How To Do Good Marketing for Great Cultural Change
Some people (coaches, artists, social entrepreneurs, Simon Batchelar and me…) really want to help people and create change in the world.
Sounds a bit trite, doesn’t it.
How can we talk about and promote what we do in a way that is really representative of our power to serve the world??
The knock on effect of helping an individual might be how you can inform a bigger picture cultural shift. This is really important to me. I want to help coaches (in particular right now) feel that it is in fact their duty to promote their work.
In the Better Bolder Braver community, I hold space for coaches to reflect on how the whole marketing thing is making them feel. For us, Marketing is another self-growth tool, allowing us to think about what we are really thinking, trying to say, hoping to help and tackle and what our limits, boundaries and bigger picture dreams are — for ourselves, for others (and in some cases, for humanity).
Humility, self-awareness and compassion, though, can also breed self-doubt and fear. To varying degrees across the different stages of what we call the Journey of Consciousness, coaches are going to be concerned with how qualified they are to do the work that they are so keen to do, how they should be talking about it and to who, and how much their ideal client is aware of the work that they need to do: How should they approach them? What should they say? How can they ethically talk about areas for development without scaremongering? How should they price their coaching services in such a way that is inclusive and helps them build up a business but at the same time prevents them from burning out?
“Shame need not crouch, in such an Earth as Ours; Shame — stand erect — the Universe is yours!” — Emily Dickinson, #1304, 1874
If you are a coach doing good in the world, I want to help you show up with excitement for your services and to make an impact. I want to help you remove a sense of shame around selling, to see that your own journey of self-awareness - of an understanding of you role in the universe and relationship to others - is precisely the story of wonder that will help your clients, and the systems in which they exist, expand.
My friend, anne miltenburg, also talks “about reframing our dysfunctional beliefs around branding”. Here’s a post she wrote about this. She feels that people with the most substance — the most to offer the world — often feel the biggest trepidation about putting themselves out there… Which is a shame — because according to Anne, “those are the people that really deserve the best brands”.
Anne says there are three things that often hold people back from promoting themselves, as far as she can tell, from the branding perspective:
We think, “if I brand myself too well, people will discover I’m a fraud.” What if we reframe that as: “If I brand myself well, I will get the opportunities I deserve”?
We think of personal branding as a vanity game, while we could also think of it as strategic visibility: showing up in the spaces where it matters, and being a strong presence and source of inspiration in the world of your audience.
People believe that if their work is good, clients will come, i.e. the product will speak for it/my self. The reframe here is that for 99.9% of us, it requires hard and smart work to get the right clients on board.
People think brand and marketing are a bit icky, and disconnected from their purpose. What would happen when we realise that when we are great at getting the right clients on board, we can do more of our purpose?
I like having conversations about this, and am looking forward to a double bill of upcoming Better Bolder Braver Masterclasses all about THE BIGGER PICTURE.
Kicking off, we will be talking to Mark Steadman, who is on a mission to help social entrepreneurs feel empowered to technically produce and emotionally own their podcasts… generous gifts to those they want to help, compelling story tools to those whose support they would like and mirrors up to their own needs, wants and vales.
A week later, we will be talking to the aforementioned anne miltenburg — a brand developer, writer and educator who founded Brand the Change — an education company that trains social entrepreneurs in brand thinking. They create books, tools, case studies, and courses, and bring together a global community of brand builders for change.
Do join us if you would like to consider how your own services and story fit into the bigger picture of change-making, and then how best you can put this out there, and be seen.
You can catch both Simon (Episode 1!) and then me (Episode 2!) talking on Mark’s podcast, Ear Brain Heart. Through these conversations with entrepreneurs, thinkers, and change makers who are working towards a better future, Mark explores the way we show up for audiences, build trust and effect change.
Other podcasts I’ve appeared on recently where I get really excited about this subject are:
Nirish Shakya’s Design Feeling podcast, where he talks to people about how Design “can help you make an impact that aligns with who you are”.
and
Kendra Patterson’s Stepping Off Now podcast “for Creative & Sensitive Thinkers”.
