Forget Marketing Best Practices: Be Authentic

Speaking with one of our clients today about radio advertising strategy, I got to thinking about communication. Simple person to person conversations.

We were discussing our client’s upcoming campaign and the CEO started running through a list of all of the bullet points he wanted to include. This took about ten minutes. From listening to the radio, you know that ad spots normally don’t last ten minutes. So once he was done going through everything I asked him to sum it all up into no more than three sentences. He looked at me like I had three heads instead. I went on to explain myself.

“What station do you like to listen to?” He replied.

“Who is your favorite radio personality?” Again, he replied.

“Why?”

This is where he described why he liked the radio personality on that station. He described things like how funny he was, how he said it straight without worrying about what people thought, and how he was just like himself. There was the revelation I was looking for.People don’t like to be sold. People don’t like to be manipulated or told what to do. People just want straight talk from someone who is like them, that they can trust. Period. I went on to tell him that with radio you want it to come across as if their good friend is sitting in the passenger seat next to them. No clouded elevator pitch. Just a conversation.

From there we outlined their campaign and everyone walked away feeling great about where we are headed.So, here is why I wanted to share that story. Too many times we get caught up in wanting to make sure that our marketing is going to bring in a solid return on investment that we forget to just be real. We forget to be human. I’m not saying that ROI isn’t important; I’m saying that if you want to really have out of this world marketing strip away the “marketing best practices” and bullet points of why people should work with you. Tell people why you do what you do, not what you do. Explain how you can help them in the same way that you would tell a friend. Be authentic. It allows you to communicate effectively and helps you remember why you are passionate about what you do.