Feel-Good Marketing: 3 Wonderful Things to Remember In Seeking A Human Way to Market

Endearment and Marketing – Do they really go hand in hand?

If you have been marketed to (and who has not been marketed to these days?), you may find yourself thinking negatively or positively about the question above. If you have marketed to others for a while as I have, you may find yourself pondering on the questions:

“How can I market to others and have them and myself feel good about the interactions or… even have the experience of endearment in the process?”

AND

“Is that endearment going to result in my business being profitable?”

AND

“Will that endearment be authentic – i.e. true to ourselves and how we feel and think?”

Many of you are asking these questions as you see more marketing done by businesses and campaigning by politicians – these are people who want something from us – we want to learn and share – and yet, there is something missing.

We are missing feel-good marketing. Or, the human side of marketing — looking at ourselves and our clients and prospects … as human.

Feel-Good Marketing: We are Social Beings

We are fundamentally social beings – that is how we evolved or if you do not believe in evolution, that is how we are designed. We have a predisposition to liking / loving others and having others like and love us. Even if you are a psychopath or a sociopath, you will realize at the base level, that you do need others to survive and thrive.

Biologically, wonderful and ‘happy’ chemicals (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, etc.) are released when we experience connections with other human beings. Conversely, ‘negative’ or fear-based chemicals (adrenaline, cortisol, etc.) are released when we experience a withdrawal of connection.

If you take out the biological explanations, we as human beings thrive on connecting with others and we value these connections as imperative not just to our survival but to our well-being.

We Enjoy Remembering And Reconnecting to Our Humanity – Yet we forget that enjoyment.

In our hustle and bustle world today, we tend to focus on the world of results rather than the world of humanity. We (myself included) focus and get tired of the world of results – we then get hungry for the world of humanity.

But we keep putting this on the backburner – because we need to feed our families, ourselves and live up to our ambitions and views of ourselves. Building the resume overtakes our humanity.

The cost of this lifestyle is a compromise on going deep with oneself and with others. We tend to stay on the periphery or surface of our humanity and our willingness to help or guide others.

Yet, when I teach, coach and speak – I hear people being and feeling deeply connected to the possibility of going deeper for themselves and with and for others. We want to feel good and be connected.

There is a clear hunger for this deeper connection especially in the younger adults coming up today.

Balancing Distractions with Being Endearing

Most marketing education these days is focused on how to keep attention on you and your business. I do not blame this thinking or the people engaged in it – because it may be a necessary science to learn.

However, we have now marketed to the point where we have failed to create a depth and appreciation for ourselves and others as human beings. I have been guilty of this in the past as has been many of my compatriots in business.

The point is not to cast blame, but to cast opportunity for the future.

I am not going to pretend to give you a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for I do not think I have one.

But I do have questions that have helped me craft better marketing and interactions with people and I would like to share these with you:

What if we created a future of more feel-good marketing and in ALL our interactions?

What if we took the time to deepen our knowledge of ourselves and others in our marketing and interactions?

Where have we compromised on creating more depth and understanding of ourselves, our customers, and our relationships?

If you would like to explore what feel-good marketing could look like for your business contact me or follow me on LinkedIn.