When I was 14, I found an advertising book in the school library. It was sort of against advertising and it explained to hapless readers how advertisers use “weasel words” like ‘virtually guaranteed to’ — words that sound good but mean nothing.
But I was intrigued. I mentioned it to an adult friend of mine. He replied, “Perry, if you waste your potential by going into advertising, I’ll slap you.”
And here I am a few decades later, writing advertising books.
Is there a little part of you that thinks of marketing as “slimy”?
After today you’ll probably do a 180 on that one. Here’s why.
I had a friend Jim who was a really good therapist. I told him he should raise his prices and he recoiled.
For a little while, Glenn Livingston sold a course for therapists and psychologists on how to market their practices. I don’t recall that it sold well, and that’s probably because counselor-type people are VERY squeamish about promoting themselves.
Glenn interviewed me for his members. I told his customers the same thing I told Jim: “You drive down the street and see all these houses going by. As a therapist, you know that behind those closed doors and the flickering light of the TV in the living room window that there’s all kinds of chaos going on in there.
“People are arguing and giving each other the silent treatment and screwing up their kids and everything else. You KNOW how to solve a lot of their problems but they ain’t gonna get solved unless those people go get some help.
“Don’t you have a moral OBLIGATION to do the best job you can marketing yourself? Cuz if you don’t, people just sit there and suffer.”
But that’s not all. It goes farther.
Let’s say you’re a therapist… or a marketing consultant… or you plan events, or whatever. You’ve got a handful of skinny-cow clients and you’re barely paying your rent.
A prospective client comes to you. They aren’t really a fit. You *might* be able to help them but it’s really over your head and there’s a good chance you’ll screw everything up.
But you take the business anyway because you NEED it to eat.
Has anyone done that to you?
Did you like it?
Wouldn’t it be MORE ethical, and more responsible, to market yourself heavily so you turn away clients that don’t fit you?
Do you disqualify clients before you take their money?
As John Paul Mendocha says, sales is a DIS-qualification process. If you’re doing your job, you should be turning people away. Not just people who don’t have enough money, but people whose needs don’t precisely fit your abilities.
Bad marketing FORCES you to be slimy.
Truly good marketing isn’t slimy. It’s helping people who need each other find each other.
You’re in the best MORAL and ETHICAL position to serve people when demand for you exceeds supply. If that’s not an argument for being a marketing ninja, I don’t know what is.
Perry Marshall
P.S.: If you’re GOOD at what you do, and your competitors screw people over… and if your competitors market better than you… then people are suffering because YOU are embracing mediocrity.
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
7 Comments on “The "Moral Argument" for ninja-level marketing”
Perry,
Self-promotion has been a challenge for me, coming from an environment where I was required to be self-effacing and sacrificial. (P.K background)
Your P.S. really hit home. I’m breaking out. :)
Sabrina
I’m a PK too. You can overcome!
Perry–
I just wanted to say that I’ve had some of this same advertising-is-slimy argument with myself. Even as recently as two years ago, I would not have imagined that I would ever be involved in writing software for marketing and advertising. However, after listening to and reading a ton of material that you, Tom Meloche, Glenn Livingston, John Mendocha, and others have produced about advertising and marketing, I have definitely changed my tune. I tell people now that the reason I’m working on Fanalytix is that I want to *reduce* the amount of advertising in the world. That is precisely what happens when we make advertising more effective: it takes less advertising to achieve the same amount of sales. Even though I am a complete neophyte when it comes to marketing and advertising, it is thuddingly obvious to me that conventional approaches to these activities make salmon spawning look frugal. Anything we can do to reduce that wasted advertising expense both saves advertising dollars and reduces the irritation levels of customers and non-customers alike.
So, here’s to pin-point advertising! And thanks for the on-going education!
–Bill Cavnar
(Main developer for Fanalytix)
Hey Perry
Marketing becomes slimy when your heart isnt it, your belief in something isnt there, and you don’t truly know who you’re marketing to. You fall-back on cheap tactics, generalizations and the grab-and-go of people’s attention – and money too.
It’s a false reality, with little authenticity, truth or personal connection.
So in my mind marketing is about asking questions, AND giving answers. Presenting positives, AND excluding negatives. So as to help customers hone their own needs, set their expectations straight from the start, and ultimately buy-in to what you’re offering for the right reasons AND at the right $ value :)
Thanks again. Better get going, it’s 6.30am here in Australia. And my 3 boys will explode into life soon :)
perry,
Always inspiring. Every Email you send has a unique teaching element to it, which makes a true entrepreneur want to put it to good use.
One thing I find, the teaching is eternal and not only for this era. This is the teaching I want to harness, so after I’m gone, it could help those that follow. Therefore, I have to do it NOW.
Gerald
Perry,
That is by far the most helpful article I have read this year. I have been struggling with this very thing and this answers the question completely.
I have felt that marketing is “slimy” and somewhat beneath me. I have come from the pristine world of programming and technology. Been fighting the need to promote for some time and now that it is a moral obligation, it is a no-brainer.
If I can’t engage in marketing my wares, I need to go back to my cube job as a programmer (where I had a nice life and made a great living for my family) and kill the dreams of owning a business.
You said this would be a 180 and you definitely delivered.
Amen brother!!!!