Tag / this is marketing

by Nathan Coumbe

Marketable skills

The Music School at University of North Texas has a list of what they call “marketable” skills that each of their degree plans develop. Skills include:

  • Performance communication
  • Excellent memory capability
  • Command of music computer programs
  • Pattern understanding
  • Improvisation and analytical capabilities

Now, as a former full-time musician myself and current corporate employee, I can safely say…

No one has ever paid me for any of this. Which is the supposed to be the definition of “marketable skills”—things worth paying for.

If you take Seth Godin’s definition of marketing to heart (which I do), then marketing means creating change in another person. And to take it a step further, it means creating a change in them that also prompts them to “pay” for your skills in some way.

You will then see that none of those skills do anything like that. However, they may give you the ability to accomplish that goal.

Those skills might allow you to:

  • Move another person so deeply that they become a raving fan of your music
  • Leave someone in awe of your stage presence and artistry (so they’ll come to more concerts and buy your albums)
  • Create a piece of music so astounding that someone tells 10 of their friends (and they tell 10 more…and on and on it goes)
  • Hypnotize an audience with intricate rhythms and on-the-spot creations so outrageous they beg to “know the trick”

All of these outcomes from your skill development lead to similar results: obsessed fans who tell other people and support your art because they can’t live without you.

The skills aren’t marketable.

But what you create with them and put into the world is.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Do you do what you THINK you do?

If you’re a business owner or freelancer, what problem would you say you solve for your customers? (Hint: it’s probably not the same as what they think.)

If you’re an employee, do you know what problem your company was created to solve? What its original purpose was? Do you know why customers hire your employer?

Odds are, what you think you do and the reason your customers actually buy from you are quite different. 

But if you want to increase your levels of success and sales, you have to align those two things.

Whether you’re starting a business or building a musical group, there are two marketing questions you must ask first: 

  • Who’s it for? 

And

  • What’s it for?

And if you work with others, you must also ensure they know the answers to these questions. If they don’t know, they won’t care, nor can they truly help you succeed.

“No involvement, no commitment.”

—Stephen R. Covey

In fact, it’s a good idea to solicit answers to these questions from your people. You might get closer to the truth of what it is you’re trying to do.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Here’s how to know if you’re manipulating someone…

If they knew EXACTLY what you knew about your…

  1. Product
  1. Service
  1. Idea

And knowing exactly what you know, they wouldn’t…

  1. Buy it…
  1. Use it…
  1. Believe it…

Then, yes, you’re manipulating them. 

On the other hand, if they knew exactly what you know, and they STILL wanted to engage with it, you’re doing something right. 

Don’t create or sell things you aren’t proud of. 

by Nathan Coumbe

Stories sell

No one cares about the features of anything. What they want to know is how it helps them.

“What do these features do for me?”

A friend of mine was asking about the internet provider we use in our home. Naturally, I wanted to sell him on the service that we use because I think it’s the best.

So I told him, “You get up to one gig upload and download speeds.’

Then I thought about it for a second and realized this: most people don’t know what that means. More importantly, they don’t care. 

So I changed up my approach and told a story instead.

I told him that some of the projects I do each week for work have to be uploaded to Vimeo. “With our old Internet provider, I explained, “it would take me between 15 and 20 minutes to upload a single video. Now, with this new provider, it only takes me about 20 to 30 seconds to do the same thing.”

He was sold, right then and there.

Stories are how we humans make sense of the world. Stories are also what sells—anything and everything.

No matter what you’re trying to persuade someone to do, find a way to tell them a story about it.

by Nathan Coumbe

Inconvenience sells

I was leaving the gym this morning when I started checking my pockets for my car keys. 

Then I thought, “Why don’t women’s clothes have pockets?”

Since I see the world through the lens of marketing, I came up with a theory:

Maybe women’s clothes don’t have pockets so industrialists could sell more purses. 

Before there were purses, there were pockets in everything. You needed to be able to carry your stuff around with you.

I’m sure that didn’t sit well with the people who made and sold purses. When presented with a fancy new bag, I’m sure customers thought, “Why do I need a heavy, expensive bag to carry my stuff when I have pockets?”

But if you get rid of the pockets, you make things inconvenient. You’ve created a new need—the need to have something to carry your stuff around in.  

(Let’s not even get started on all the accessories sold simply to carry around in a purse…)

If this is true, it goes to prove a great (potentially immoral) marketing point:

If you don’t have a problem, make one up, then sell the solution. 

Marketers do this to us all the time. We need to be aware of it.

Are you actually being inconvenienced, or did a sly marketer make it that way?

by Nathan Coumbe

You have more than one shot

50 years ago, you had to stage a grand opening to the masses to your event or business. 

If you wanted to open a store, you banked a lot of money (usually borrowed), on the fact that you had to get a lot of customers right away, or you’d go bust.

So you’d hype everyone up. You’d send out mailers, run TV commercials, tell everyone you knew to spread the word to your friends. 

Hype, hype, hype!

Then you’d hold the grand opening with those big scissors and red tape (metaphorical or otherwise). And it would either succeed—you’d make the money you needed to stay afloat.

Or it would fail, and you’d potentially go bankrupt. 

We still have that “one-shot” mentality today. Whether it’s starting a business, writing a song, publishing a book, whatever—we still feel like we’ve got one shot to succeed. 

That everything hinges on one big moment where either everyone hears about it…or they don’t and you fail. 

The reality is, the internet has made the grand opening both unnecessary and obsolete. 

If you write something that doesn’t perform well, so what?! You can show up and do it again tomorrow… and do it better. 

If you start a business, but don’t get any traction, so what? The stakes for failing in a digital business are minuscule compared to what it used to be. 

