“We met five years ago, and I’ve been following you all this time. It’s finally time to write my book!” If I thought my marketing wasn’t having an effect, getting this message as a reply to my newsletter definitely changed my mind!
It shows that people are quietly connecting with our communications even when we perceive that it’s just crickets out there.
When I ask our community members what they want to learn in upcoming workshops, marketing is always on the list.
For me, it’s an ongoing evolution. While I know lots of marketing tips and tricks and techniques, it’s hard to move into action if my mindset is putting on the brakes.
Bringing Heart Into Marketing
My experience with marketing has been confusing. I see other leaders struggle with it as well, and it makes me wonder, Is heart-centered marketing different? As authors, I believe we think about the message in our book and marketing our book as two distinct things. We’re passionate about putting our hearts and our vulnerability into our stories. And then when it comes to marketing, our minds say, “But that’s salesy. It’s pushy. Maybe people don’t want it. I don’t know how to talk about it.”
We have developed an attitude in response to marketing, as if it’s a “bad” word. First, it was “sales” that got the bad word award, now we’ve added marketing. When we think about sales, we may think hype and loud, fast-talking hyperbole. The whole concept of selling things has taken on an entirely different meaning, partly because there are infinite things being sold all the time. And many of the things being sold cause us to question their merit, their packaging, their purpose. That, in turn, leads us to question those doing the selling.
So, getting back to our books, the chatter going on in our brains is telling us not to be salesy. But our hearts are saying, “If my book helps one person, it’s all worth it.” That sounds more like a gift of love than like pushing someone into something they don’t really desire, right?
You’ve put a great deal of time, heart, soul, and cash into creating a book. This is a work or art, an important expression from the depths of your soul. So why does marketing it feel so awkward?
Maybe for that very reason. Because what you’ve created feels so vulnerable, and we rarely pair those sorts of feelings with the world of business. Like church and state, we have been compartmentalizing aspects of our lives forever.
Transparency
These days, transparency in business is becoming more popular, because we’ve realized how important trust is in the buying process. We’ve all heard the expression know, like and trust, and it’s true in marketing just as it is in friendship or any type of relationship.
Another reason marketing is so challenging for us is because we were not raised to focus on our strengths. We don’t generally speak highly about ourselves to strangers, even if they do follow us on social media!
But sharing who you are is important to your readers. They want to know your story; they want to know you are like them–both ordinary and extraordinary.
What does transparency in business look like? Here are some basic guidelines that also apply to marketing:
- Keep it simple
- Be clear about what you deliver
- Communicate
- Invite people in
- Focus on your strengths
- Tell your story
- Show up and be consistent
For me, I’ve had to go back to the basics of what I teach in the Unleash Your Inner Author program. Connect with your mission, your soulmate readers, and your dreams as an author. When you get clear on these things, you can write your book. Guess what? You can also do marketing!
How? When we take a step back and connect with our mission, our “why,” we remember how important the message is and why we believe it is important to others as well. From there, we become decisive about sharing that message with the many people waiting to hear it. We are no longer on the fence, resistant to our motivation. And without that hesitancy, marketing is a whole lot easier. Who are those people waiting? They are your soulmate circle, your ideal readers, and clients.
What Are We Delivering?
What about your dream? The one about sharing a message so potent that it brings readers into the present moment. And in that moment, they can feel the potential of their own transformation.
When you think about it this way, does it change your mind-set about marketing?
Now let’s invite our busy brains to go one step further. Instead of the words marketing and sales, what if we use the words communication, or education, or better yet, transformation? That’s what we’re delivering.
When we hold ourselves back from talking about our mission in social media, blog posts, articles, and books, we’re not making the impact we could. And we’re not doing anyone any favors. I’m not talking about sharing an opinion, I’m talking about genuinely sharing the essence of who you are. The unique qualities that drove you to write the book from your heart and not your head.
Why not use marketing to share the gift of who we are, actually be ourselves in our marketing.
For me, I want to keep getting better and bolder in my willingness to be myself, not just with my closest friends and family. I want to become more transparent in the world. I want to invite more of my soulmate circle into my mission to help visionary leaders to make a powerful impact as authors, and as themselves. And I want to help you get better at it too.
So, let’s keep having conversations about what it means to market, to share, to become transparent and honorable in our exchange of goods and services.
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