What Most Marketing Misses

Since the beginning, some people needed to buy and others to sell. —It’s the timing that screws us up sometimes. Because sellers want to sell all of the time, every single day to anyone who has what sellers really want — money. It’s not a sin. It actually does make the world go round. And buyers DO need to buy things – we want things, need things, etc. And THAT also makes the world go and go.

But, it can be the sellers’ thirst to sell things that actually drives buyers away. So when the buyers want to buy they have already said good-bye to the seller. Hmmm… How do we get this question of timing to line up?

Here’s what I think. Sellers need to back off and do other valuable things to establish themselves into the life of the buyers so that WHEN the right time to buy hits THEM (and sellers you have no choice in this) the sellers will be there and ready to complete the transaction.  

So the real question becomes how do we as sellers invest in the relationship to become a regular fixture in the buyer’s life?  How can we earn our place there?

  1. FREQUENCY — The trick here is to not always be around, but be there often enough so the buyer doesn’t forget about you. For most b2b service businesses, I like monthly. BUT (and this is a Sir-Mix-A-Lot level big BUT) the content MUST be good every single time you reach out OR they will dump you (and rightfully so). For B2C, it might be more often but BE CAREFUL. Every time you hit send, your relationship is at risk. I get at least five telemarketing calls per day from companies playing that numbers game. That is the ultimate exercise in futility. Effort is happening, but it will never result in the win they are seeking. Never. 
  2. STORY — From the subject line of an e-mail to the headline of your social post, you’d better be talking about THEIR story where they are the hero on a very important mission and YOU are the guide helping them get there. When you start talking about yourself, you’ve lost their attention — it’s over.
  3. TRUST — Let’s face it, they don’t trust you. And why SHOULD they? Everyone else has lied to them, exaggerated their claims and left them feeling exposed and angry. They’ve been burned and they are CAUTIOUS. So sometimes, it helps to change the messenger and use client testimonials, influencers and media to back up what you’re saying about your own product or service.  —That PR stuff, it REALLY works. 

Running your marketing like this is the only way to be sure that when the buyer is ready, YOU will be there and that magical timing thing will work out for you. And let’s face it, most marketing doesn’t do any of these things. They would much rather bludgeon us with a constant marketing-automation-generated stream of garbage until we acquiesce and buy—or unsubscribe. And since they probably don’t really measure the top of the funnel, who cares, right?  

There IS a better way. A way that requires empathy, creativity and the desire to build trust in a world that looks at “marketing” as an advertising-driven numbers game.

Join me down this path. And together, we can change our own marketing for the better AND by doing so, what the marketing profession has become. We can hit where they miss. We can care where they use data reports to justify a decided lack of empathy. All of us CAN be better.