Sharing wisdom is actually what advertising and promotion is all about. Educating those who need our help is the soul of marketing. And helping our clients is the purpose of our business. That’s why I think of marketing as if it’s a kind of ’spiritual’ practice. No, not religious, but soulful or the outward direction of the spirit of our business goals.

Almost every spiritual practice has a priest, wise woman (or man), holy person, shaman or spiritual leader who professes the truth to those who wish to learn.

As a business owner, it is our own spiritual quest to profess this truth—our knowledge or education about how our products can help others—in an inspired message to those in need.

A common mistake of business owners, usually in their early stages of development, is to not reinforce this sharing of information often enough.

For example, common marketing wisdom states that if a company plans to run an advertisement, it should run at least 6-12 times before evaluating its effectiveness, as it takes that many “impressions” of seeing it before it sinks in and takes hold of the very busy people from whom we are trying to evoke a response.

It is important to educate your customers or potential market so they can understand how to use what you offer. The world’s great leaders, like the Ghandi, spent most of their lives educating their “market” -their constituents-  or those they were trying to influence through their teachings, prayer, and practices. As business owners, we could learn a lesson from them: If we spend more time teaching and less time telling people they need our products, we may move further along in our divine purpose.

As one observes the great world leaders from the Dalai Lama to Martin Luther King, we notice that even our great leaders spread their message through the use of many media—from word of mouth, to television interviews, direct mail, teaching and lecturing, and e-news or websites.

It is important to mix our messages into many type of media in order to reach as wide a target market as we can since not everyone watches tv, opens direct mail pieces, or follows Twitter.

And lest you think I’m being sacriligious comparing the gospel of our great leaders to marketing, well, it’s time you rethink your perception of marketing: It’s a practice that’s all about helping people. And in the thousands of clients I’ve helped, I’ve only ever met one person who was just in business to make money and not truly devoted to helping people in some way.

After all, Knowledge is Bliss.

Share on Facebook

from my old blog: Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Again I got a call to do some publicity for a colleague’s client. Why? Because often people think marketing is just publicity, that getting your name in print will create that tipping point to make a company a huge success.

However, doing publicity without the marketing strategy behind it can be very costly without producing sustained results.

Sure your web traffic can skyrocket from a great article about your company, or your phone can ring off the hook for a day or two. But without solid marketing tactics to sustain that hit, results wane quickly.

For business owners trying to do their own publicity, I found Jill Lublin’s co-authored book on guerilla publicity quite useful along with Bulldog Reporter’s moderated interviews with the media.

But to do PR properly you must devote solid time and effort (gee is there anything worthwhile in life that doesn’t require that?) to build a media list in your industry, submit online to PR distro companies, do some media relations, create an editorial calendar of strategy for what you’ll pitch to whom and when, plus craft astoundingly fascinating pitches that are keyword-rich and command attention with the right kind of follow up. So few people do this correctly.

Many business classes teach students to spam all publications with press releases that are basically sales pitches about their business. What a waste. So, before spending huge sums on publicity, or conducting campaigns that waste time, take a look at your overall strategy to ensure it’s the right one.

A marketing coach or consultant can advise on that direction, and should be able to refer a good publicist when the strategy is sound. Once you know what to do, the actual doing of it is easy. “Knowledge is Bliss” as we say.

Share on Facebook