Guarding Time and Building Relationships: The Essence of Modern Marketing
We have two things we should guard: time and health.
We are all super busy in a world where technology is supposed to make everything easier.
Technology opens opportunities and bombards us with offers. It overwhelms our time, distracts our attention from important things, and eliminates our ability to take care of ourselves properly.
We need to use our time wisely. I’ve made this observation before. If you waste only ten minutes a day (and usually we waste much more than that), we essentially (do the math) waste the equivalent of sixty – yes, 60 – hours of our yearly workweek. Only ten minutes a day, and we’ve lost 1.25 weeks of work. Imagine how much we lose yearly if we watch a 30-minute unnecessary TV show each night.
The thing for us to remember is that we are not alone. Everyone is losing time. The dyke has holes all over it, and there are not enough fingers to plug all the leaks, which brings us around to our self-interest: with so little time available to people, how do we get them to pay attention to us?
The answer is that we develop a relationship. This is not just a personal preference, but a strategic move in the marketing game. How this relationship occurs is wide open. It could be events, social media interactions, or simply offering something (a book) that the other person readily receives, making them willing to give up their precious time to spend that time with you.
When I was a kid (and even now), salespeople came to our house. We developed a relationship if they had a product that interested us (like an insurance salesman). As time passed, technology made it easy to mass market to everyone, and individual relationships were lost. Now, thanks to technology, we can connect directly and personally with customers (readers, in a writer’s case). I love this new development. I love meeting new people. I thrive on personal relationships. My personal experience with marketing and personal relationships has been inspiring and motivating, and I believe it can be the same for you.
People do business with people they know (or think they know). My daughter does not know Taylor Swift, but she feels she does. She listens to her all the time. Whatever Taylor is doing is personal marketing. From my daughter’s perspective, there is a relationship there. You need to develop those same kinds of relationships with the people you are involved with, your target audience for your product or service. The world has become too impersonal. Customers need to feel these days that they know you.
In my PR/marketing company, I encouraged clients to get involved personally with the lives of those they wish to market to. This could mean engaging in community events, responding to customer queries on social media, or even just sharing personal stories that resonate with the audience. People like doing business with friends (or people they think of as friends [e.g., Taylor Swift]). It’s a difficult lesson to teach clients. They’d instead buy and add. Instead, how about just asking someone, “How can I help you?” or giving them a product that makes them want more?
It pays. Instead of wasting five minutes a day and sixty hours of their year doing useless things, they spend those five minutes connecting with you. The benefits of this are increased customer loyalty, higher conversion rates, and a more satisfying work experience. Reach out. Make yourself available. Be a natural person who wants to know the people who want to know you.
This is marketing at its finest. This is human interaction at its best.
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