Dear marketers, please stop stencilizing my life
Do we really need to impose guilt, shame, and anxiety in order to sell our thing?
I’m subscribed to a number of newsletters, so my inbox is full of people who love telling me how I feel:
- I feel inferior because of my accent.
- I feel guilty because I’m not productive enough.
- I feel like a loser because I’m not making enough money.
- I feel tired because I eat crap.
- I feel ashamed, stupid, stressed out, and lonely.
Which is weird because before I opened my email and started reading all the newsletters, I felt okay.
So what happened? Have all the marketers conspired to make me feel bad about myself?
In a way, they actually have. I know it because I’m one of them.
I’ve also learned the most persuasive copywriting formulas. The ones that start with “P” for pain: Make the reader feel the pain to create urgency. Paint a vivid picture of their suffering so they can breathe a sigh of relief once you introduce your solution. That’s how you make them hit the “buy now” button in no time.
Now, here’s how it feels on the receiving end:
As a “target customer,” I often feel like the marketers are stencilizing my identity: They define me in terms of what I’m not but should be. They take a picture of my life and cut out my nons, uns, and not-enoughs so I can clearly see my incompleteness.
They create a vacuum in the shape of my prescribed ideal self. Then they tell me they can complete me. Fix me. Save me.
EFL speaking coach: “It’s time to finally feel equal to native speakers of English.”
Business coach: “I know it sounds harsh, but if you’ve been in business for more than a year and still haven’t made six figures, you don’t have a business, you have a hobby.”
Another business coach: “I know it, you know it. If you were able to do it on your own, you wouldn’t be here.”
Non-native. Un-equal. Imposter. Powerless.
It kind of works. The empty space fills me with fear, guilt, and shame. I feel so bad that I may even buy the thing they’re selling.
But as a marketer, I know that they’ve just made a sale while ruining their brand in the process. Because as a human being, I know that I’ll never forget who made me feel like crap — even if their solution does make it better in the end.
In my head and heart, their brand will always be associated with the negative story about myself.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
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Why do we need to “create urgency,” anyway?
… and do we?
I believe that we — online teachers, coaches, creators, freelancers — do need to create urgency so we can do our work. But we can do it in an ethical, feel-good way.
I mean, in your client’s hierarchy of needs, your solution is somewhere towards the top. One aspect of their life is not ideal, but it’s not like they’re in a great deal of pain. If you don’t help them, they won’t die; their situation will stay more or less the same.
To move them to action, you need to increase urgency. Now, you can either do it by exaggerating the pain they’re going through and offering catastrophic scenarios of what’s going to happen if they don’t take action (hire you or buy your thing), or you can flip the negative story and “paint a vivid picture” of what’s possible for them.
The things they could do, achieve, become. If they take action.
Instead of picturing them as the victim, the sufferer, someone who needs to be fixed, make them the hero of the story.
Instead of imposing fear, cultivate courage.
Of course, fear-based marketing works faster (that’s why politicians like to employ fear in their campaigns, too). But in the long run — and we are here for the long run — the empowering narrative is going to pay off:
- Your clients will take ownership of their success and therefore get better results. They won’t just passively wait for you to save them and get frustrated once they find out it doesn’t work this way.
- People will associate your brand with a positive story — the story of change, bravery, and hope.
- If we all do it this way, the whole (online) world will become a little bit of a better place.
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What do you think? Let me know!
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I’m Veronika, a community-driven brand strategist & designer. I team up with small digital business owners — teachers, coaches, creators, and leaders — and help them build community-first brands so they can scale their impact in ways they never thought possible and turn their community’s energy into possibilities that didn’t exist before.
You can find me at doyouspeakfreedom.com.
