One of the most significant periods of my life was the three years I studied under the world’s greatest business consultant, Peter Drucker. Dr. Drucker is known as the father of modern management, but he also contributed to the creation of marketing as a professional discipline, wrote extensively about entrepreneurship and innovation, and is generally regarded as the greatest business philosopher of all-time.

There is not a single day that I don’t hear his voice in my head as I work through customer problems. His advice has become the foundational pillars of my work and in many respects, my life.

But there is one piece of advice he gave me that is remarkably useful to me in this overwhelming world of change, and I think it will help you, too. Let’s reveal that today.

Immersed in the problem

I studied under Dr. Drucker while pursuing an MBA at the Claremont Graduate University. He had retired from most of his professional life and devoted his time to mentoring students in the business school that now bore his name.

He would sit on the edge of a desk with a carafe of coffee and talk about his books. It was impossible to outline his talks as he took us on a jagged journey through his life and the fascinating people he met along the way.

Dr. Drucker taught us through the Harvard case study method. We were assigned a long text detailing a complex business problem. Over weeks of classes, we would dissect the issues from every angle. As business leaders, our tendency was to try to solve the case and resolve the problem.

And that’s when Dr. Drucker would go nuts.

It’s not about the right answers

This class was filled with experienced leaders eager to display their intelligence and insight by “solving” the case study.

Nothing irked Dr. Drucker more.

“The people in this case study have been working in their business for 30 years or more,” he would say. “What makes you so arrogant to think that you can solve the problem when they can’t? Your job is not to have the right answers. Your jobs is to have the right questions.”

This might be the most important advice of my professional life and informed how I approach all my business consulting assignments. I approach business problems very humbly because I am never the expert in the room. Why would I have the right answers?  However, I can guide people to the right questions — the real key to a resolution.

I’ve found that most leaders have the knowledge and insight to solve their problems if they know where to find an answer.

Relevance of the right questions

The marketing world is far too complex to be an expert in everything. I’m not sure you can be an expert in anything! However, you must be immersed enough in the day’s issues to ask the right questions. You have to have a sense of what is possible.

I think curiosity is the most important soft skill for marketers today. For me, asking the right questions is not just a prerequisite to effective consulting. It helps me become a better author, speaker, and teacher.

Asking the right questions is also the true heart of all great content creation. If you put the work into finding the right questions, great content will surely follow.

Jay Acunzo and I just dropped a fun podcast episode demonstrating the opportunity to ask the right questions. We challenged each other to pose questions that the other person had never been asked before. And it worked! I invite you to have some fun with us and enter a world of challenging questions.

All you have to do is click here >

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 305

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I’ve had the honor of working with some mega brands on their community strategies. There’s a growing recognition that this is where the real conversations, collaborations, and insights are taking place (and it’s out of reach of social listening platforms). But how does a brand get involved in consumer communities?

Many brands — big and small — have built their own consumer communities. Look to Nike, IKEA, and Lego as best examples. Sephora operates 2,700 brick-and-mortar stores, yet 80% of its revenue derives from its online community of 6 million fans. That’s not just a community – that’s an economic force of nature.

Here’s the wake-up call: Your customers are already having conversations about your brand. On Reddit. In Discord channels. Through Slack communities. The only question is: Are you part of that conversation or the awkward outsider looking in through the window?

Even if you don’t build your own community, it makes sense to have some presence in hotbeds of consumer insight. Let’s talk about how to do that today.

Community versus audience

Let’s start with an important point. An audience is not a community.

I wrote the bestselling book about why brand communities are the future of marketing (Belonging to the Brand), and one of the most important ideas is understanding the difference between an audience and a community. For example, I hear many people describe their “blog community” or “Instagram community,” but those are not communities. Those are audiences. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not a community.

An audience is one-way. If I blog, I have an audience. If I go away, I don’t. But a collective of people sustains a community and this has important implications for brand marketing.

Here are the three differences between an audience and a community:

COMMUNION

In a community, there is communion — people know each other, like a neighborhood. Members of an audience don’t know each other. This is a critical difference because the goodwill and friendship that occurs in a community spill over into the love for the sponsoring brand. Customer communities represent the highest level of emotional brand connection. If customers are emotionally invested in a community, they literally belong to the brand.

