This Is Marketing

Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about.

The second step is to design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about.

Tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the smallest viable market.

Spread the word.

Show up –regularly, consistently, and generously, for years and years – to organize and lead and build confidence in the change you seek to make. 

Creative people can change the world.

You cannot change everyone.

Change is best made with intent.

Human beings tell themselves stories.

We can group people into stereotyped groups that often (not always) tell themselves similar stories.

Connect us to our purpose and vision for our career or business.

Allow us to celebrate our strengths by remembering how we got from there to here.

Deepen our understanding of our unique value and what differentiates us in the marketplace.

Reinforce our core values

Help us to act in alignment and make value-based decisions.

Encourage us to respond to customers instead of react to the marketplace.

Attract customers who want to support businesses that reflect or represent their values.

Build brand loyalty and give customers a story to tell.

Attract the kind of like-minded employees we want. 

Status is always relative.

Status is in the eyes of the beholder.

Status attended to is the status that matters.

Status has inertia

Status is learned

Shame is the status killer

Dominion is a vertical experience, above or below.

Affiliation is a horizontal one: Who's standing next to me? 

Tactics are easy to understand because we can list them. You use a tactic or you don't.

Strategy is more amorphous. It's the umbrella over your tactics, the work the tactics seek to support.

If you tell your competition your tactics, they'll steal them and it will cost you. But if you tell them your strategy, it won't matter. Because they don't have the guts or the persistence to turn your strategy into their strategy. 

Direct marketing is action oriented. And it has to be measured.

Brand marketing is culturally oriented. And it can't be measured. 

Make sure the right people is attracted to it

Make sure the promise that brought them in aligns with where you hope they will go

Remove steps so that fewer decisions are required

Support those you're engaging with, reinforcing their dreams and ameliorating their fears as you go.

Hand those who have successfully engaged in the funnel a megaphone, a tool they can use to tell the others. People like us do things like this.