Should Your Marketing Follow a Playbook?

The next wave of effective professional service marketing is going to be driven by authenticity (wrapped around a desire to really help people). All the marketing forces around us are moving in the other direction, of course: an endless search for attribution, faux personalization, and so much cross targeting that it feels like brands are stalking us.

It’s crazy to think about this, but never in the history of mankind has there been such a tidal wave of targeted marketing, and never in the history of mankind has it turned us off to this extent. At this point I would pay people to NOT market to me.

So there’s that, but it happens to coincide with a deep emptiness and an eternal sense of yearning to belong. To be a part of something. To have a tribe that thinks like we do, understands us, sees us, values us. (Trust me on this: letting politics fill this void is going to leave you very empty indeed, and worse off than before.)

These two forces (a longing to belong and deep but faux personalization) are like high-speed trains on an oblivious collision course, hurtling toward each other in the night while everyone sleeps.

Practical Applications Gone Wrong

Corporate America has caught onto this. They understand the problem pretty well, but their solutions, to date, have been really short-sighted, as well as a little bit sad:

• Let’s use a spokesperson to tell you about this drug. Then I guess we’ll have to tell you that this is from a “Paid Testimonialist” (is a “testimonialist” less egregious than an “endorser”?). You’re telling me that you couldn’t find someone who loved your product so much that they would gladly tell everyone else about it and be able to tell their grandkids that they were on nationwide TV? I don’t understand who makes these decisions. I would gladly be an unpaid “testimonialist” for many brands. Just call me up, Newmar or Festool or Rab or Sako/Tika or Leica or Gargiulo Olive Oil or Repatha.
• Then we had every corporation and higher ed institution on earth feeling like they had to “write an editorial” on every divisive issue to show people where they stood. Only many of those turned out to be convenient beliefs rather than deeply held beliefs, as they back away from them a year or two later.
• Next was humanizing corporate leadership. Let’s set up a blog for the CEO, where he’ll write stuff from a human perspective. Maybe then consumers will be drawn to buy our stuff because they’ll bond with the people at our company. Maybe Sam Altman can help everybody relax and look forward to a world driven by AI. Or let’s align the very visible leader of a leading EV manufacturer with one particular flavor of politics.

Oops.

Practical Applications Gone Right

The thing is, these instincts are right, and we should be applying them to our own marketing efforts. People do want to buy from other people. In professional services, anyway, we should welcome a healthy bond between buyer and seller. We are emotional beings and it’s a lot more fun to give money to someone you trust and who cares about you.

This brings me to your own presence on LinkedIn, and I’ll just say this quickly and get out of your hair for this week.

Be yourself on LinkedIn. Or if you’re an idiot, be the person that your therapist thinks you should be. That means:

• Don’t follow someone else’s playbook. Sure, do whatever best practices might dictate, but if you’ve never written one-sentence paragraphs in your life or if you don’t include a picture of yourself in every email you send, just stop it, If you don’t end every conversation with, “And if you enjoyed this, please subscribe to my blog,” then quit doing it every time you post on LinkedIn. Be yourself, please. I want to connect with you as a person—I’m not looking to connect with someone else’s playbook.
• Don’t let someone else take over your LinkedIn account and do stuff that you’d never want done to you, like pitching anything with a pulse before you even understand what they do or might need.

There’s this weird “Circle of Futility” happening on LinkedIn:

• We need to let buyers connect with us personally.
• Let’s have the CEO/Principal post a lot to make this happen.
• Oh, he’s really bad at it.
• Let’s have the comms or marketing people take over his account.
• Huh?

Finally The only way to consistently cut through the noise of hyper targeting and AI shitification is to speak human to human, and you’re probably pretty good at it, so give it a try. I will cheer for you from the sidelines. The hurricane winds of AI, combined with marketing pressure, are trying to tear you away from who you are. Please don’t let go and get blown away with everyone else.