PURPOSE

Something must drive a customer to your community — a unifying purpose. What are your customers yearning to do? Learn something? Change the world? Create, connect, or collaborate? The best communities occur when the brand and the customers share a common purpose.  A community thrives when a company realizes that it can have a bigger impact when the customers come along to help.

A well-known example is Patagonia. What is its purpose? Responsible outdoor recreation. Patagonia’s customers are also devoted to this purpose, creating an ideal opportunity for community.

CONTROL

A company controls its mission, a marketing plan, an ad campaign. But community members drive the direction of the community, at least to some extent. This might sound scary, but wouldn’t it be amazing to have your customers help drive your future based on their wants, hopes and dreams? Access to this first party information is golden for any brand.

The biggest hurdles

Why isn’t every brand participating in brand communities? I consistently hear these obstacles:

Scale — Brands are accustomed to an advertising strategy that can generate millions of impressions. Even a community with 50,000 members doesn’t meet their expectations for vast reach.

Personal involvement — How does a “brand” show up in a community? It doesn’t. A “person” shows up in a community. Real people have to create real connections and relationships. This is a new dimension of customer intimacy that seems intimidating for marketers who are comfortable in cubicle land. There’s no effective way to automate interactions in a community. Somebody has to show up.

Outsourcing — Even when companies buy into a community strategy, they struggle to figure out how to delegate this to an ad agency partner. After all, throughout marketing history, the ad agency usually does the heavy lifting. How does an agency represent the brand in a customer community? It might be possible, but I think that would be unusual. I’m not sure a brand should out-source community relationships.

Measurement –Brands need to understand that these communities aren’t just marketing channels – they’re genuine spaces where people share experiences, advice, and support. If you come into a community trying to reach quarterly sales objectives, you’ll fail in a spectacular way.

For these reasons, brand communities could be a more likely strategy for small- and medium-sized companies with a culture geared to patient, human participation in customer communities.

Connecting to a community

So here’s the million-dollar question: How do brands respectfully enter these spaces?

I’ve reached out to community leaders and asked them, “How could a brand add value to your community?” Several themes emerged:

• Show that you really understand us, and not just selling stuff. Spend time observing the community’s conversations, pain points, and values before jumping in.
• Show us relevant new products and how to use them. Pay attention to our pain points.
• Provide educational content. Teach us something new.
• Actively participate in community conversations. Be transparent about who you are.
• Offer exclusive access to executives, designers, marketers, and others who can help us grow.
• Every community needs content. Is there content that can spark conversations in our community?
• Offer to help organize community events or challenges.
• Amplify community members’ voices and expertise, not just your own
• Help us have fun. Can you sponsor contests, quizzes, and games?

In addition to direct involvement, here are three ideas for indirect involvement that might fit the culture of larger brands:

1. Many community founders have a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel. Sponsoring their content can be an indirect way to access their communities.
2. Most large communities have offline events. Could the brand sponsor those activities to gain access to the community?
3. Could you create an event adjacent to a community? For example, fast-food restaurant Jack In The Box hosted an online late-night party on Discord during Comicon with live music, contests, and food giveaways.

The future

We all live in a world longing to belong. We don’t just want community. We need community to function as healthy humans. A brand community might be the only marketing tactic customers actually embrace.

I’m often asked if any brand can have a community and I don’t know the answer, but I take a clue from Yeti. This is a juggernaut of a brand that began with an ice cooler. They didn’t create this success with advertising. They relied almost entirely on community. In fact, Yeti hosts 12 different communities ranging from skiers to rodeo fans. If a cooler can create a cultural movement, what’s your excuse?

Connecting through communities isn’t just brand marketing; it’s brand anthropology. Your social listening platforms are just scratching the surface. The real gold — the authentic discussions, the brutal honesty, the passionate advocacy — that’s happening in communities you can’t track with a dashboard.

We need to connect to the world in new ways to keep our brands relevant. That means patiently learning about our consumer communities and showing up in a meaningful way.

Need a keynote speaker about brand communities? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post How should brands connect to consumer communities? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

On vacation in Italy, I visited a lovely wine shop in Florence. So of course, I wanted to talk to the owner about marketing (can’t help myself). The proprietor had a lovely place filled with antiques and art — such an interesting, visual environment! And yet, she wasn’t on Instagram. In fact, she didn’t use social media at all, a personal decision that certainly goes against the grain.

“Everyone tells me I should be posting,” she said. “But I don’t feel comfortable with it and would rather spend my time talking with customers.”

