Really Deep Stuff

I don’t talk about this with many people, at least not before a couple adult beverages. But since you’re here. . .

Marketing, like anything, has an underlying physics to it. Causes and effects. You may not understand them or even be aware of them. They can be subtle, even unknowable to most in the game. And they can be in-your-face obvious. But they happily operate nonetheless. Like gravity.

The more you understand, however, the more power your marketing takes.

I have too many influences to list. Here, the biggest voice comes from Marshall McClellan, Arthur M. Young, David Ogilvy, Aristotle, my good friend John Webster and most recently, Merlin Mann. What follows are touchstones I use. Again, the physics of marketing. Delicate stuff. Separate. Non-sequential. But like gravity, all true.

Generally, the goal of marketing is to communicate with the intention to persuade. The evidence of persuasion is action. But action is arbitrary without purpose. The goal of persuasion, then, is to align what you sell with the shared purpose of your target customers. Don’t tell people what to do. Tell them a story. Because story creates purpose. And purpose creates action. Hopefully, the action you desire.

Start where people are. The level of understanding those you wish to persuade are at is where you start your story. Not at yours.

A is A. Understand and accept the circumstances and objective reality of your situation. What you want it to be or need it to be or hope it would be are not relevant.

When you persuade you make choices along a moral continuum. On one end: preying on people’s lack of sense of self; the more you become like me, the more you buy what I’m selling, the more whole you will become. The other end: connecting to the truth in others you share.