I hear it from small business owners almost every day – “I’m just no good at marketing.”
Here’s the thing, it’s not true and it’s not possible – that is if you want to stick around for any appreciable amount of time.
What I find is a more accurate statement is this – “I’m not that good at what I think marketing is.”
See, if you hang around marketing folks very long you’ll hear all kinds of things about metrics, social media, engagement, conversion, branding and maybe even a little HTML5 for good measure.
All the talk from inside that fishbowl can have the impact of clouding what marketing really is.
Marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you.
Now, framed that way you might start asking yourself different questions – thoughts like do I need to figure out how to market on Facebook might start sounding more like how could I grow the trust my clients have, how I could I offer more than is expected – and it’s the answers to those questions that you already know.
Reframe how you think about marketing and you’ll change your relationship with marketing.
There’s a pebbled trail that winds through my neighborhood and for some reason I don’t like to run on it. I live in the city so mostly I run on the street and the times I have run on the trail just didn’t feel right. I came to conclude I didn’t like running on this lovely trail.
Then one day it dawned on me that if that same trail was in Rocky Mountain National Park I would absolutely love running on it. It’s pretty silly really, but when I thought about the trail in a different way it changed everything.
Now, of course it’s not simply because I made up a new thought – I had a frame of reference – the joy of my runs on mountain trails – to help me rethink about it.
Business owners have that same frame of reference – they understand how to talk about what they do, their products and services, in ways that build know, like and trust.
Don’t over think it – reframe it, change your relationship with marketing and watch how much more enjoyable it gets.