She spread her arms to indicate this sacred space where she sits in her shop, sipping wine with customers. “This is what I love about my business.”

Obviously, this anti-social media strategy has worked well. Her business has been growing for 18 years, built on her reputation of quality products and personal attention.

Sometimes, you can’t just listen to the gurus. Marketing is often a personal decision.

And I’d like you to consider this alternative thinking as a possible competitive advantage …

Marketing lemmings

The biggest problem with marketing, and especially social media marketing, is that “best practices” are so well known and so easily absorbed. Once a new competitive trick is discovered on a social platform, it spreads like wildfire and becomes part of everyone’s normal practice.

For example, the “shocked look” video thumbnail pioneered by Mr Beast:

Leads to this:

I’m not judging whether this is good or bad. It probably works on some level. But it all looks the SAME.

My point is that by going your own way, following your muse, and ignoring conventional wisdom, you can evolve into your own competitive advantage simply because when it’s YOU, it’s different.

Go your own way

I was an early adopter of social media marketing. In 2006, as part of my corporate marketing duties, I led an early social media team and started my own blog a few years later.

And I was a big rule-follower. I desperately tried to fit in and follow all the best practices of the day. I dutifully created my strategic, SEO-optimized content for my “ideal customer personas.” And two things happened.

First, nothing happened. Nobody was reading or commenting on my content.

Second, I became bored. What was I doing? Creating keyword-infused content for a made-up persona? Blah.

So I stopped.  And I started telling my own story, following my curiosity, expressing opinions (even when they went against the grain), and breaking the shackles of Google-driven content.

And something amazing happened.

When I went my own way, instead of finding my ideal audience, my ideal audience found me. And they were all over the world. When I decided to be a real person, real people responded back, and it changed my career.

There is no way this would have happened if I had stayed in the social media trough of best practices.

It was a powerful lesson, and since then, I’ve broken rules all along the way as I’ve written my books, created The Uprising, and established a speaking career. That personal decision to have your own little rebel yell doesn’t mean you’re reckless or offensive. But it requires courage to show up differently when boring is the path of least resistance.

The personal decision and marketing

Are you in a marketing trough? Are you so focused on what other people are doing that you’re overlooking your unique value and inherent creativity?

More importantly, are you happy and excited about your work, or are you becoming bored with all these rules, as I was?

Stop trying to game the system and start being unapologetically you. Because in the end, people don’t connect with keywords or personas. They connect with stories, passion, and real human beings who have something genuine to say.

There is a place for best practices, but don’t overlook the power of going your own way, especially when most marketing is so dull. There is tremendous pressure to do what everybody else is doing. It might seem scary not to follow the crowd. But that might be your most powerful and meaningful differentiator.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy of Austrian National Library and Unsplash.com

The post Sometimes, marketing comes down to a personal decision appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

My theory is that if you created a word cloud of the most popular subjects on LinkedIn, somewhere between “let me help you skyrocket your sales” and “AI will destroy us all” is imposter syndrome. It seems to be everywhere.

One of the people I follow declared that she is writing a book about imposter syndrome and then decided that she couldn’t do it because of imposter syndrome. It seems to be a ubiquitous subject these days.

On a personal level, I don’t suffer from it much. I figure if I am invited someplace, I belong there. Either the people who believe in me are stupid, or I should be there. And I don’t think people are stupid. I have not met too many people who are immune from imposter syndrome. Why me? I’m not sure but I received a lot of positive reinforcement early in my career that might have helped.

But it’s still a frustration in my business coaching practice. For people I help, imposter syndrome seems common. I can see how worthy and talented they are, and maybe I can get them to believe it for a week, but then they devolve and feel the insecurity a week later.

In the latest episode of The Marketing Companion, Amanda Russell and I talk about different sides of this issue, and she brings up an important idea. In her days as an elite athlete, she underwent “brain training” to help develop the mental toughness to overcome injuries and setbacks. Why wouldn’t we use these techniques in the business setting?

It’s an interesting conversation you won’t want to miss! Just click here to listen in >

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion episode 293

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Early in my career, I learned a powerful lesson on how to battle boredom that changed my professional life forever. I hope this story will inspire you too.

How to battle boring

I began my career in corporate communications and had the amazing opportunity to have my own little company magazine. I did everything – writing, editing, design, and photography.

