You Can Learn To Love Marketing Even If You Hate Selling

By Bonnie Boots

The main business of any business is to sell. No matter what you do, you'll only make money at it if you know how to sell it. Yet that's the point at which many people back away from their business, saying “I hate selling.”

This is especially true among highly creative people. Artists, writers, musicians, and people involved in all sorts of creative pursuits often short circuit their own success by refusing to get serious about selling their work.

Creative people are especially prone to thinking that marketing is all about “manipulation” a word that can carry overtones of evil. Rather than engage in marketing, which they view as coercive, these people sit back and say, “My work speaks for itself. I refuse to push it on people.”

The result, all too often, is good books that go unread, great paintings that go unseen, new products that never find a market.

I'd like to show you that marketing is not an evil activity. In fact, marketing is one of the ways good things are brought to light and people's lives are made brighter. And I can prove that to you by telling you about my father.

At 92 years old, my father has fallen head-over-heels in love with a wonderful woman of 82. It just goes to show you–the ability to love and be loved is not affected by age.

My father is amazed by his luck and can't figure out how this happened. He thinks chance brought them together. It's unlikely I'll ever tell him the truth–that his newfound happiness is the end product of a marketing campaign I built on his behalf.

That marketing plan left only one thing to chance, and that was which woman my father would choose. Everything else was by design. Let me explain how this happened, and what it all has to do with creating and carrying out a marketing plan.

A year and a half ago, after my mother's long illness and death, my father was clearly suffering from stress, anxiety and depression. He almost never left his apartment in a senior community, and consequently hadn't made any friends. He was incessantly anxious over small matters, and all my reassurance did nothing to set his mind at ease.

And most troubling, his usual good health and fine mind seemed to be deteriorating at an alarming rate. I diagnosed the cause of all his problems as stress and depression, and set out to craft a cure.

I decided I would try to kick-start Dad's life by getting him out and active. Once he was comfortable being out and about, I would start involving his neighbors in our activities. I counted the number of widows in his community---80% of the residents--and calculated that it wouldn't take long for some lonely lady to notice what a sweet fellow my father is.

My husband and I began working on the plan by taking my father out for lunch and an activity every Saturday. At first we planned everything, even menu choices, but week by week we pushed Dad to make choices for himself. After just a few months my father's thinking was clearer, he felt less anxiety and began to express normal interest in where we went and what we ate.

That was our signal to move to the next step in my marketing plan, which was “involve the neighbors.”

I chose a simple card game called “Uno” as the means of getting my father acquainted with his neighbors. I bought several decks of Uno cards, then  printed out the rules in extra-large type and made sure my father always had plenty of copies to hand around to anyone that showed interest.

Then I designed several unique T-shirts and had them made up by a print-on-demand service. Each T-shirt had a catchy slogan that stated Dad's interest in teaching others to play the game.

Finally, I put notices in the community newsletter and on the bulletins boards saying we'd be available every Saturday to teach anyone this easy-to-learn, fun-to-play card game.

At first my father was excited. But after wearing one of his new T-shirts to dinner the first time, he called me and complained, “Not one person asked about my T-shirt. People here don't want to make friends. They don't want to get out and do anything.”

“Dad,” I said, “this is a sort of advertising campaign. Our job is to get people's attention, get them interested and convince them that playing Uno is something they want to try. All that doesn't happen overnight. You have to give it time to take effect.”

Six months went by with no apparent result. Each Saturday, my husband, my father and I sat in the community room and invited people passing by to come in and learn the game. I pressed my father to keep wearing the T-shirts and coached him on greeting people by saying “Hi, I'm the Uno guy. Can I teach you to play?”

But when, for the first time, someone finally came into the community room and expressed interest in playing the game, my father turned his back and made it clear their company wasn't wanted. “It's better with just the 3 of us playing,” he said. “The people around here are all crabby.”

The, finally, slowly, the tide began to turn.

One lady ventured in. Too deaf to hear my dad's grumbling, she sat down “just to watch.”

“I'm too old to learn a new game,” she said, but within minutes we had her playing.

On her next trip to the in-house beauty salon, that lady talked about how much fun she was having. Her remarks brought some new faces to the card table. And so it began to grow.

That's when I gave my Dad a bright-colored pen and notebook. “Tell people to write their names and apartment numbers,” I told him. “Then, when you want to play cards during the week, you can go around and knock on their doors.”

Again, there was resistance. My dad didn't want to knock on doors and risk being rejected. And he was.

New ideas, you see, take time to grow.

But eventually, Tuesday grew into an “also Uno day,” and Wednesday followed soon after. One of the people that came to play on Wednesdays was a woman of 82, as tiny and cheerful as a sparrow. Whenever she came into the room, my father's eyes sparkled, so we began to take her out to lunch with us.

