Evolution of Marketing from Selling/Enrollment to Content Marketing to Benevolence
Channel: Our Highest Work
Date: 02/09/2014

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”  ― Mahatma Gandhi

This episode in brief: 

There’s an evolution going on of 1. Selling / Enrollment (ethically / with integrity which is selling what people actually need, not just what they want) to 2. Content Marketing, to what I’m calling 3. Benevolent Marketing...  

Episode Notes:

The article on “The Ideal Length of Everything Online” (blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, tweets, google+ posts, slideshows, etc.) 
https://www.google.com/search?q=“The+Ideal+Length+of+Everything+Online” 

How can you market your business effectively and yet purely from the heart? Let's explore how...

The jist of what I'm going to explore in this episode is that there seems to be a 3-stage evolution that marketing is going through...

Stage 1: A pure focus on Selling / Enrollment. It's clear what the salesman is trying to do. His primary purpose -- transparent to them, and to you -- is to sell you his product. He may say he wants to help you also, but you know (and he knows) that it's a byproduct of his main intention: to make sales. Now, if he's an ethical salesperson he will do a good job of "filtering" or "qualifying" which is to ask good questions and help you explore whether the product is really a good fit to help solve the problem you're trying to solve, and whether it's the right timing to buy it.

Stage 2: Content Marketing. The content marketer -- blogger, podcaster, social media maven -- typically feels conflicted about Selling/Enrollment. They know they "have" to do it to stay in business but they would prefer not to. They may have a "content marketing sales funnel" where someone comes in at the top of the funnel through free content, then moves down the funnel to more and more content, to maybe a cheaper product, to then more expensive products. The content marketer primarily tries to create beneficial content to help their audience, but they work on having enough people go through their Content Marketing Sales Funnel so that some of them (hopefully enough of them!) will buy and allow them to sustain or expand their business. They create content prolifically in hopes that some of it will go viral. Of course they keep learning along the way about how to make their content more engaging, and try to focus on Quality not just Quantity.) The problem with the Content Marketer is that she's conflicted internally. Whenever she creates content she has in mind (sometimes subconsciously) the hope that the content will eventually produce sales. That internal conflict does not liberate the full creativity and effectiveness of helping that full altruism does.

Stage 3: Benevolent Marketing. This is what I'll be talking about on the episode today. It's actually borrowing the BEST of both of the first 2 stages. It's having purity of heart and intention when you are doing each activity. Yes, it is about understanding that you have 2 separate activities in your business: Selling/Enrollment. And Content Distribution. It's like a business having 2 arms: the for-profit arm and the non-profit arm. In each department there is purity of intention. There is no internal psychological conflict. In this way, both can be done ethically, and effectively for its purpose. You can make enough money, and yet feel passionate about fulfilling your natural desire to give and help with a full heart.

(Benevolent Marketing is a new term I'm playing with... do you like it better or Virtuous Marketing, or something else? Let me know your reactions...)


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Episode 55