This dates me (painfully), but at this time in my career, a photographer still had to worry about f-stops and film speed. Digital wasn’t a thing—not even close. So, I needed to learn the craft.

I signed up for a weekend class with a master photographer who specialized in the type of corporate photography that was part of my job. He assembled a class of ten students in adjoining suites in a Dallas hotel, and this is where I learned how to battle boring forever.

The first day of class covered the basics of composition and lighting. The second day pushed us to put these lessons into action. The class was divided into two and we were challenged to create photographs that would make the other team laugh, ask questions, or feel curious.

Using Polaroid cameras to create our art on the spot, we were instructed to only use what we could find in the hotel rooms for props. With no budget or outside resources, we depended on the team’s collective imagination to create something out of nothing.

The teacher pushed us. “Never be average or predictable,” he said. “Use the team to create something I’ve never seen before.” We moved, changed, twisted, challenged, and pushed our meager resources until we had singularly unique and bold photographs.

The team trials became progressively more difficult, and near the end of the last day, the teacher issued a final assignment – create a photo that would shock the other team. Until then, creating a funny or puzzling photo had been fun and relatively easy. But shocking? Now we really had to reach … and remember we were stuck in that boring hotel room.

The Shock Doctrine

We did our best and worked to create a photo that we thought was shocking. But then he looked at both teams, shook his head, and said, “You’re not getting it. I mean, you need to create something really shocking. Go back to your rooms and create a photo that will knock our socks off. You have 20 minutes.”

By this point we were working well as a team and we were determined to produce something audacious. We emptied our pockets and backpacks. The women on our team emptied their purses on the floor. Was there anything we could work with?

One of the women had black mascara and started rubbing it on the back of her hand like shoe polish. Then the other woman took it and started rubbing it on her face until it was black as night.

Somebody else had a tiny flashlight. Another person had a mirror that we held up to her nose. We pulled up her blonde hair. At the end of 15 minutes, this was our photo:

Yes. We blew their socks off.

Decades later, I still see this photo as a great inspiration. If we could create this ghoulish, one-eyed monster in a dark Hilton hotel bathroom, it made me believe that I could make anything more remarkable. I could battle boring and win. I would never create dull content again.

I didn’t need money to push the limits, and I didn’t need a team of experts. I just had to be desperately dissatisfied with mediocrity.

Money is the bane of creativity

Later in my career, I worked at a plant location that was swimming in money. It was the most profitable plant in the system, and everyone just threw money at every problem. There was so much waste. And so much dull!

I realized that the most creative teams I worked with had the fewest resources. Money was the bane of creativity. It’s possible to battle boring, even with a small budget.

I’ve never met a fellow marketer who told me, “We have too much money in our budget.” No matter where you are in your career, you’ll face resource constraints. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be audacious. In fact, as long as you have access to a tube of mascara, you’ll probably be OK.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post How to battle boring … even without a budget appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

There is a quote in my new book that is gripping and profound, but I’m not sure I fully understood it until this week. This quote is from Boss Mom CEO Dana Malstaff: “It’s easier to start a movement than build a business.”

Dana is a visionary business leader, and when she speaks, I listen.

But what does this quote really mean? What does a movement have to do with business and customers? It seemed a little woo-woo to me. Are you going to walk into your supervisor’s office and tell her that you’re starting a movement this week?

As I was helping a client with an exhausting sales problem, the truth finally sunk in. I understood how a “movement” can connect to business success, and I wanted to pass this insight along to you, too. Here’s what happened …

The spark of an idea

I love doing my one-hour coaching calls. Anybody, anywhere can sign up, and I get to meet the most fascinating people from all over the world!

A recent call was with an artist who specializes in a practice of music therapy. He teaches people how to play musical instruments in a way that helps them calm down and heal — certainly something needed in the world today. I liked his idea, but he struggled to keep his business going.

He had some limited success using Facebook ads to drive sales of his classes, and he had read every book and blog post he could find on sales funnels and lead generation.

But after many years of endless ad cycles and experiments, he barely made ends meet and was exhausted. He had read my book Belonging to the Brand about the link between business and community and wondered if community-based marketing could be his answer.

As we talked about a possible business strategy, the meaning of Dana’s quote finally lit up for me.

Start a movement or build a treadmill?

I think the missing link between sales funnels and community is the emotional bond.

