My Most Important Marketing Advice Ever

I've been working in and teaching marketing now for over 18 years. At this point, I have practiced and preached all forms of marketing methods, processes, strategies, and plans. 
I am well versed in the textbook definitions of branding, marketing, promotions, and sales. I've been fortunate to discover some amazing insights as I've applied, taught, tweaked, and finally created my own method for marketing. Through it all, I discovered something so extraordinarily mind-blowing and humbling. I've learned what marketing really is and, unequivocally, what it is not.

It comes down to a fundamental human skill, one we use every day, every waking moment of our lives. Let me start off by telling you that we all have the capacity to be marketing masters; that is why I want to share what I've discovered. I hope you take a minute to read it, take it in and if compelled, share it with others. I want this to spread far and wide.

This is my most important marketing advice ever...

Human beings desire many things but those desire usually tie back to some other more fundamental need or want. We have the need to connect with other human beings. We have a need to feel we are part of a community and to collaborate with others. We have a deep need to create. Whether we create businesses, art, manifestos, or ideas, we deeply hold this need within us. Finally, we have a need for stability and consistency, we thrive and grow when we take consistent action.  When these needs are filled, we feel happy, special and a sense of stability.

And. Low and behold. There are thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of products and services geared at helping you feel happy, special and stable. But most of these offerings may never reach those of us needy of these products and services. Why? Because most of the people selling or offering them are just marketing these products. But marketing is vital right? I've said it many times, over and over again. You've read it on marketing blogs, Inc. magazine, Fast Company. "Marketing will make or break your business."  Well, yes. Marketing is important but, just marketing doesn't work anymore. Marketing needs to be redefined. Actually, let's do even better than that...let's RENAME marketing to what it REALLY is. 

Marketing is communication.

Marketing is communication. A simple Google search on the definition of "communication" brings up this Wikipedia definition: 

{"Communication (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning "to share" [1]) is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of ideas, feelings, intentions, attitudes, expectations, perceptions or commands, as by speech, gestures, writings, behavior and possibly by other means such as electromagnetic, chemical or physical phenomena. It is the meaningful exchange of information between two or more participants." }

So simple. Yet, marketing has gotten amazingly complex. Corporations have departments devoted to this work. They have complex systems through which information is constantly churning out. But it's not the type of marketing that truly connects. Do these corporations know who is truly on the other side of their marketing? What about the small business owner, solo entrepreneur or freelancer? I've worked with and coached many who have some very complex marketing systems in place and still struggling to earn and bring in the income they desire and need. They are all missing an important yet extraordinarily simple point, and that's because they, and many of us, have not thought to go back to the basics, at least not in an intentional way. Entrance into the social media realm is teaching us to build relationships, see who is on the other side, engage them, listen to them...these are all communication skills.
As I look at it, many of us suck at marketing, because we are bad at communicating. Going deeper, we are bad at sharing and therefore failing our fellow human beings. We're failing them from potentially having solutions and needs met through the products and services we offer. We're pushing them away rather than bringing them closer. These days,  I see marketing often getting dubbed as as sleazy, salesy, and hypey. I'm sure you've rolled your eyes in annoyance over an ad, tv commercial, or Facebook promotion you saw recently. 

If you want to be great at marketing then studying marketing isn't going to get you there. You should know what textbook marketing is and how it works, but just learning that isn't helpful in the new economy. To be great at marketing now requires studying communication. You get great at communication and you become a marketing master. I know you're likely thinking..."oh, ANOTHER thing I have to add to my plate and have to learn about." That's why I am going to insist that studying communication need not go beyond the definition I gave above from Wikipedia. Read it over and over again until it becomes your mantra. Want even less to learn? Then, simplify even more, which is even better. When you get to the root of the word, commūnicāre, which means "to share" you can stop.

There will also be many of you who will go read articles and perhaps even books on communications. You'll come across lots of valuable information on communications this way. This is not a bad approach to becoming a better marketer. One important point you'll likely see over and over again as you do research on communications is that good communications requires listening and it absolutely does. But, if you don't have anyone to listen to, where does that leave your plans for communicating well? You need to have established an audience before you can listen to them. 

The way you establish or attract an audience is not by listening first, but by speaking first. You can go listen in on other people's audiences and see what they are saying and gain some insights that may or may not be helpful. Or, you speak first. You speak and then listen to what people are saying about what you just said or about you in general. this is exponentially more useful to you, and again, will fast track you to being a marketing master. 

So, about speaking first and attracting that audience who you will then listen to. Let's talk about that. It's just as important, if not more important, to learn how to speak well as it is to listen. This is true in ANY situation where communication is key, but it's especially true when marketing. You owe it to your potential audience to speak well, to speak VERY well. In fact, you won't even attract the right audience, let alone an audience that really wants what you provide or offer, if you don't speak VERY well.

I bring it down to two fundamentals when it comes to speaking very well. It is vital that you speak from a place that is authentic and vulnerable.

Authentic. Does what you say sound like you? This applies to everyone from corporations to freelancers. Evaluate if your brand feels contrived or conversely, does it represent values held by key leadership internally?  When you speak from this place it automatically conveys passion. People who are attracted to those values, your passion, and your authenticity will be attracted to what you offer. Speak from those values.

Vulnerable.  When you speak from your values you start to share a bit of you. There is the word "share." You must be willing to share a little bit more of you when you speak. So going beyond values, what other aspects of you or the key leadership internally can you share? Also, vulnerability automatically conveys your humanness, that you care and you aren't perfect. You are like the people you are trying to attract. So show your weaknesses and your strengths.

When you speak authentically and with vulnerability you start to attract just the right people. You start to master marketing.

You truly master it once you put this system in place:

Speak

Listen

Change

Then you start back at speak again. It's a cycle. Let's recap.

• Remember marketing is communications.
• The root word for communications is commūnicāre, which means to share.
• Sharing can only happen when you have someone to share with. 
• Attracting an audience requires speaking well.
• Speaking well requires authenticity and vulnerability.
• Once you have your right audience, you can continue to share with them, but also listen.
• You keep attracting by listening and changing what you share but always keeping authenticity and vulnerability as your focus.

You get it.

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Rubina Cohen is a serial entrepreneur, mom, wife and self-proclaimed meditation junkie. Rubina strongly believes that communication and relationship building are the foundations for brilliant marketing. Her passion is to bring this message as well as strategies and services to the design, architecture, health, wellness and environmental fields and positively shift the quality of life in our communities and our world. To learn more about Rubina and Firefly Strategies, click here.

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