What Marketing Is & What Marketing Isn’t
Posted by: Cheryl Clausen in marketing, tags: individual sales coaching, information marketing secrets, marketing position, sales coaching
photo credit: Logan Antill
Marketing is the initial connection starting a conversation. As a business owner you’ve probably felt exactly the way John Jantsch states, “I sure love to work with spreadsheets and do people’s taxes, holy crap, I’ve got to learn how to market.” Yep, that’s the stark realization.
No matter how much you love doing what you do you don’t get to do it until you attract clients. Now many of you are repulsed by the idea of marketing your services. You think as a professional it’s beneath you, or you shouldn’t have to because people should just come to you because of your expertise.
As the bank account dwindles you face the fact that you have to market yourself, or you’ll have to go work for someone else. Someone who’ll do the marketing for you. The reason you’re marketing averse is because you’re focusing on what marketing isn’t. Marketing isn’t:
- hypey communications that mislead people
- shouting louder than the competition about how great you are
- tricking people
Now there are definitely examples of people who market themselves exactly as I’ve described what marketing isn’t. They do it because they don’t understand marketing. They buy into a marketing scheme sold by some huskster. And they’re desperate.
True marketing is:
- talking to potential prospects about their problem(s)
- quietly entering the conversation already in their heads
- genuinely giving and caring first
Does that change your perception? I hope so. You see everyone markets it’s how they do it that makes the difference. Even when you do it well you can’t expect your marketing to do all the work for you and sell your services. At some point you have to hold a one-on-one human to human genuine conversation with the other person.
I know that’s probably your next fear. But that’s because you don’t understand that selling is really nothing more than a genuine conversation between you and the other person where you’re seeking to understand if you can help them and how.
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May 30th, 2008 at 6:17 am
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