A lead magnet can attract clicks and maybe people who like free stuff, but it’s a treadmill that never ends. Keep advertising, keep promoting, and keep them clicking. Even with the help of automation, this focus on filling a pipeline with strangers can wear you down, and my friend was feeling it!

But what if you had a community where people feel something as well as buy something? They’re part of a community because they love you and believe in your mission. That is how you start a movement: enabling people to achieve something, to build something, to change something. And Dana’s right. That’s also a sustainable business strategy with a lot less wear and tear.

Building momentum for a community requires time and patience. And my friend did not have time or patience. Every time I urged him to create content with consistency and build an audience that leads to community, he reverted to his addiction to sales funnels. It’s fast. It can create leads tomorrow. He was tethered to the treadmill and was afraid to jump off.

But as we talked through his alternatives, he began to see that he had to change or the sales funnel exhaustion would never be over.

Start a movement, start a business

I don’t think a community is necessarily the right strategy for every person or business, but it was for this man. He truly could change lives, and the people in his circle loved him and wanted to follow him. But he couldn’t see this as the start of a movement. He saw his followers as sales leads.

Dana Malstaff

I explained to him that if he had a community of hundreds, or even thousands, of people who believed in him, the treadmill could be over. His community would sign up for his classes, workshops, and events because they believed in the movement — music for healing, music for peace.

Eventually, their bond would not just be to him. It would be to each other as friendships and collaborations bloomed. They would belong to the brand. I’m happy to report he is exploring this new path.

Dana’s Boss Mom community now has 80,000 members, generating about a million a year in revenue. She has no sales team, no sales funnel, no ad budget, no lead magnet. She created a self-sustaining community, a movement of people who want to grow as mothers and entrepreneurs.

When I interviewed her for my book, I kept asking her for the monetization strategy and the measures of ROI. Over and over again she insisted that her only focus was the movement — creating successful mom entrepreneurs. If you have a movement, the business will take care of itself.

That seems so much more fulfilling than the sales funnel, right? Organic growth and customer advocacy instead of SEO and ad cycles. The movement nurtures and heals. The movement drives the business. The movement IS the business.

This is why I made the bold claim in my book that community is the last great marketing strategy. Content, ads, and SEO will always have a place, but these ideas are becoming dramatically less important in a streaming, AI-driven world.

But we have always needed community, and we always will.  Have you thought about enrolling people in your movement instead of moving them through your sales funnel?

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post Is it easier to build a business or start a movement? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Many of you have noticed a dramatic difference in how my blog posts are being delivered to you. In fact, some people have asked me … “where’s your blog?” Today, I will expose a flaw in my business and why a new focus on subscribers instead of web traffic resulted in the new blog delivery system you’re seeing today.

This is my story (and maybe it’s your story too?).

The complacent strategist

I had become lazy.

Prior to the pandemic, business was coming so easily to me that I really didn’t need to focus on the nuts and bolts of my digital strategy. As my personal brand rose, opportunities poured in. It seemed like I didn’t need to worry about marketing.

I recognize the irony. I’m on a lot of “best of” lists as a digital marketing thought leader, and here I am, ignoring my digital marketing. What an idiot.

But the post-pandemic world is an era of unintended consequences. The dynamics of my customer base changed, and I needed to change with them, fast!

The right measure drives the business

In his famous book “Good to Great,” Jim Collins emphasizes the importance of choosing the single right measure for a business. It drives behavior up and down the value chain, so it is a big deal!

Like nearly every other digital marketer on the planet, I was obsessed with web traffic. And it drove me NUTS!

You have to understand that I come from a manufacturing background. When there is variability in a manufacturing process, we wanted to know WHY. We wanted to hunt down the root cause and improve it.

But the internet world is aggravating and often defies statistical logic. For years, there would be wild swings in my web traffic, and each time I asked my web guru why, there would be a shoulder shrug and a puzzled look. It could be anything. A little change to the Google algorithm. Unexpected traffic from links. The inevitable decline in traffic to popular older posts (and I have a lot of them!).

I even hired experts to help me sort through the data. The work involved in tracking down attribution exceeded any benefit. Over time, I just gave up on the idea of assigning meaning to web traffic.

It seemed like I had a rudderless ship.

I felt nearly helpless trying to understand a key metric for my business. Truth is, nobody understands the internet. I needed to reflect on what Jim Collins said and come up with a new measure, the right measure.

