Stop Marketing, Stop Selling and Start Connecting

Over at License to Roam, Rachel Clarke reports in her post Self-replicating Awesomeness at SXSW the following exchange:

Deborah Schultz, Chris Heuer, David Parmet

  • DP: Brian Oberkirch put this together - he asked 2 questions. How to market into community without being too marketer like. And how do you build a community around what you are doing? What does ‘no marketing’ look like? How can we use social media?
  • DS: None of this is about tools or technology, but is about the customers. Here to talk about some of the subtleties, not about the tactics. It’s about marketing, customer service, product development. the marketing silo needs to be changed, why are they afraid of the opps. This is not telling or selling, this is being in the trenches.
  • CH: what is really bugging me right now is the number of people who are saying to me ‘build me a community’ but this does make a community, it is the interpersonal connections that make it. Social media is not new media, it changes how we relate to each other. You have to shift the way you think about participation. have to change mindset from stop trying to sell me to help make me buy.

stop trying to sell me to help make me buy

I’d rework that final phrase to…

stop trying to sell me and instead help me solve my problem/fill my want/ meet my need

Fifty years ago selling was push, push, push. Over the past half century the tide has turned and now selling is more of a pull, pull, pull.

Stop Marketing, Stop Selling and Start Connecting

The ENTIRE focus of my first book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results is to help the reader get out of his/her own head and into the head of his/her customers!!! To use the language above…jumping INTO THE TRENCHES and getting down and dirty connecting with your target customers.

When your focus is upon solving your customers problems…. when your focus is upon providing something they want…. when your product or service meets their need… you discover that marketing is merely presenting your solution… your answer to the people who not only want to hear it, but are EAGER to learn more.

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