Marketing is a powerful approach to making a difference.
And, believe it or not, marketing is really good for introverts!
I never expected to fall in love with marketing …
It seems about as far away from my shy self, and my interests in body-based, depth psychological, eco-feminist, political-philosophical Processwork and transformational, sustainable social change, as pretty much anything could be.
But I fell in love with marketing when I realized it is a powerful way of relating to the world.
Marketing is one of the skillsets that will help you make your unique impact.
In this blog, I’m going to share posts about some of the most important parts of an effective marketing approach, so you can make a difference.
But what is marketing, anyway?
Marketing gets a pretty bad name in many circles, and not without reason.
If we’re trying to grow our practice or get our ideas out there, we might know it is something that we ‘have to do. ’
Like taxes, or taking out the garbage.
Yuk.
And many of us hate the idea of marketing because we think it means ‘selling ourselves.’
We don’t want to be a slimy, pushy salesperson.
Even worse, it takes us into the horrible territory of self-doubt and ‘am I good enough?’.
But the good news?
Effective marketing is not about selling yourself.
And (bonus!) it provides a really great strategy for bypassing any nasty inner critic scene you’ve got going on.
Marketing is about building relationships to make a difference.
I fell in love with marketing in 2020, as the world stopped. I feel very lucky to have stumbled upon Seth Godin when I googled ‘what is marketing?’.
Though, of course, it wasn’t an accident! Google ranks Seth high for some very good marketing reasons.
I was a busy, overworked, nonprofit CEO, running an accredited academic program and other activities for a small independent graduate school, pulling off impossible things most days, and wearing the multiple hats that makes this kind of role so interesting.
I knew we needed to focus more on ‘getting the word out there.’ But taking out an ad in the New York Times or on the radio, as folks were suggesting, was way far out of our budget reach. Plus I had a gut feeling that this kind of expensive advertising probably wasn’t the way.
So knowing nothing really except that I had to learn how to get the word out there, I enrolled in Seth Godin’s intensive, interactive online course, The Marketing Seminar, linked to his 2019 book, This is Marketing.
The Marketing Seminar gave me a lifeline of powerful ideas, practice, and community over those intense and stressful first months of the pandemic.
From Seth I learnt that marketing is about learning how to see. It is about a practice of empathy and generosity.
It is NOT about yelling as loudly as you can at people who don’t care.
Marketing is not advertising.
Marketing is a core skillset for making a difference
And now four years later, after hundreds of hours of training, reading, studying and practicing, I am more in love and more convinced than ever: marketing is a core skillset for making a difference.
I’ve trained with, or studied, many of the biggest names in marketing education and research, and I’ve taught the marketing approach to graduate students and practitioners, online and in person. I’ve seen the effect on people’s confidence as they make the marketing shift and take ownership of their relationship with the world.
And I am here to help creative, passionate, introverted folks like me, people who have a difference to make, but struggle with ‘putting themselves out there’.
I am for practitioners of change modalities – therapists, facilitators, alternative health practitioners, authors, trainers, educators, coaches – who want to grow their practice, and get their message across, to make a bigger impact.
I am for you if you are feeling stuck, knowing that you have more to give, knowing that you want to help people, but unsure how to ‘get the word out there’. I can show you how a marketing approach can help you each the audience you want to reach, and make the impact you are here to make.
I’ve learnt that marketing is an essential skillset for change-makers.
It asks us to make a fundamental shift in mindset.
And it gives us powerful tools to make an impact.
But … and there is a but.
Marketing does have a dark side
So one thing to add, before I finish this post.
For me, marketing needs an awareness of the bigger picture.
Nothing makes sense without saying something about the moment that we are in.
About the context of the economic system, our market driven industrial consumer capitalism, about climate change and the risk to life on earth created by the extractive growth ideology and shallow individualism that drives it.
A short answer for now.
It is true that marketing can be used for exploitative purposes because we exist within an extractive, competitive industrialized economic system motivated by fear and scarcity.
Marketing on its own cannot change the world and some marketing might be making it worse.
We deserve to live in a vibrant future where all beings flourish.
The future that people like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Christiana Figueres, Kate Raworth, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, and Naomi Klein show us is possible.
We must make our difference in order to bring the change that is trying to happen.
It is going to take all of us.
Marketing can help you make your impact.
Together, we’ve got this.