Marketing

Having written two (one with my buddies and one solo) books, I’m starting to gain an education I never thought I would. I’m learning the importance of marketing.

Not sales per se. Not advertising. But, marketing. Honestly and enthusiastically communicating an important message to the right people, at the right time.

Marketing, for some reason, has a bad “name.”

But, marketing is essential. It’s critical.

One example is an organization I worked for which went through great pains to improve itself. It had drastically changed for the better over a 10 year span, but it still found itself battling against the past. People who had bad experiences over ten years ago still spoke poorly of our organization. They had been so dissatisfied that they refused to give us another chance. Worse, they continued to detract from the good work the organization had been doing. They told anyone willing to listen how bad we were. This made it difficult to overcome our past and have our customers see us fairly.

The answer wasn’t simply doing better. The solution wasn’t to provide better service. We did that, in buckets. What we needed was a marketing campaign. We needed to clearly, loudly, and consistently communicate our new-and-improved services. We needed to market ourselves and our services to our customers and to potential customers.

“I’m too humble to market myself.” This would make sense if “humility” meant not speaking highly of yourself (or your organization). But humility doesn’t mean being shy or hiding your light under a bushel basket. We are called to share our light, to shine it where others can see it. And we’re also called to be humble. Humility means being totally, fully honest. Not exaggerating the gifts we have nor down-playing them.

Think of marketing as a form of sharing your light.

In the case of our organization, we could have gained a lot of our lost trust and customer base if we marketed our improvements. Of course we would have had to be painfully honest. Not only touting our enhancements, but being honest about our still existing failings.

Marketing is a good thing. If it’s done with humility (honesty), and for the purpose of communicating the truth – not making a sale. Intentions, while good for paving roads, are also good for discerning the difference between marketing and manipulating, between humility and pride.

What do you think?