The Great Marketing Hoax

In this article I want to expose the great hoax that has been played on us by so-called marketing experts and others in the business fraternity who have sent us on a wild goose chase to try to find new clients.  But I’m also going to reveal the other side of marketing where you can attract all the clients you want if you focus on what really matters. 

If you’re wondering at all why your marketing efforts aren’t working the way you would like, especially if you are in a professional service business where you offer advice, support or services to your clients, I’m sure you will find this article to be a revelation and you will be able to finally discover hope in your quest to have the impact through your business that you know you are capable of.

Seth Godin, the doyen of marketing consultants, wrote a book called All Marketers are Liars, which was later re-released as All Marketers Tell Stories.

This book was about the reality that marketing needs to create a perception in people’s minds that means they see your product or service as exactly what they need.  The book itself was great.  The problem is that many marketers have used blatant misdirection, manipulation and misleading data to get their message across.

As a result, people don’t trust marketing. 

Let me make that clear.

People don’t trust your marketing.

Now, if you’re the one responsible for the marketing in your professional service firm, I trust you don’t deliberately lie and try to manipulate and mislead your clients and potential clients.

But, if you’re like the vast majority of people trying to attract clients to your firm and you are following the advice of most of the so called marketing experts, you’re likely to be operating from the dark side, without really knowing that you are doing it.

What I see most people doing, even the more advanced marketers who are giving value first, rather than just promoting their services, is that they are trying to use all the latest tactics, tips and tricks to get attention and attract interest from new prospects. 

I see many of you writing blog posts or posting on LinkedIn and Facebook.  You write good articles that give valuable tips and advice.  And you hope that by giving value, people will respect your advice and want to work with you.  But this is just the latest trend in marketing that feels better to you than blatant advertising.  And every trend has a shelf life.

When I see so many of you following the latest trend, just the way everyone else is doing it, it almost makes me want to scream! 

This may be harsh, but it’s like the blind leading the blind.  I’ve seen it before, when people copied other company’s failing ads and wondering why they didn’t get results.  It’s just the same with your web sites that look almost identical to all of your competitors.

If you are posting content and giving valuable advice, please check your results and see how little engagement you are getting and note how few new leads you are getting from that.  Unless you are already a guru and well known in your market, your handful of comments and a sprinkling of likes on your posts aren’t going to pay the bills, or get you enough new work to get you where you want to go.

Stop giving advice.  There is so much free advice on the internet that you are just adding to the noise.  If you think about it, you’d recognise that people hate receiving advice unless they ask for it first.  What makes you think people want your unsolicited advice?

Remember the clever quip, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much your care?  There’s a great truth in that statement.

So why are you trying to show people how much you know with your posts and your advice.  It’s falling on deaf ears.

What I care dearly about is that there are so many people like you, who are great at what they do and who have a genuine desire to make a positive impact on the lives of their clients and by extension on the world, who don’t get the chance to achieve their greatest impact because their true message  isn’t being heard.

I know that most are genuinely driven by the desire to save people from the pain of their current situation.  I know that your own success and the money, wealth and freedom that you desire from doing that is really secondary to your desire to make are larger impact.  And I’m deeply dismayed that you can’t achieve  that because people don’t really know what you can do, despite how hard you’ve tried to get your message across.

You’ve been led astray by the marketers and their followers who are stumbling around in the dark trying to find more effective tactics to distribute marketing messages that fall on deaf ears.  You put in so much hard work to get your message out that it kills me that you don’t get the results you deserve.  And perhaps you’ve actually given up with marketing and have decided that you have to do the best you can with waiting for referrals and trying to get better at networking.

So. the answer to the problem is not about getting better at marketing. 

It’s about getting better at caring.

How distressed are you that your market is suffering and not getting the help they need?

How desperate are you to make sure that the people who are hurting are getting the right solution?

I can sense some of you responding to this by feeling you’re not great at marketing and you really don’t like selling, so you are hesitant and hold back.  Others don’t want to big note yourselves and are happy to be the quiet achievers.

That was me until I saw the light.  I’ve spent so many years investing in marketing programs and reading books to try to improve my skills.

But when I realised I was barking up the wrong tree all that time everything started to change.

When I shifted my focus from worrying about my success, to how much my market needed my help, the reality hit me.

My focus on my own success and capabilities was all vanity.

I needed not to care more about how I was doing, but to care more about how and how many I was helping.  I needed to care more about the clients who needed my help than I did about what I got out of it.

When I started to care more about my clients, and they started to notice how much I cared, it was incredibly attractive and they started to trust what I was saying and trusted me to help them.  And yes, the money and my personal success followed.

So my advice. 😊

Realise you have been conned into thinking that marketing is all about getting your name out there and that you are missing the point, because when you give advice and all the useful tips, and trying to display your knowledge and experience and credentials, you are omitting to show how much you care.

Focus more on what it means to your customers to get the results they need from you.

How much effort would you put into trying to save someone if you knew their house was on fire and they had to get out? Would you be hesitant because you are shy or would you hold back because you don’t wan to be a hero?

No.  I’m sure you would do whatever you could and whatever it took to get your message across, because you care.

That’s the attitude you need to bring to your marketing.  How much do you care?  What do you need to do to make sure you get your message across?  It’s not about showing them what you know, it’s about showing them how much you care.

I care so much about you making the impact that your market needs.  If you feel you need help with that, here’s where you can learn more about whether we should talk: https://businessflightpath.com/training