Focus on subscribers

When business slows down each holiday season, I use the downtime to reflect on what is working and not working in my business. Last year, realizing that I had the wrong metric was only the beginning.

1. Subscriptions to my blog and podcast were stagnant. Part of this is due to what I call the “physics” of subscriptions. The larger your subscriber base, the harder it is to grow. You can read a detailed analysis about this: surprising math behind a growing social media community
2. My entire website was sub-optimized for subscriptions.
3. I had numerous Excel spreadsheets of various customer groups. Too much manual labor!
4. By focusing on traffic instead of subscribers, I stupidly ignored the fact that subscribers will be more likely to hire me or buy my books and online classes one day.
5. My email delivery system was badly outdated and poorly managed.

I felt ashamed by how I had overlooked so many digital marketing basics. But the good news was, I had an obvious focus for the coming year!

The new plan to focus on subscribers

My first realization was that I had to abandon my attention to web traffic. I know that sounds weird, but it is absolutely not the right measure for my business, and all it caused was stress. I have not looked at web traffic trends to my site in at least six months.

My key business metric had to focus on subscribers. Subscribers are future customers.

My immediate need was to turn the ship around and start attracting new subscribers. Here was my plan:

1. Invest in a comprehensive email management program. I was able to do this through the guidance of email genius Robbie Fitzwater and his company MKTG Rhythm.
2. Focus on subscribers and their needs in my content plan. I know … that sounds so obvious. But recently, my writing tended to follow my whims instead of reader needs. An example of this change was a comprehensive post I did about how to design an AI marketing strategy. This was a lot of work and not my favorite topic, but it was a post that needed to be written right now. So I’m doubling down on more relevant and timely content for you.
3. I went through my website looking for opportunities to encourage subscriptions, including an unobtrusive pop-up ad, which I had previously resisted.

Those are the main pillars, and I am already seeing encouraging results. Last year, nearly every month registered some small net decline in subscribers. This year has had a positive gain every month.

Yes, this means something for you!

This is a long way to explain why the blog posts being delivered to you look different. The new format is a result of my strategy, and in particular, the new email system.

So, you can expect even better content in a fresh new format. I’m just beginning to turn the ship around and there will undoubtedly be more ideas and innovations coming to you soon!

If you would like to help me envision a better future for this blog, please fill out this five-minute survey!

I never take you for granted. Thank you for spending time with me and my content! I hope you enjoy the new format coming to your inbox.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

The post Why a Focus on Subscribers, Not Web Traffic, Transformed My Strategy appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

What’s the difference between your brand story versus your business narrative? Turns out, everything. And it has vast implications for your marketing strategy, personal brand, and even your effectiveness as a leader.

Lucky for us, my friend Keith Jennings has been studying the art of the business narrative for many years and provides his wisdom on the latest episode of The Marketing Companion podcast.

The “story” is important … but it’s about the past. Your business narrative is about where you’re heading and where you want people to go with you.

Much of our careers as marketers depend on an ability to get people to try, buy or donate to things that might seem unnecessary or inconvenient. Selling powerful ideas is hard work that demands head and heart.

Whether you’re in marketing, sales, fundraising, recruitment, volunteerism, leadership, or even a parent, your success depends on your ability to get others to take action, whether that’s trying, buying, changing, donating, or doing something new.

The problem is that it is becoming almost impossible to connect to people in the moment when there are so many fun distractions in this digital world — especially when you’re trying to tell them or sell them.

But there is a way to overcome this if you know the role of business narrative.

Me-We-They-You-Us

In the podcast episode, Keith and I discuss several models that can be used to frame your personal narrative. One of the ideas is framing your narrative in a specific format that is attributed to Andy Stanley, the founder and senior pastor of North Point Ministries in Atlanta.

In a business context, we can frame our business narratives using Me-We-They-You-Us:

1. Me: Let me tell you about a problem I’ve had
2. We: I’ll bet you’ve experienced this problem too
3. They: Here’s what authorities on this topic have to say
4. You: Here are some steps you can take to address the problem
5. Us: Imagine how much better things would be if we all addressed this problem

Here’s an example of how that might work. Let’s say I wanted to spread a message about the positive benefits of servant leadership. In this framework, it might look like this:

1. Me: I want to be successful in my work. But I want that success to mean something and matter to others.
2. We: I’ll bet you wrestle with the same tension.
3. They: The latest research reveals that serving others in and beyond your job impacts your success, happiness, and sense of purpose.
4. You: Here are some steps you can take today to start serving others.
5. Us: Imagine if every associate in our company put others first and actively contributed to the well-being of others.

