Marketing Made Simple

The world today is not simple. Things that SOUND great like zero-percent financing for 12 months don’t look so good in month 13. Want to save $10 a month on your service subscription? — well you can IF you pay for the entire year upfront. Marketing kinda lies. A lot. Often. Really all the time and that is why we don’t trust a word companies say.

The Edelman Trust Barometer measures trust in things and this year, trust in just about everything you can name including the media, gov’t, business, organized religion and social media are at all-time lows. We trust just about nothing at face value.

So if you’re doing marketing right now you have one hell of job ahead of you. Build trust in a trust-less world. Get them to believe YOU when they reject everyone else. Uh huh.

But if you know something about people and how their minds work, you can play in this sandbox just fine. In fact, the job of marketing is actually much simpler than we like to think it is. Here are just a few tips to help out.

Tip 1: Begin with the End (User) in Mind — If you start your marketing conversation with personal pronouns that modify you or your company, you’re doing it wrong. No one cares. The audience cares about themselves and their problems and that’s pretty much it. Always begin with them and end with them and keep your role to a supporting one in their story.

Tip 2: Legitimately Try to Help — Your marketing is an exercise in memorization so you want to make sure to teach your audience what you do and HOW exactly you can help them get what they need. Brands that help are more trusted, grow faster and create raving fans!

Tip 3: Get Others to Say How Great You Are — Remember that trust thing? Well, you can assume your audience doesn’t trust a word you say. Sorry. But, they do trust some media and influencers so see if you can get another messenger to deliver your message with greater effectiveness. Also has the bonus of greater reach and no privacy invasion downside either.

I told you marketing was simple, right? Attracting customers and clients really just takes a few cups of empathy mixed with some creativity and clear communication. It’s too bad more marketers don’t get that.

My mentor Donald Miller, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Building a StoryBrand has a new book out called Business Made Simple. Don basically shows us in 60 days how to master leadership, sales, marketing, execution, management, personal productivity and more. Buy it here and see how Don makes all of these difficult concepts very easy!