Traditional marketing is dead.
The shit just doesn’t work! People are tired of being marketed to.
They want smart, valuable, helpful content…not trite marketing slop.
If you try to market yourself in traditional ways, your biz will crumble.
Hillary Weiss, a copywriter, pointed this out on her recent Medium.com article, “8 observations from a crumbling niche — and how to avoid getting crushed.”
In it, she wrote:
“With a jarring suddenness, the brand giants who rose to notoriety just a few short years ago are slowing down, stepping back, or crashing completely.”
“Millions-in-revenue programs and strategies that used to be gold standard ‘cash faucets’ are drying up while their leaders and advocates are frantically digging for ways to restore the flow.”
She writes copy for an industry notorious for “marketing”:
The “women’s empowerment/coaching/consulting/marketing/branding/the creative space,” as she calls it.
However, her message applies to other industries as well.
Basically, if you have any kind of home-based business (i.e., not corporate), this message applies to you:
Traditional marketing is dead. Anti-marketing is the way of the future.
“Consumers are ever-more discerning, and it’s costing marketers BIG MONEY because they’re not paying attention, or don’t know how to react,” Weiss states.
Damn right.
Consumers are glossing over anything that doesn’t immediately offer a specific benefit to their own life.
Sending a “20% off” coupon to your email list won’t cut it…you have to give people more meaningful reasons to buy. (Why should I use your 20% off coupon when I don’t even know what the hell your product is yet?!)
Posting inspirational pics on your Facebook won’t cut it, either…
“Consumers don’t just want to be inspired. In fact they’re so damn over-inspired if you look closely you’ll notice they’ve got Hero’s Journey Facebook ads oozing out of their sweat glands,” says Weiss.
(Ha! That’s why we do anti-inspiration!)
Fact: If you want your home biz to survive (let alone thrive), you need to create quality content that helps people ACHIEVE something valuable in their own life.
Hint: It’s NOT affiliate marketing, joint venture partnerships, or traditional marketing.
It’s anti-marketing.
“You can no longer rely so heavily on partner promotions to push you through to success,” says Weiss.
True. You must first and foremost, figure out how to promote your own damn product.
I guarantee that if you have a great product or service (proven by repeat sales), there’s a rich reservoir of valuable content waiting to be tapped, produced, and broadcasted, that can serve as the vital foundation for your business.
…And it doesn’t have to contain one single ounce of “marketing speak” in it!
Hone in on this precise content — excluding ANYTHING that doesn’t directly apply — and tailor all your promotional activities around this content…
…and your cash faucet will never dry up. (Cause if you run out, you can just turn it on again.)
Anti-marketing is here to stay. It’s not a trend or a fad. It’s the “second coming of Jesus,” as far as marketers are concerned.
The very nature of anti-marketing spurs growth and awareness…and consumers can’t get enough of it!
Nobody but a select few are doing it (yet)…it seems they’d rather cling to doing more of what’s NOT working, and go down with the sinking ship.
I’m too busy to save them.
Michelle
Anti-Marketing Manifesto
P.S. Thanks for reading, I’m outta here…gotta prep for my trip to LA next week! It’s been over a year since I was last in Los Angeles, and I miss it!
Michelle Lopez Boggs is a copywriter, copywriting mentor, and author of "The Anti-Marketing Manifesto: How to Sell Without Being a Sellout." She's helped her clients sell millions of dollars' worth of products and services online by using the MEI(S) principle — motivate, educate, and inspire, and sell. 