Maybe you're an artist not a marketer

--> maybe me too

I fell in love with marketing back in business school in the 90s when I was supposed to be learning how to be a better manager. It prompted a big career switch for me.

(Quick aside: has anyone *ever* learned how to be a better manager at business school rather than just becoming consultants or bankers?)

One of the things that was hammered into my brain back then was the number one rule of marketing: “you are not your customer”.

In other words, just because you like something doesn’t mean your customer will. Your tastes and interests, the media you use, what influences you. All likely to be very different.

Study after study has shown that marketing people massively overestimate how much their customers rely on social media vs TV and radio for example. Simply because that’s what they do.

So the number one rule means you need to focus on what your customers are interested in and care about, not what you do.

Except…

Marketing for your own business is very different when it’s down to you to write the emails, the articles, make the videos, do the podcasts, everything really.

As I said last time, the easiest way to sell more is to communicate and attempt to persuade more.

But writing more emails, more articles, making more videos…if you don’t love - or at least enjoy - what you’re doing then it’s simply impossible.

You’ll burn out or give up.

So in order to create enough marketing to make an impact you have to take joy in the process. It has to be what you care about.

But that’s the opposite of good marketing which should be about what your customers care about, not you.

In essence, it’s the dilemma faced by every artist.

They’re driven to create things by their own passion. Being “market focused” and spending all your time worrying about what others will think of what you’re doing is the kiss of death for an artist’s creativity.

And yet if they create things the market doesn’t love they’ll become the stereotypical starving artist.

Artists who achieve commercial success in their own lifetime manage to solve this dilemma. They create art for themselves, but manage to find an intersection with what the public loves too.

Maybe they’re just lucky that their tastes are close enough to a big enough audience that it flies.

But if you think about it, people like us are almost always “lucky” like this.

Very often we help clients with problems we faced and usually still face ourselves. We care about similar things to them.

I write about succeeding with email because it was a challenge I had to crack for myself. I found a way of writing interesting, useful emails fast and now I teach it to others who need to do the same thing.

And even if we’ve not been there ourselves we almost always understand and empathise with the people facing the challenges we help with. We’ve coached, consulted, taught and hung out with enough of them.

So I’m going to suggest you trust your instincts.

Even though it may be a bit marketing-sacrilegious, I believe that if we create emails, videos and articles about things we’re passionate about and enjoy creating, there should be enough of an overlap with what our audience cares about to make it work.

Even if we go off-topic a bit.

If I write about productivity, there’ll be enough people in my audience struggling with procrastination or overload that they’ll value it: even if it’s not strictly about email.

If I write about getting inspired, there’ll be enough people who can use that to help them find topics to write about even if it doesn’t dive into the mechanics of writing better emails.

It’s the same for you.

Sure, sanity check to make sure you’re not writing about something so obscure that none of your audience will care. You probably don’t want too many emails from me about why the Newcastle United strip of 1996 is the coolest one to wear on matchday.

But common sense (probably) prevents me from writing that.

Instead, when I do delve into my other interests like magic or gardening or occasionally football there’s enough crossover and enough relevance to make it useful even if it’s not your thing. And because it’s unique to me it makes my writing different and interesting.

Try it for yourself.

Next email you write, pick the topic that you find the most interesting right now and see how it flies.

After all, even if it falls flat, there’s always another email. That’s the beauty of a newsletter. You don’t need every email to be a home run. You can strike out every now and then and still win.

- Ian