Marketing Monday: the thread that unites

mm logo w sign shadow Marketing Monday: the thread that unites We have talked until the cows came home about how all of your marketing JuJu is really based on what you want that ittybiz of yours to be when it grows up…so all I’m going to say here is revisit your vision. Just sit down or stand if you want, and and re-ask yourself the question “why am I thinking about doing this?” and “what do I want it to be?” or iif you have already been on the front lines ask ” is my business attracting the type of custmers I like to deal with” or “what do I love and what do I hate about my biz?” that’s all just ruminate on that for a while.

Here are some possible reasons why you’re doing what you are doing:

Nothing else better to do
Easy money
Romance
Some side pocket money
You can’t imagine doing anything else
Afraid of looking like a FAILURE if you change direction

!Important!

Keep this question present in the back of your mind…

“what business am I in?”

and yes you are in business, you are wanting to have folks fork over money for your stuff….and that’s business by any definition.

OK lets us get back to the featured issue…

We’ve already established that marketing is about relationships and the keystone to creating those relationships is you and how you see your world. When your glasses are all clean and shinny you see the world clearly and when you see the world clearly the things you make reflect that shinny clarity sending out your invisible rays that tell the folks who have similar shinny glasses that you are alive and kicking and have something they should check out.

Here’s the catch though…

Without knowing how to communicate what you are all about to those folks you are trying to be visible to, you will be very… invisible. Even more important, you might just want to think a bit about how you communicate…what is your natural way of sayin’ what you do, what is your natural way of talking about your stuff, the stuff you do that gets you all hot and excited.

This is important because any other way of saying things will go over like a lead balloon. The key to creating relationships is communications…you have to know how to talk and how to listen, unless you have perfected the art of the grunt. Moreover, in the beginning stages of starting up that relationship it is best to listen and to ask and to make the conversation more about the other person…because that’s how you gather intel, so you can figure out if there’s a match. It’s also helpful in finding out how they see their world and if it is even close to what you see.

So, at this point you don’t want to be all “gimme,gimme look at me see how great I am” or sinking into the manipulative thing of convincing prospective custmers they should like you….that’s so old school. Instead, you want to be all about giving, giving them your ear, your energy, your empathy. When, done successfully the marketing relationship turns into a two way street, because your people now eagerly await the chance to bring more of your stuff into their lives and into the lives of their friends. If you’ve done your work and know your core this is the time for that core to get all sparkly, causing all who see it to shout ahhhs and ooohs and clap. And why this happens is because you haven’t made them feel that all transactiony you wanted was to get them to buy something from you.

So think of what it is that you are saying with your work and in your words, what do you want it to be for folks who buy your stuff. Then once you have it use it to shape how you communicate.