And last week, after a two-month courtship, they told us they plan to marry.

This lovely lady took my hand and said, “You can't imagine what a difference that card game has made in people's lives, not just your father and I, but everyone. So many folks want to play that there aren't enough tables to accommodate them all. People that never used to come out of their apartment are now playing cards every day. Everyone's made new friends. There's a whole new attitude around here.”

My husband and I couldn't be happier. It's taken a real commitment to give up our only day off each week and push my dad, push that whole community to get active and get connected. But what a payback! And it all started with a marketing plan.

This story perfectly illustrates how a marketing plan is created and carried out. First, I determined what my father's problem was–isolation. An obvious solution to that problem –an activity that would get him involved with others.

I set out to “sell” people on the idea of playing a simply card game by running a small, inexpensive advertising campaign. I used custom printed T-shirts as billboards. I put handwritten notices on bulletin boards, and had a notice printed in a free community newspaper. Then I created a slogan and taught my father to use it to open conversations. “Hi, I'm the Uno guy. Can I teach you to play?”

I essentially “branded” my father by making him the Uno guy. When people saw him, they had to think about playing Uno.

Between the T-shirts, the bulletin boards, the newsletter and the fact that we were on display to everyone that walked past the community room each Saturday, everyone in that complex was exposed to my “play Uno” marketing campaign on a daily basis.

Of course, it took time for that advertising campaign to start delivering results. That's the nature of advertising. It's much like gardening. You plant the seed of an idea, feed it and give it time to grow.

That advertising really began to pay off after the first few “customers' ventured in for a free sample. The first woman to join us at the card table later went to the beauty salon and talked about how much fun she had learning a new game. That added two important key elements to my marketing campaign–word of mouth and social proof.

We all know what “word of mouth” is. It's such an effective form of advertising simply because people don't perceive it as advertising. And “social proof” is the concept that people are moved to try something new when they see other people doing it. Word of mouth and social proof are powerful forces when used effectively.

As word of mouth and social proof began working in the community, the card game crowd began to grow. As people joined in, we captured their name and address. In effect, we built a list so we could re-contact people that had expressed an interest in what we had to offer.

Once my marketing campaign began rolling, I only had to step back and watch it run, knowing that my father's need for love and companionship would inevitable lead him to a happy ending.

That's the way it is with any well-crafted marketing plan. You establish each step of your campaign. Give it time to grow. Watch for the signals that tell you when it's time to move from step A to step B to step C. And stay committed to your plan. Don't throw in the towel when things aren't moving as quickly as you might wish. New ideas take time to grow.

My father doesn't know it, but I took a very calculated look at his situation and designed a plan for manipulating his behavior and the behavior of people in his community in order to bring about my desired result.

My desired result was happiness for my father. Happiness for a large number of other people was a joyful byproduct.

None of this happiness would have come about if I had stood back and said, “I don't want to manipulate anyone,” or “I think my idea's good enough to sell itself.”

If I'd simply told people about my idea, my father might have agreed that getting out in the community, meeting new people and looking for a special companion was a good idea. But it's unlikely he would have taken any action.

Instead, I stepped forward, saying, 'I know I can help my father have a better life.” And marketing was the tool I used to sell my idea and make it happen.

If you find your ideas, your products and your visions are not moving into the marketplace, ask yourself, “Am I short-circuiting my own success because I think marketing is bad?”

If that's the case, then think of my father and what his story illustrates.

Marketing is an attempt to manipulate your target. But manipulation is not, in itself, an evil thing. A doctor that manipulates a dislocated shoulder back into a healthy position does no evil. An advertising campaign that sells people on the idea of not smoking does no evil. And I did no evil when I manipulated a community into coming together over a simple card game.

Marketing, as Shakespeare might have said, is neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so.  Marketing techniques can be used by bad people to work evil. And they can be used by good people to work miracles. It has always been so.

It is not the technique, but the mind of the marketer, that makes the difference in the end result.

To sell a product, you have to have some sort of marketing plan. A marketing plan involves thinking out what you can do to get people to pay attention to your creation and convince them to buy it.

If you believe in your vision, if you believe in your product, if you believe in your cause, then you owe it to the people you can help to embrace the principles of marketing and use them to bring joy, beauty, health and happiness into the world.

At least, that's what I see when I look into the twinkling eyes of my new stepmother.

 About the Author

Bonnie Boots publishes The Internet Wizards Magazine and the companion The Internet Wizards Blog to teach self-employed people and small businesses owners how to leverage the internet for advertising, marketing and promoting their business. To stay in touch with her, type your name and email into the subscriber box in the left column of this page. You'll be glad you did!