The Marketing of Anti-Marketing

Playing hard to get in the overly-accessible digital world

The overwhelmingly urgent desire for a successful business, and the very real fear of losing business, drives many a good person to do some very sneaky things.

Not a casino owner-pimp-politician-corporation-type of unholiness, but the sad case of good small business owners who become marketers.

Say you have a blog, and you post great stuff, and people enjoy it. Now what? How do you build a business out of that?

You look all over the internet and see people who have made millions online: How exactly did they do it? Internet marketing. They have constructed mailing lists, then manipulated those lists with emotional tactics, social proof, creating a false urgency, building up funnels, warming up the lists, urging the potential customers to think they need this or they will fail.

This success excites you and you want it. You haven’t the foggiest idea as to how to build a business, but this gal did it and she is successful. So you signup and buy her course, and follow her sage advice.

Next thing you know, your great blog is urging me to join a mailing list to receive a free report. You have a popup trying to get me to enter my email address. If I do, I start to get all kinds of emails I do not necessarily want, trying to push me into some funnel. You create synergy by posting a thousand things to social media accounts, trying to get me interested in your sale.

You have begun to construct an image you think I want, so I’ll buy what you’re selling. You my friend are now a marketer, a manipulator, untrustworthy; I am no longer interested,

I Unsubscribe.

Now, let’s instead assume you had confidence in your business? You create something of value and believe it helps people? You make its value and how much it helps other people your gauge of metrics.

You decide to do none of the above things. All you do is create wonderful things, and people spread the word for you. You, instead, opt for simplicity and trustworthiness.

You create confidence by putting everything you have into the construction and growth of the business. By listening to people and seeing whether what you are doing is helping, resonating. Adjusting when needed. Those of whom do not come to you … you let pass. What you have built is not for everyone.

The fear of losing business will never go away, but a business should never be driven by it.