A few friends and faithful followers of ye olde blog will say, "Fred, "don't be silly. You know, I know and all your readers know the purpose of all marketing is to ultimately sell something, so whats up?
"Well" says I, "Me thinks the purpose of marketing is to create change. For example you are planning to do a presentation to the local Chamber of Commerce about your company's party offerings and fund raising abilities and you are struggling with how to get it focused and directed..
First, realize you're not going to get any one to go gaga and throw thousands of dollars at you during that meeting.
Second, at best - and your goal should be this - to change some attitudes about viewing bowling as a corporate event venue or fund raising venue.
Third, you want this change to open doors for you; to create possibilities. Ultimately, you want this presentation to lead to action; to making a sale.
But if you're subconscious goal is to get out of this presentation without getting barraged with negative questions, then you will build a presentation that will merely entertain and waste people's time. And they will recognize that in a heart beat and tune you out equally as fast.
So go back to the drawing board and realize that every presentation, every ad campaign, every flier, every facebook post, and every email you send has one reason for existence: to change someones mind from either apathy to yes or from no to yes (the latter being more difficult and requiring much more thought and planning) and question: is your message attempting an attitudinal change; is your tone inviting; does your graphics say "come in and spend 30 seconds of your precious time with me"? Do your testimonials seem substantive and verifiable? Is your guarantee real? Is your offer too good to be true and therefore too easily to be picked apart by the skeptics that lurk in all of us?
If your marketing doesn't create change; you have failed. Game over.
But if you do create some change and offer some outrageous program that actually gets accepted, two things will happen. You will be expected to do it all the time., and that's OK because it will push you every time, even though you may not succeed every time. But at least you went all out! Or you might shrink back from the outrageous and do the safe and secure. In that case you would fail again.
In the end, it is far easier to do a "mediocre -i-don't-really-care" job then to create change that says "I- really- give- a- damn." But you can't because the change you strive for, just might make a real difference!