You don’t need grand openings anymore. You don’t need hundreds or thousands of customers and followers right away to be successful. 

You now have unlimited chances to attract the people you want to serve. Failing is often free. 

Start small, serve well, and let it grow over time. That’s the key to succeeding in the modern age. 

by Nathan Coumbe

Praise the good. Ignore the rest.

If you want to create lasting influence with others, or change for the better, there is really only one way to do it:

Praise the good.

“So long as a person did anything good, he would praise him and use him for the service in which he excelled, but to his other conduct he paid no attention…”

–Cassius Dio writing about Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius

When Emperor Marcus Aurelius wanted to influence other people, to reinforce the behaviors and actions he wanted to see, he would praise the person who did the good deed. This is actually quite Pavlovian in its execution.

Conditioning good behavior

Remember Pavlov from your introductory psychology class? Pavlov would ring a bell before he gave his dogs food; the food caused the dogs to salivate. Eventually the dogs associated the ringing bell with food and would salivate when the bell rang, even when Pavlov did not give them food.

Marcus essentially did the same thing with those in his service: whenever they did something of which he approved, he praised it. This constant reinforcement of the good conditioned his people to do more good work in the future. But there is a second part to Dio’s observation above…

Pay no attention to the rest

Not only did Marcus praise the good, he ignored the behavior and actions he didn’t want to continue. Why did he do this?

There is a wonderful little book who’s first chapter discusses this at length:

“Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.”

–Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

How often have you had a positive outcome after you criticized someone for doing something? I would hazard a guess at 10%.

When you criticize someone, they get angry, defensive, and emotionally illogical. He or she will justify the action rather than accept that it was wrong. It’s a natural human response. We don’t like to be wrong, and we definitely don’t like other people pointing out our poor behavior.

Therefore, the only way to get the results you want from other people is to praise them when you seeing them do the good deeds you want done. Criticizing the bad doesn’t work: it only causes resentment.

“We are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures brisling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”

–Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

(Of course, there are some behaviors that are dangerous, illegal, immoral, or that might harm others; these behaviors must be stopped immediately. Those sorts of behaviors are not the topic of discussion here.)

Be a model

How do let others know what good actions or behaviors are? You must be a model. Do the things you want others to do; be the kind of person you want others to be.

Seth Godin likes to say, “people like us do things like this.” Invite people to be “people like us,” whoever you think “people like us” should be. Then, do the things you want others to do, and when they follow, praise them for it!

Model good behavior. Praise others when they perform good work. Ignore the rest.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Marketing isn’t evil. You are.

Okay, so you’re not evil – I just wanted to get your attention.

Our culture is so used to being “sold to”, to being bombarded with advertisements and brand marketing that we’ve been taught to believe that marketing, trying to influence someone to do something or change something or buy something, is evil.

Marketing is a tool. Tools are not evil; they are morally neutral. Their capacity for good or for evil lies in the hands of the wielder.

Would you ever call a hammer evil? Of course not: personifying an inanimate object with morality is preposterous. If you used the hammer to bludgeon someone to death…is the hammer guilty of evil or are you? Did the hammer commit evil?

Likewise, if the hammer is used to put a nail into a wall to hang a picture for a little old lady in a retirement home, the hammer is not good, nor has it done good. The person using the hammer has used it for its intended purpose to do good.

Marketing is not evil, but people doing marketing can be. Using marketing is evil if it is used to persuade people to do bad things or to do things that cause harm to themselves or others. Using marketing for deception is wrong.

Marketing that creates beneficial change in the world is good. Persuading people to do something that helps themselves or creates better circumstances, even if they know they are being influenced by marketing, is good.

Marketing isn’t good or evil, but what and how you market might be.

Go market the right thing in the right way.

(Who determines what the right thing is? That is a discussion for another day.)

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by Nathan Coumbe

Everything is marketing. Everything is sales.

That’s the premise.

Even on the smallest scale, we are marketing and selling. It might not be products but rather ideas or ways of thinking and being. 

If I have an idea about how people can behave or change to improve their lives, to become the best possible versions of themselves, it does no one any good unless I can persuade them to adopt the ideas. That means that I have to sell to them.

“Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone.”

– Seth Godin, This Is Marketing, p. xiv

Marketing and sales are both about influence; each of us must influence others to create change (we will get into the ethics of influence in another post).

Leadership in the modern age is sales and marketing. During the Industrial Age, a leader told an employee what to do and that person either complied or left. In the Knowledge Age, a leader must influence those who follow. You can still attempt tell people what to do, but it rarely leads to enrollment and willing compliance, without which high-quality work does not occur. However, influencing them – by empathizing and understanding what they want, feel, need, and believe, and then having the courage to let them know your ideas for progress – this sort of leadership brings others willingly to your way of thinking. (It also potentially creates better ideas than either party came up with on their own.)

Every career requires sales and marketing. A psychologist is both a salesperson and a marketer. If they do not market, they do not get patients. She cannot rely on her credentials to bring people into the office.

A teacher is marketing each time she sets foot in the classroom. If she cannot get her students to come with her, if she cannot get them excited and willing to go on the learning journey, her knowledge and expertise are useless. She must influence them.

If you coach people on how to level up their careers, personal lives, or get past negative scripting from earlier life periods, you must sell them on the ideas you present. If you fail to do so, or do it poorly, you have failed to create change or the desire for it in the other person. 

Regardless of whom you seek to influence, you must always begin by understanding them, their points of view, their wants, desires, worries, fears, and problems. That is always the first step to influence, and influence is marketing.

We all must influence others to make change happen, and if everything is marketing and everything is sales, you might as well learn to do it well.

Start with this book here.

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*Some links in my posts are affiliate links, which means I make a small commission on any purchases.