Thinking My Way Through Marketing
I've been in close contact with online marketing for eight years now. For a while, I worked as an online marketing manager full time. Even though I transitioned out of that role, it was a good time. Sometimes difficult and fraught with a lot of imposter syndrome, but still good.
There is a difference between "just reading about something and dabbling with it a little" and really putting it into practice for real-life projects. At first, I was pretty afraid to do anything. What if it didn't work? What if the client was unhappy? What if I did something wrong?
Over time, I relaxed a lot about this. I realised that online marketing is more about trying things and measuring than about knowing things and succeeding the first time. Sure, over time, some patterns will solidify for you so you have a better idea of what to try first. In the end, though, it is always just "try it and see if it works".
The idea is to come up with a whole bunch of small experiments to test ideas. Marketers call them "campaigns" but I just call them ideas. To this day, I find the term "campaign" really vague. Everyone uses it as if they knew exactly what it means, but if you look closer, a campaign is just "running with an idea and trying it different ways".
Over time, I found out what makes me uncomfortable about marketing and what doesn't. I have a hard time with run of the mill marketing that just shoves things into your face. Actually, I’d argue that that is not marketing. It’s just “shouting branded nonsense”. You know the kind. It’s the social media profile full of promotional images, the brochure with stale copy and cookie-cutter offers. Sometimes, it’s also just plain lies.
A lot of people are uncomfortable with marketing because they associate it with being lied to. That’s a mental block I had to get over as well.
Marketing is marketing and lying is lying.
Good marketing is effective advocacy. It tells you what you need to know to make a decision. It draws your attention to things that might be helpful to you. It gets your attention and then helps you make a decision.
Of course, you can use it for wonderful purposes and for horrible things. Think “campaign for blood donation” vs. “cigarette ads”.
I love the kind of marketing that communicates a personality. And it needs to be ethical. The marketing I love to be involved with isn't about tricking people into buying things. It's about advocating whatever I am involved with to the people it is useful for. It’s about helping and enjoyment.
It’s about discernment, too.
"I don't want that" is a very legitimate outcome in marketing for me. I don't want the wrong people to buy from me, listen to my music, read my writing, or be my clients.
If what I have to offer doesn’t fit them, they'll be unhappy, I’ll be unhappy, and it's just going to be a mess.
We all save ourselves a lot of pain with clarity.
If it’s not for you, I’d rather you know straight away and can move on.
Nobody likes to be disappointed.
