Marketing unfortunately can be seen as something sleazy or icky, and as a thing that is separate to everyday business activities.
It is neither, though it definitely can be sleazy and icky when done badly.
Firstly though, I’ll define what I mean by marketing.
I’m using Shopify’s definition, which simply states that, “Marketing is the practice of creating interest in a product or service and convincing potential customers to buy it.”
We are essentially marketing during all the hours we are at work in our business, because everything we do is designed to create and maintain interest in our product or service to ensure that existing and potential customers buy it.
When we mention an additional service we provide when a customer talks about a problem, we are marketing. When we swiftly resolve a customer complaint, and give them a free gift to apologise, we are marketing. When we offer to share our knowledge to solve a problem other businesses are having at a business association or chamber of commerce event, we are marketing.
While all of us do need to make absolutely non-negotiable time every week to focus exclusively on marketing our businesses and getting the word out to new clients or customers, marketing is an integral and awesome part of everyday business too.
Of course, some businesses engage in marketing strategies that make marketing look awful. Interestingly, such strategies are also completely ineffective and result in unpleasant potential client experiences.
Marketing strategies in this category include:
- Bombarding clients with promotional emails almost every day. We all know that we don’t read any of these emails when we’re on the receiving end of this never ending onslaught.
- Throwing pop up boxes up all over your business website. We all know that everyone hits the cross in the corner of the pop up box so that it’ll disappear automatically as soon as the pop up box appears.
- Using a business’ contact form to promote products and services from another country that they aren’t even looking for.
While the above kinds of marketing are ineffective and do come across as salesy, we simply cannot throw the beautiful baby out with the bathwater.
Because of course, we all end up without a business at all if we don’t continually market it.
Marketing most definitely doesn’t have to be salesy, sleazy or unpleasant.
You can choose exactly what marketing strategies you are comfortable with, or create completely new ones. And leave the rest.
I’ll give you an example.
I buy a significant number of a certain parcel product, and had been buying this product online and then sending the parcels off from my local post office because online savings were widely advertised. One day when I called into the post office, the manager asked if I was interested in buying the parcel product through them if they could offer a competitive price, providing me with a note showing the price they could do. I was delighted to be seen as important enough to be asked for my business, and chuffed that there might be a local win-win situation. This is because I prefer a quick transaction with a lovely human being rather than sit in front of a screen to buy something whenever I can anyway.
My local post office manager is not pushy or salesy in any way. She simply excels at customer service, and her marketing approach in this instance was respectful, considerate and helpful.
Indeed, marketing can always be carried out in an ethical and non-pushy way.
My post office manager always demonstrates a high standard of professionalism and her approach was a good example of what I call the helpful straight shooter approach. This approach involves the business sales person simply asking about something or talking about their products and services in a clear and direct way, and demonstrating that they’d like to help me as a client. The helpful straight shooter approach makes me far more likely to buy a business’ product or service, because the business owner is building my trust with every word that comes out of their mouth.
Marketing in many cases is quite simply offering value in a respectful way through communication. I’ve spoken to a number of Business Development Managers who know this, and who excel at it. It’s getting on the phone or getting out and talking to people about what you can offer a potential client.
Clients respond to this because people are social creatures and love being part of a business and social network. They love being known. And they like to align with businesses that treat them well because essentially, they just want to save themselves future hassle.
As an aside, I highly recommend checking out Marie Forleo’s excellent videos on the topic of marketing. She loves marketing but asserts that all business owners can use marketing techniques that arent’ sleazy or over salesy.
In summary, when marketing is done well, it really can create win-win situations. We all love it when there’s a good match between what a client needs and what our businesses offer.
It just needs all of us to keep putting ourselves out there.
© Annemaree Jensen