Marketing need not be ugly

When you realize that you want to attract a higher caliber of client who pays you top dollar for your elite expertise, get ready to lead by example.

Around these parts, we can talk a blue streak about how to write dynamo websites, promo emails and marketing materials. But there is a phenomenon that keeps coming up in Stella’s conversations with business owners—and you need to know about it.

Here’s the thing about marketing: yes, the words are important—that’s what persuades people to hire you. Yes, the marketing channels and your strategies & systems for using them are crucial to your success, too. Without regular marketing habits that follow a written marketing plan, you won’t get very far. There’s no doubt about that.

But this marketing game is a three-legged stool. The right strategy, the right words, and…

The right energy.

This energy piece is simply how your marketing feels to the receiver. And lately, I’ve been noticing that there’s a lot of ugly marketing out there. It’s not beautiful, it doesn’t feel good, and I don’t want to touch it with a forty-foot pole.

Let alone with my hands, eyeballs, or business.

Example: A business card with bullet points of all the amazing results working with this person would create. Except the print was so small, mice couldn’t read it with a magnifying glass.

Example: An email from the assistant of a woman I was interested in hiring to run a project. It was a cut & paste offer to join a group program that I would be “the perfect fit” for. There was no inquiry after my vision, goals, intentions, or challenges.

Rare is the business card that feels delicious in my palm. Exotic is the website that opts folks into a mailing list and looks fabulously generous in the process. Unusual is the email or video link that crosses my screen, sparkling like a firework that makes me go “awwwwwww” or “now that’s well-thought out.”

I want to be clear: marketing has a bigger job to do than sit there, looking pretty. But to run an uncommonly wise, smart, and profitable business—and one where you stand out in the crowd as elite, competent, and someone people will go out of their way to work with—you’ve got to consider what your marketing not only SAYS, but what it FEELS like. And might as well bring more beauty into the world, while you’re at it.

Mighty thanks to Amani Hasan’s flickr photostream for the fireworks.