We often forget that marketing is about you. The new economic conditions, the rise of the social media and the internationalization often make us neglects this fundamental marketing principle: that the exceptional good marketing is focused on YOU!
Marketing tries to make you feel special and part of a larger entity (culture, community, group, etc). It is not something for everyone to do and, certainly, it is not something of a mass nature!
What Is An Effective Marketing?
Success or failure of marketing is not just to make you buy something! It is to hook you up with an idea, a specific brand or a perspective of the world, totally different from the ones in the mainstream.
Most marketing campaigns fail because are unable to grasp this simple truth. It does not take only a good story to make someone move towards a direction; it takes other things as well.
It needs the good story to lure you, the concept you try to promote (the more coherent the better), the connection to specific needs of the target group, the availability (of the product, service, idea, etc) and the “voice”, whispering that this whole thing is about you!
For this reason, modern business and marketing try to become more and more personal, crunching large volumes of consumers’ data. But data is only the one part of the consumer’s buying equations!
If the prospective client does not hook up on the idea, if you do not lead him or her to sample the prospect idea, project, item, service, if you do not leave him the freedom to choose, ultimately will negate your personification attempts for a second communication.
For this reason, it is essential to have it right for the first time. And for doing that, you should care about your prospect connections (people with needs first, later clients!).
Marketing Is About You!
Marketing is not always directed to raise a buying trend in favor of a product or service. Most of the times, successful marketing, and sales campaigns start with the why and focused on the familiarization of the prospective client with a culture!
A culture that is formed by the stories marketers told to the public in order to raise interest and awareness.
Most successful marketing is when you sharing free stuff (tools, ideas, new concepts, papers, documents, drawings, etc) all related to your main message and when you sharing your personal views in an authentic voice (the ‘be yourself ‘clause)!
The game is old! I give you a wonderful opportunity to sample this or that item or idea and you lend me your attention for some minutes! Quid pro quo. But this must happen on an equal base, without rush and coercion! The connection happens when the story you tell have or can acquire a special meaning for the listener. Or when (as the good education does) you have a shift in the behavior of the listener.
Furthermore, only when you (as a brand, affiliate, associate, company, etc) share a same image of the world with your clients (followers, tribe, etc.) you have a marketplace and a shop! i.e. something that is been built by the free will of both parties. Not only to exchange goods but to share as well (ideas, ways, new approaches, etc). This is the reason why the freebies, giveaways, mods, and hacks, are so popular, these days!
Question: What do you think a good marketing is? What are the best stories, we have not told yet? How can we market better? How can you do marketing more efficient and more adjustable to the special needs of the people?