We are all marketing all of the time. This is not a controversial idea and there is general agreement about it on every level from personal to professional. Whether we’re trying to convince a friend, persuade a family member, or sell a product, we use the marketing techniques we have found to be effective over a lifetime of trial and error to make a compelling and irrefutable case for something that influences the opinions of those around us.
The challenge is that there is just so much noise that it’s practically impossible to break through the clutter and be noticed, let alone remembered. How many of our email inboxes are filled with pages of unread messages? How many signs and billboards fly by and we don’t even notice? How many ads are, worse than annoying, literally unremarkable? If you have any doubt about this, ask a teenager to show you their inbox! If and when they remember how to get there you’re likely to find very few emails even opened. How else can you explain a “benchmark” open rate of around 25% (only one-quarter of all emails?!) or a “benchmark” click-through rate of 2%--that’s just an absurdly low number! We’re at a point where even our two-minute movie trailers often start with a two-second trailer for the trailer!
The demand for true creativity is even more critical in trying to address this challenge. Talented people find ways to create meaningful messages and this is where we get our promotional ads that are clever or funny or cute. This is also where we get advertising with shock value. It’s the same goal, except the end result is often offensive to at least some portion of the audience. Other attempts are explosive (in the literal or metaphorical sense). Again the same goal, but by definition the end result is often overwhelming.
A better solution than all of these is to make people smarter. People hold on to things they value. We know that’s the case with physical items because people actually keep them for a long time. It’s also the case for ideas because people remember valuable ideas: It changes the way they think about or see the world around them.
Good “marketing” gives people value. It makes their lives easier. It makes them better. It makes them smarter. The best marketing is an actual experience, a light-bulb moment that people will remember as an epiphany, the moment when things suddenly made sense and where they connected the dots.
Your reputation should be that you make people smarter. It’s that old adage that people remember how you made them feel more than what you said or did. We all know people who cut a swath of negative energy and feelings. Your goal is to leave everyone in your wake a better person for having interacted with you or your offering.
The best marketing isn’t marketing per se. It isn’t informational, it’s educational: People actually learn and they remember it. It isn’t entertaining (or at least not just entertaining), it’s edifying: People feel better from experiencing it. It isn’t overwhelming, it’s engaging: People want more of it and they want to share it with others. It isn’t selling, or promoting, or recruiting, or even really marketing at all. All of these approaches are looking for something in return. Instead it’s enlightening, so that instead of buying a transaction you’re building a relationship.
Enlightening beats marketing every time.