How To Do Marketing When You Hate Marketing: selling your talents without selling your soul

If I were to go back in time and tell my younger self that I would work in marketing for businesses, my previous self would have promptly thrown up in her mouth a little bit, dyed her hair blue, and thrown paint balloons at the nearest business school. 

“Business” was for people who liked button-down shirts, spreadsheets, flat-ironing their shiny perfect hair, and read the Wall Street Journal before drinking superfood smoothies.

It never occurred to me before the age of 25 that the owner of the badass crafts consignment shop was a business owner, as was my tattoo artist, or that all the other services and shops I admired were in fact businesses run by people who did not have perfect hair or designer suits or maximized breakfasts. Many of them wore band t-shirts and ripped up jeans, just like I did.

Not all of us who want to offer goods and services to the world are interested in what Forbes has to say.
About anything. Ever. 

Some of us are much more interested in sharing our passion, our art, and our gifts with people.
The decision to monetize that exchange is secondary to the privilege of connection.

If you’re a Forbes-loving suit-owning person, you can exit the website with all my love and blessings for your future, friend. You have many many many alternate resources to help optimize your marketing strategy with allll the shiny impressive metrics. Go get ‘em, tiger! I cannot be of service to you.

I’m here for the previous version of me, who desperately wanted to make a living from sharing my healing skills, but making a marketing plan still made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. 

Noticing that I didn’t actually have any business unless I actively marketed it, I forced myself to do whatever top tips other successful people shared, even when they felt jarring, horrible, and entirely counter to my personality. 

Here’s the reality:
If your heart isn’t in your marketing, you won’t want to do it, so you’ll keep putting it off and your business will suffer. When you finally work up the nerve to force yourself into it, people will be able to tell you’re miserable and/or desperate and it won’t work well anyway.

So what’s an unconventional soul to do?

Just like not all “business people” look like conventional business people, marketing doesn’t have to look like conventional marketing.

Behold! A plan!

How to Make Marketing NOT Suck:

1. Figure out how much you need.
   Part of the soul-sucking horror of marketing is that the conventional language around it is…greedy. It seems like most people offering marketing advice are in the business of helping you create a seven-figure launch and build an empire that requires more and more upkeep to bring you more and more riches forever.
   I don’t want a beach house in Cabo and a ski cabin in Vail, so I don’t need to invest in a $50,000 click funnel to bring me 10,000 clients who pay me $7000 a head to access my coaching package, thank you very much. I’m in this to cover rent, utilities, food, and the occasional date night, so my marketing strategies are built to meet those needs.
   You’re going to be doing marketing for as long as you have a business. It’s like laundry. So, only do as much as you actually need to meet your immediate comfort and short-term goals.
   This isn’t lazy, it’s strategic, and will help you avoid burnout.
   
   Here’s your assignment. Take a couple of minutes to do the real-world numbers for what you want to make from your business. If you know exactly what you need to earn, you can figure out exactly how many of which things you need to sell. (If you have no idea how to do that, Kristen Kalp made this dope workbook for $10, which will save you countless hours of financial dread.)
   
   Seriously, do this. Knowing exactly how many things you need to sell will shape a marketing plan that will be much easier to implement than chasing down an amorphous, perpetual “more.”

2. Pick who you’re talking to, and make them real.
   Creating an “ideal client” persona is a marketing 101 kind of thing, but bear with me if you’ve heard this before.
   The golden phrase, “If you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one” is true–and if you hope that absolutely everyone in the world will love your service/product then I have bad news for you: not all of them will.
   Which, frankly, is a good thing.
   
   I do not want any MAGA-hat-wearing neo-nazis to set up a client call with me. There are many human beings whom I do not want to talk to for an hour, and I am comfortable with the knowledge they don’t want to talk to me either.
   There are also many human beings whom I would be thrilled to the gills to talk to for an hour.
   I write for them.
   
   Do you like animals more than people? Do you have images of anime character tattoos saved for inspiration? Are you amazing at your job but exhausted from working yourself to death, and looking for an easier way to make money while still making the world a better place? WELCOME DEAR ONE I AM HERE FOR YOU.
   
   I have gathered enough followers from my years as a bodyworker, and simply living in the world, to have a band of people that generally (or exactly) fit this description. I know their names, I know their faces, and every time I write an email I know they will open it and read it. I think of what they would want to know, what they might need to know, and what I can do for them. Then I write to that little group specifically.
   This makes it 10,000 times easier to hit send. Instead of me hawking my wares to a group of hundreds of strangers for their judgment, I’m just writing an email to Courtney (hello, love!).
   
   Trying to craft a postcard for a promotion or a sales letter when all you’re thinking is, “I need money I need money I need money I hope people like this, will everyone like this? Maybe I should add this color scheme it seems to be trendy I need money,” will make you hate your life, AND will result in a bland, boring, soulless piece of garbage. Sorry, but’s true. (I’ve done it!)
   But framing it as, “Let’s make a postcard to send to Dave,” –who is your number one favorite client and you wish you had 100 more of him–will inspire a truly rad piece of marketing material.
   If you’re just starting out and don’t have a favorite client, make one up in your head. Give them a name, habits, outfits, pets, a career, a hairstyle. Get as specific as possible to make your imaginary friend real. Then every time you send a message out to the world, send it for them.
   
   

3. Get a little weird. (Or a lot.)
   The internet is great, and having an online presence for your business is (nearly) indispensable. But did you know there is also a non-digital world?
   I know! It’s still there!
   There are as many ways to reach out to potential clients/customers as there are business owners. If the top tips for marketing make you feel queasy and reach for the nearest finger-paint, consider this permission to get weird with it.
   For example: A local artist created cameo-style illustrations of crows labeled with names and short captions like, “Wonders if he left the oven on” and “Is over your nonsense.” He included a QR code to his Instagram in the corner, laminated them, and stapled them to telephone poles around the city. Guess who got a ton of comments on his artist page and probably a bunch of new followers? That guy.
   
   Brainstorm a list of ways to get yourself seen and heard that would delight both your ideal client AND you. Silly, whacky, whimsical ideas are encouraged. Serious, compassionate, soulful ideas are encouraged as well. Digital or analog, there are always a lot more options than you might think.
   And remember, you don’t have to do all of them. Only pick what you need.
   
   
   

That’s how to get started!

You don’t have to try to be something you’re not to have a successful business.
There are a lot of people in the world who might like you because you have blue hair and fantasize about throwing paint balloons at the nearest business school.

Marketing is about finding your people and helping your people find you.
The more authentic, honest, and connected to your passions you are, the more new favorite clients you’ll attract, and the more fun your business will be. 

To recap:

• You don’t have to do as much selling as you might think.

• You don’t have to talk to strangers, talk to your favorite people instead.
  
  and

• You can be as creative, wild, and weird with it as your heart desires.

See? Marketing doesn’t have to be so bad after all.

P.S.
Need help getting some words out? Stuck on that “Get Weird” brainstorm?
Hire me here, I’m happy to help.