Monday, October 13, 2008

Marketing – Heart and Soul

Most small businesses and entrepreneurs struggle to survive, and most don’t make it. Typically, they struggle with marketing. Meaning, they don’t have enough new people coming to them. That’s because, if they do any marketing at all, it probably sounds like all the other marketing out there. And they are ignored.

They are ignored because the heart and soul of most marketing is, unfortunately, a command to do something. Buy this! Come here! We, human beings, don’t like to be told what to do. So most people ignore most marketing. And most businesses close in less than five years.

You must get people – as in, understand them – in order to get people – as in, have them come to you. Get people and you get to keep your business.

The heart and soul of effective marketing is to give value. That’s because the heart and soul of each of us is “what’s in it for me?” Offer some irresistible value and those who want it will come to you, and you’ll never chase people – or chase them away - again. You’ll never feel like a pushy salesperson. You’ll be responding to people who want what you have – who want to interact with you and learn about you. You’re not trying to get someone to do something. You are merely offering something nice. You are inviting them to take something. To try something. To sample something.

You are an unlimited supply of value when you choose to be so. Your desire to help and empower is the key that unlocks your imagination. It’s the fuel that strengthens and drives all your efforts. It’s what heals and cleans and calms and clarifies you. Once you are so galvanized, so specific, and so certain, you have the strength and power and attraction of simplicity, which lets people see and hear and evaluate what you have most efficiently.

To put the ball in their court, give them a ball. Give them something to consider taking. What? – you might wonder. Free samples. Free information. A report on the state of your industry. “How-to” lists of how to do something related to your product. Free audios. Free videos. Free links to great information and resources. It’s a very different mindset than “Buy my thing now!”

Giving value first is the best first impression you can make. It is more irresistible than anything else you could promote as the way to introduce your product or services or company. It leads to the next step in your sales funnel – the slippery slope down which you want people to slide easily and effortlessly. Make the first contact with you as delightful as possible. Give, give, give! There is no limit.

The bonus benefit that takes you by surprise is the gigantic size and power you will feel. The wholeness, the abundance, the well-being, for by giving we automatically trigger the assumed feeling inside that we must have more than enough, and this feeling of abundance makes all the difference in the world. Because the world becomes, to us, what we assume it is. The world – life, reality, this universe – become abundant when we perceive them as abundant.

And that, my friends, is the greatest value I can give you, and you can give others – namely – the empowerment of knowing that we are the limit and the key – we are the magic wand. We hold all treasure inside, and only the perception of abundance unleashes abundance – and unleashes our mammoth capacity to give value to ourselves and everyone else.