What does your marketing tell about your brand and business?
The essential meaning of marketing is communicating value. It is about showing the world the amazing things you have to offer, it’s about inspiring and touching hearts, turning heads and making an impression.
Your marketing should speak the message of your brand, it should transmit its essence. It should show the world what makes you unique and why we should all care about this thing you are doing.
Now, when it comes to sharing your message and attracting customers to your business you will be walking on shaky grounds. If you don’t know the art of telling a story and making an impression you can really scare people away from your brand.
Marketing is a form of art, it is like a love play.
You dance with your audience, you mesmerize your audience, you show how beautiful and unique you are and how much amazing value you can add to their life … and then you wait. Then your message starts to haunt them, it starts to excite them, it starts to appear in their dreams. And next thing you know they just can’t live without you anymore. They wonder how they survived all this time without having known you and had you in their lives.
But this happens only when you are really confident – confident about your message, about your value, confident that what you have and want to share really matters. And this happens when your business and your brand is your passion.
And when I see people trying to sell to me I can really tell what’s the story behind them – I see it in their eyes, I see it in their looks, I feel it in the way they shake hands.
Let’s speak first about the turn offs when it comes to sharing your story.
Obviously when you have something of value people need to hear about it. And of course you will be excited about sharing it. But there is sharing and sharing.
How NOT to tell your story
- Turn off number 1 – lack of passion
I was at one networking event recently and was walking around the hall meeting people. I saw one lady sitting by the table with a friend I know. I went to greet them and started chatting with her about her work. Turned out she makes jewelry and has just moved to the city recently.
“How great – I thought – there’s so much you can do”. I started thinking about hooking her up with some photographers and models to showcase her work, I was excited about cooperation with shops, her branded content on social media … heck I thought I’d try her jewelry and make a photoshoot with it.
I was so excited!
But she? – NOT? She started telling me how she can’t make a living and life is so difficult. She was telling how moving to new country is basically ruining your life and committing to poverty because basically you don’t know anybody and anything.
But duh .. I thought here’s a chance to meet people, right, it was a networking event after all!
Then I noticed she was sitting in the corner of the hall and not really giving that vibe that she has something interesting to say.
Then I thought to myself “Ok, if that’s what she chose, it’s not my business to make her change.” … and I moved on.
So what was the lesson here: If you are not excited about your brand … well guess what – nobody else will give a damn. Even if they find it interesting your lack of enthusiasm will finally push them away because hey … who are they to try to convince you that what you do is great if you don’t know it yet? I mean come on, is that how you are passionate about yourself?
2 Turn off number 2 Let me be your friend
If that was not exciting let me share another turn off scenario that you should definitely not do.
I get messaged often, or sometimes people come to me at an event or on the street wanting to be friends. They try to tell me they really care, they make a compliment … and then they say we should hang out sometimes and slowly start to introduce the entrepreneurial work they do and how it can really help my life and business. Then they want to connect and start to send me their offers … I mean WT* man?!
What’s the message I get? Average. And I am not going for average.
If I want to buy from you I’ll not do it as a charity because you basically begged me to, telling how beautiful my hair is and how much you care.
This reminds me of this people at the touristic sights in Rome, have you met them? They try to sell you souvenirs or flowers. If you are with a girl they will tell you how beautiful your girl is and how you should buy her this beautiful flower to show her how much you like her. Sounds cute right? But when you say no, you already gave her a flower you see what was really going on – they start to beg you, they need to buy food, they are hungry, they start to cry, they start to follow you, they even try to put the flower in your hand … like WOW.
Are you doing the same in a more elegant way?!
Please, stop that. Why embarrass your brand like that? I mean seriously you are embarrassing your business!
Let’s turn that around!
So how can you turn those turn off scenarios into turn ons?
- OMG, what I do is really great!
If we go to the jewelry girl, first thing I thought when she told me she is making jewelry was “Wow, are you wearing it, where can I see it?”
She said “no” obviously and she didn’t even have pictures of it.
How weird is that?
How to turn it around?
Be truly passionate about what you do! If you are doing something, I would at least assume you enjoy doing it, right? Show how much you enjoy it! Tell your story with a sparkle. Wear the stuff you make.
Live your business, breathe your business, be your business.
If you are not passionate about your business, then guess what, nobody else will be either.
Tell the people the amazing story of LOVING what you do. Tell them how it lights you up. Show your sparkle.
If there is something that really makes an impression it is doing things with passion. When you emit that light of being excited about what you do then other people will get excited about it too.
2. Don’t beg people to buy from you but make them inspired by what you do.
I rarely come up to people to try to tell them about my business. What happens most of the time is that they get so excited that they come to me to ask me what I do. The truth is that the people who are confident in themselves and in their business will not run around chasing others to tell them about it. They’d rather just be themselves and speak about their great life and the things that excite them and then people will so much like that vibe that they will want to know all about them.
Then they will google them, they will study their website, they will read all their social media posts and they will tell their friends about them. True story.
When you share your passion people will want to be part of it. They will want to be part of your world and part of what you do. And that’s how you get really excited and devoted customers.
To sum the whole thing up the best marketing is your passion. And people will see that you love what you do and then they will know that it is really something of value.
We don’t want another mechanical business that’s just about somebody trying to get rich or make a living. We want to see happiness and inspiration. We want to hear a message and a story that matters. We want to see people that light up this world, we want to support businesses that have a sparkle. And that’s how we make the world a truly lovelier place … when we are not working for surviving but loving every second of our day.