Getting the Word Out
How to Effectively Connect With the Right Audience
In a noisy world full of distractions and offers of dubious quality, it’s difficult for those seeking guidance to find trustworthy and truly valuable resources for solving their problems or achieving their aspirations.
For those offering products or services, spreading ideas, or promoting a cause, getting the word out and enrolling the right people is equally challenging.
Why?
I think it begins with the stories we tell ourselves about what marketing and sales are (and are not).
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Marketing vs. Sales (& Advertising)
Most of the clients I work with initially come to me with a very negative view of marketing and sales. I get it because I once did, too.
This negative impression of marketing and sales is born in part from the experience of being marketed and sold false promises by clever digital marketers.
But marketing and sales are much more than the sketchy tools, tactics, and tricks that have proliferated since the dawn of the digital age. If we view marketing and sales as they have historically been employed, our impressions may be much more favorable.
Owning and operating a brick-and-mortar guitar studio in a small rural town for almost twenty years provided me with insight into a more positive practice of marketing and sales (and distinguishing each activity from the other).
Marketing and sales are terms that are often confused and conflated, but they are very different approaches intended to get very different outcomes.
I define marketing as telling true stories to people whose lives will be enhanced by colliding with your idea, product, service, or cause.
Sales is leveraging empathetic antagonism to encourage people who resonate with your marketing to invest in and adopt your idea, product, service, or cause to make a change they want happen.1
The marketing cycle has two parts. First are the social media and broadcast channels you use to earn awareness and attention (Exposure). Second are the message and email apps you use to have conversations that earn permission and trust (Proximity).
The sales cycle involves earning enrollment in the process of learning more and then interest in your product or service and, ultimately, investment in what’s on offer to solve a problem or achieve an aspiration (Access).
And what about advertising?
Ads are simply marketing or sales communications you put money behind to amplify and increase their reach.
Like marketing and sales, advertising is neither inherently “good” nor “bad.” All three are simply tools that are only as good or bad as the motivation and intent of those who employ them.
Now, let’s dive a little deeper into the meaning of exposure, proximity, and access.
Exposure, Proximity, & Access
Before you can start to spread your idea, cause, product, or service, the right people must become aware that it exists and be willing to pay attention to it (exposure).
To help turn that new-to-them concept (innovation) into something they can understand and explore (information), you need to earn enough permission and trust to have a more direct conversation (proximity).
To effectively implement the ideas or approach you offer, people need your help (access).
Okay, Now What?
Now that we have a little context about how ideas and offers spread, how do we get the word out and actually connect with those who would benefit from colliding with and investing in what we have?
It turns out a book first published in 1962, Everett Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations, delivers a wealth of insight on spreading the difference only you can make.