UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging

Chapter 2. A Word on Experts

LET'S THINK BACK to what we learned from the hierarchy of buying. To successfully UnMarket your business, your goal should be to get to the point where you are a recognized expert in your field. You can choose to be recognized for a certain discipline, whether it is time management or sales or marketing in general. You can also aim to be recognized as an expert to a specific industry. What you have to realize is that there is an important difference between somebody who is selling something and somebody who is an expert. This is one of the problems when you use advertising or direct mail for your marketing—if your potential customer does not have an immediate need for your product or service, then you are potentially turning them off and losing them for the future. When you position yourself as an expert with useful information for people, your marketplace will always have a need for that information. You have successfully pulled people into your funnel, you have their attention, and now you need to do something great for them.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not opposed to advertisements or direct mail. It is just that in general these methods are executed poorly. They are almost always doomed to fail, and companies put too much focus on them. Advertising or the Yellow Pages or (cough) even a cold call can "work" if whoever is in contact with you at that very moment has that exact need. And therein lies the problem. You have to blast your message to ...