When you relax and show your company’s true personality to the world, people read between the lines and you communicate with them on multiple levels. You magnetically attract like-minded people.

The name of the game here is not so much being flamboyant, or controversial, or Big-Ass (as in Big-Ass Fans).

The name of the game is being real. Being human. Showing your true colors, instead of institutional gray. Here are several things that happened to drive that point home with me.

I was on the phone, doing a fast-start session with a member named Steve. We were discussing this very subject of people who are afraid to use personality and human touch in their advertising, and he says to me “Yes, Perry you talked in one of your newsletters about ‘posers,’ and I just read a book ‘Wild at Heart’ by John Eldredge that talked about the exact same thing.”

“That very book is where I got the word posers,” I said.

We’d both read the same book, and one single word, even used in a different context, created a connection to an entire book – and it was dead accurate.

That happens more often than we realize. The world is a naturally self-organizing place on many, many levels. A big aspect of successful marketing is simply and honestly communicating who you are, so you can join forces with people who think like you do.

One of the reasons long sales letters work so well is that they’re really the only way to communicate with people on multiple levels. Brochures can’t do that. Slogans can’t do that. White papers, interviews, editorials, and other long-format media are far more engaging.

Along similar lines: One July 4 while I was in Mozambique, I sent an off-topic email to 5,000+ people. The subject was Happy July 4 from the Dark Continent of Africa. Everyone on that list is on it only because they’re interested in marketing. But it was very, very interesting to see the replies I got back, simply because I was sharing the organic, human experience of doing unusual things in a faraway land. I heard from relief workers, missionaries, adventurers, and all kinds of folks who see the world through a wide lens. And very, very few people unsubscribed – maybe 20 or so.

Don’t hide behind your business, or your computer. There’s no penalty in being the person you really are.

Photo by Windell Oskay cc by-sa

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.