How Marketing Can Empower Others and Might be the Secret to Life

Why is it so easy to tear someone down than build them up? Why is it so easy for people to believe lies instead of the truth? Some say it’s human nature. People want the scandal, the rumors, or maybe they just want the distraction from themselves.

?Empowering others should be the new human nature. That should also extend to marketing. Why? Because here’s the crazy truth…we are all human. We have doubts and fears, don’t know everything, worry, want to do well, and prove that we belong and that we matter. We all want to be that person that everyone looks up to and makes others proud. It’s at the core of who we are. But how do empowering others and marketing relate?

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Marketing should help people find the solutions to the challenges they are having. If a small business is having trouble growing, software from another company could help make their projects more manageable and therefore become more efficient to scale. If marketing is done correctly, the software company will have case studies and information that speaks to the pains of growing a small business.?The case study will have facts showing how much time and possibly money has been saved using their product.

People should help each other with the challenges that we face each day. No, I’m not saying create a case study to hand out to people you meet. However, we all are a massive treasure trove of case studies. Things we have had to overcome in our lives can help others. These challenges that we have faced can let others know they aren’t alone in their struggles. It can give them confidence that they can face the challenge head-on because someone else has done it. That does not mean regurgitating every fact, figure, and stat when you meet someone facing a challenge. It also doesn’t mean pointing out everything that is wrong with the situation to ‘show the bright side’ of the problem. We all have encountered people like this when we have shared a problem. That is probably why a lot of people don’t open up. Even though providing facts and trying to give a different perspective may seem like it’s helping, it’s not. To help and empower the person having the problem, you need to provide value in your response. But aren’t facts, figures, and advice providing value?

Let’s go back to marketing, using election ads as an example, to help clarify the issue of providing value. Election season will soon be upon us and that means political ads. This is something everyone is familiar with, and politicians use multiple marketing channels to reach the voters. This includes TV ads, emails, texts, direct mail, and field marketing people knocking on your door during a football game (yes this happened to me, and let’s just say I knew who NOT to vote for in the election). Each election season is the same. Politician A says Politician B is awful and here’s how. Politician B says Politician A is just as bad and here’s their list to prove it. However, this does not help the voter know anything about either politician. What’s in it for the voter?

?What would happen if Politician A said that they were focused on supporting schools by expanding funding without raising taxes and highlighted a few ways they were going to accomplish this task? What if Politician B said that they were also focused on supporting schools but wanted to raise salaries for teachers and partner with corporations to donate technology to accelerate learning? Isn’t this getting to the heart of the issue? Wouldn’t this help voters decide who had a better plan for supporting schools? And if you had a child in that school, wouldn’t you want to learn more about each person to see how they were going to make life better for you and your family? Of course, you would!

?This example of marketing helps people find a solution to a problem they are facing - how to get more support for the school their child is attending. It also helps them decide whom to vote for. Providing value is achieved by thinking about it from the voter’s point of view and not the politician’s.

Let’s go back to the small business example, being more efficient sounds like a great idea. However, change is hard. How long is it going to take to get used to the software? Will their employees adopt it quickly? Does the owner have to train employees or will the software company train them? Is training in person or online, and how long will it take? These are questions that the software company can answer in their content creation of blogs, emails, texts, field marketing (but not during a football game), and direct mail. It’s the same channels that the politician example used but will probably have an entirely different outcome because the software company is providing value to future customers. They have flipped the perspective to look at the problem from the customer’s point of view and therefore provided information that is helpful to the customer.

?Providing value to customers is not a new concept. However, a lot of companies still don’t grasp the concept. Providing value doesn’t mean pointing out all the weaknesses of the competition. It also doesn’t mean pumping up your own product without proof points. Just because you say it’s true doesn’t mean it is. Providing value is empowering your customer. It’s answering the lingering questions they have in the back of their head. It’s easing their fears, worries, frustrations, and doubts. It’s giving them the confidence that they are making the right decision to go with your product because it helps solve their problem. It seems so simple yet, so few companies do it.

The same can be said of people. Empowering others helps them grow, learn, and succeed. It builds their confidence. It doesn’t mean that you fail because they succeed. It isn’t a win-lose scenario. It’s a win-win scenario. On the surface, everyone “gets” this concept. However, somewhere along the line, the understanding is lost, and we find ourselves turning on each other just to prove we are better than the other person. We want to show the world that we are the smartest, we’re powerful and successful and others can’t compare. Our insecurities creep in and our pettiness lashes out.

Maybe we feel it’s better to protect ourselves than to open up and be vulnerable. However, that doesn’t work. Everyone has self-doubts. Everyone has confidence that sometimes gets shaken. Everyone at some time in their life has said ‘There is no way I can accomplish that’. That doesn’t mean giving into the insecurities. It means making the hard choice to stomp down the knee-jerk reaction and push through.

Will it be easy? Probably not. Will it be worth it? Definitely! Empower others as a person and as a company. In-person and in marketing. When the doubt starts to creep in and the temptation to tear someone down is staring you in the face, take a breath and stop. Flip the perspective to how can you help instead. You may not accomplish it 100% of the time. And there may be setbacks. But if you get better a little each day that is all that really matters.

So back to my original questions…why can’t people empower others more and why do people believe lies over the truth? The answer is they can, it just takes effort. It may be easier to post a snippy comment on social media and make yourself feel better for a second or two. It may be easier to believe that science isn’t factual because it keeps changing and evolving. (I’m still confused if Pluto is a planet or not.) But confusion and fear shouldn’t control reactions to things. As someone (other than Walt Whitman) said,

Be curious, not judgmental.

Don’t take the easy way. Build each other up and help each other solve their current challenges. It doesn’t take a ton of effort. It just takes the willingness to help. Who knows, this just might be the secret to life everyone has been searching for.

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Rhonda Giedt is a marketing executive focused on solving challenges to spur revenue growth in companies. She has experience marketing companies in SaaS, manufacturing, and 3D printing. She is also an avid sports fan of college football, golf, premier league football, and many others.

She is also an ambassador to the PEAK community, start-up advisor, and mentor to marketing and business professionals.