For many small business owners, the true motivation behind their business is to do some good for the world.
These are heart-centered companies.
And they face a unique challenge when it comes to marketing their products and services.
How hard can they push in their marketing materials?
On the one hand, they need to drive sales. They have to attract new customers. If they don’t, their business will fail.
And heart-centered or not, a failed business doesn’t do anyone any good.
But…
When you look at documents written by lawyers, politicians and crisis-management consultants, it’s often hard to figure out what they’re trying to say.
There’s a reason for that.
They don’t want you to understand what they’re saying.
This is called obfuscation, which is defined as “the action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible”.
Obfuscation is deliberate.
It’s used when people are trying to hide stuff from you.
I’ve been around long enough to remember what marketing was like before the arrival of the web.
Back in the 1980s I was a print copywriter, writing ads for magazines and newspapers.
I loved the craft. And I worked with an art director who was equally passionate about his work.
Our ads were highly polished. We spent days or sometimes even weeks on a single ad. The final results were as near perfect as we were able to achieve.
Truth be told, we cared more about the opinions of the next industry awards committee than we did about the opinions of our readers.
In a very real sense, we lived and worked in an adland ivory tower.
But that was then. And now is now.
Take off your marketing hat for a moment.
Think of your experiences as a regular consumer, buying stuff for yourself and your family.
Would it be fair to say that you’d be unlikely to buy from a company you don’t trust?
Doesn’t sound like something you’d feel comfortable doing, right?
OK, now put your marketing hat back on, and answer me this, “How hard do you work to earn and hold onto the trust of your prospects and customers?”
If you tell me that the trust of those people is super-important to you, excuse me while I go through all your marketing materials.
Because everything you do as a marketer either builds trust or burns it. Nothing is neutral.
In this post I get to interview Tim Washer… speaker, creative director and comedy writer whose credits include Late Show With David Letterman, and Saturday Night Live.
I met Tim at a conference in Austin, Texas. We were both speakers, but he was way, way funnier.
He gave this great talk that held everyone’s total attention. Everyone in the audience was totally spellbound.
I remember how Tim clearly cared about the people in the room.
And how he used humor to connect with people, engage with the whole audience and make us all feel we were his friends.
Imagine being able to harness that kind of attention as a marketer.
No wonder Tim is on my must-interview list.
Let’s get started…