Effective marketing is about building trust

That’s the whole game.

Really, there is nothing else to it.

Whether you are asking someone to scroll your social media post, or click on your website, read your blog, attend a free webinar, donate money, or come to your workshop, you are asking them to take a risk.

Engaging with you, a stranger, at any level, is taking a risk. No matter how big or small the action they take to engage with you, they are taking a risk.

What if this a waste of time or money? What if it is a scam? What if I feel like a fool?

Asking someone to give you their time, attention or money is asking them to take a risk. Buying something is a risk and a commitment. And no one will take a risk with you, until they feel some level of trust.

Every time we choose to engage with someone, we are taking a risk.
We don’t know if it is going to work out. Is it going to be good for me? Is my time or money going to be well spent? Will I regret this?

So trust is the most important thing we’re trying to build in marketing, and that’s why it’s a long game.

The job of marketing

The job of marketing is to gradually and authentically build trust. And it needs to happen in each of the three phases of a marketing system: attract, engage and close.

So how do you build trust?

You build trust by keeping your promises.

You get to choose the promise you want to make. This promise is your offer. It is a commitment that you decide to make to your person, to the world.

Making (and keeping) promises

The capacity to make promises, to make commitments, might be the very capacity that makes us human, suggested Nietzsche, the influential 19th century German philosopher.

Man, he said, and he meant all of us humans, is a being that can make promises.

Making promises, he suggested, is a defining feature of our nature.

We make promises. Notice that he didn’t say we keep them! But it is our nature to be able to make commitments.

You build trust by making and keeping your promises over time.

And this takes discipline. It takes persistence, determination, focus and commitment. Because it is also our nature to get distracted, to get disheartened, to run out of steam, to give up, and to not follow through!

Consistency, reliability, and centering your person are the core elements that you need to build trust.

So, how do you sustain the energy to do that?

To help you connect to a source of sustainable energy, try this brief experiential mindfulness exercise.

It uses your imagination to access a different mindset, to access the part of yourself that is in it for the long game. It is an inner work, a practice, and a metaphor, that you can return to whenever you need it.

Tall Tree Nature – An Experiential Exercise

This is an invitation to connect to your Tall Tree Nature.

Grateful to Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), whose teaching about the kinship of all living beings integrates Indigenous and western science ways of knowing.

It is designed to help you connect to the deepest part of you, the part of you that has the ability to show up, to keep your promises, to be reliable, consistent, and center your person over the long game.

Read over the exercise first and then practice it in your own time.

Take a moment to relax. If you can, close your eyes and focus on your breath for a few moments.

Let the breath drop you into your body and into a slightly altered and more dreamy state of mind. Check that your neck is relaxed. Let your shoulders drop. Feel your belly and invite it to soften. Feel the soles of your feet and invite them to expand downward as if they had roots.

When you are ready, bring to your mind a tall tree. Maybe you know a favorite tall tree that you’ve experienced in your life, maybe you will imagine one, or maybe you can connect to one of the photos shared here.

They include on the left, an 800 year old Sitka Spruce on the Oregon Coast, and a four hundred year old River Red Gum in Central Victoria, Australia, Dja Dja Wurrung land; and on the right, Coastal Redwoods in Northern California.

Either way, bring to mind a tree that you know or can imagine, or use my photos to connect you.

Using your imagination, invite yourself to connect to your own tall tree nature, whatever it is for you.

Begin by feeling your roots…

Feel how your roots go down and out, into the ground, seeking the water and nourishment that you need to grow.

Feel how your roots also connect you to the forest.

Your roots connect you to other trees, with and through all the living beings in the soil, especially the fungi and the microorganisms, that form together a network of nutrients and commmunication that supports every forest community.

Grateful to Suzanne Simard, forest ecologist, whose book The Mother Tree (2021) changed the way western science could think about forests.

Let yourself relax into feeling your roots. Remember you can draw from that deep substrate, that connected web beneath you, your belonging in community.

Then bring your awareness up from your roots to feel the uprightness of your trunk.

Feel that incredible uplifting power of the strength of your trunk that takes you up, up, up, up, up towards the sun. It is strength. It is solidity. It is presence. It is the power to stand for something.

The tree takes time to grow tall because it takes time to build the inner and outer strength to support itself.

Feel the trunk in your Tall Tree Nature. The integrity to rise up, to stand out, to be there for the long term.

Then take your awareness all the way out to your branches and your leaves.

Feel the way your branches stretch out creating a supportive architecture to allow your leaves to reach more sun.

Feel your leaves opening to the sky, capturing the sunlight for energy… your leaves eat light.

Your leaves convert energy from the sun and allow you to grow and thrive.

You are a light eater!

Grateful to Zoë Schlanger for this phrase from her book called The Light Eaters (2024) which explores recent research into plant communication and intelligence.

Feel all those parts of your Tall Tree Nature – your roots, your trunk, your branches and your leaves.

Then remember that every tree is a whole world, supporting life all around it.

Invite yourself to know your Tall Tree Nature as a world-maker.

A tree shelters life, it creates shade and micro-climate around it. It provides a home and food for birds and insects and animals. It creates the oxygen that life needs to live and grow, taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, using the energy and the carbon to build the complex molecules that structure our environment.

Know your Tall Tree Nature as a part of your deepest self.

This is a practice of connecting to a deeper energy source.

The principle of this exercise is about allowing yourself to let go of your regular, ordinary, everyday self and change your mindset.

It is an invitation to access the part of you that is connected to an inexhaustible energy source, the mystery of the deepest part of our experience. You may have a name for it. Use whatever name is right for you.

Connecting to your Tall Tree Nature is an experiential practice that you can use to connect to a deeper, more sustainable source of energy, the energy you need for making and keeping your promises to the world.

Allow your Tall Tree Nature to support you in the long game of building trust and growing your practice.

You have a difference to make.

You’ve got this.

And the world needs you.