That’s a pretty powerful message!

The business narrative and you

This little tool is just the tip of the iceberg in this show. We also cover:

• How the business narrative framework can be adapted to the personal brand
• The difference between story frameworks in Western and Eastern culture
• How this connects to inclusive marketing
• The difference between “knowing” and “knowing of” as a method of influence

This conversation was so vast that I decided to keep the mic running AFTER the show was over. That’s why this episode is nearly an hour compared to the normal 30 minutes of our show.

It’s one of my favorite episodes ever, and I guarantee that you will be taking notes on this one. Just click here to join in:

Click to Listen to Episode 277

Resources mentioned in this show:

Mark’s Personal Branding Master Class

Where today’s hurt meets tomorrow’s hope (narrative vs story)

The real reason people are quitting their jobs and what it means to marketing

Here is a YouTube video of a young man using Marshall Ganz’s public narrative format to activate people to a cause.

Here is a downloadable PDF from Ganz on public narrative.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Today’s image courtesy MidJourney

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My friend Tim Peter posed an interesting and timely question on his Think Out Loud podcast — Should a student still pursue a career in marketing? Should anyone? It got me thinking.

The answer to this question is certainly not as reliable or intuitive as it was a few years ago. Specifically, it has been projected that AI will nip at the heels of many white-collar skillsets and even eliminate the jobs of some entry-level and mid-career marketing professionals. A big part of marketing is detecting patterns and responding with answers that are patterns and AI does patterns well.

Would I still advise a young person to pursue a career in marketing?

I’ll address that today, but to alleviate your suspense, the answer is, “MAYBE.”

Let’s get into it.

The threat of AI and marketing careers

To understand my view of AI and its existential threat to marketing careers, let me explain how I dealt with a previous threat — the internet and content marketing.

Before the web, marketers held secrets, and that’s how we often made money. In fact, that’s how almost every business made money — holding information tightly and getting people to pay for our expertise and secrets.

Can you imagine how disruptive it was when everybody was suddenly publishing everything they knew on the web? As I described in my book Marketing Rebellion, this was the second of three existential threats to marketers. There simply were no secrets any more. If you tried to keep your best practices a secret, there was somebody else down the street willing to spill the beans for free.

How was I going to make money as a marketing consultant when I literally gave away all my best ideas through my books, blog, and podcast?

Well, I gave away all my best ideas … and it worked. In fact, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. The more information I gave away, the more people wanted to work with me.

Let’s connect that to what’s happening now. Within the next few months, there will be another existential threat to my career: A ChatBot that will BE ME. I’ll upload all my writing, speeches, and books into a large language model and people will be able to converse with a MarkBot to get their marketing questions answered.

Why would somebody hire me as a consultant if they can get the next best thing for free through the MarkBot? I’ll have to figure that out, and I will. We have to embrace the technology and make it work for us.

So if you’re pursuing a career in marketing, you can’t go into it scared. If a marketing career is your dream, you have to embrace all the change and incorporate that change into your work life.

For the love of marketing

Let’s go back to that last sentence. There’s an important word there linked to marketing career success: “dream.”

I’ve been a guest lecturer before hundreds of university marketing students. And I’ve only encountered a few students who have truly impressed me … The ones who are frantically taking notes. The ones who will stay long after class to ask questions. The ones who stay in touch with me on LinkedIn or become part of my community because they want to keep learning.

I guarantee that these students will have great marketing careers because they are following a dream. Most students only have a vague idea of what marketing is about. Their college major is a placeholder while they figure their lives out. But the ones with the marketing dream … they’ll be fine no matter what comes down the line.

There will always be marketing jobs and we’ll need the best people to fill them. If you’re a student with a dream and a marketing fire burning in your belly, you have nothing to worry about. You’ll have a great career.

Embracing chaos

There is no business profession that changes as much as marketing. If you want a calm life and a linear career path, forget about marketing. To excel in this world, you have to be a change junkie.

I can already tell who will be out of a job among my current marketing friends — those who feel overwhelmed and intimidated by the rate of change.

And the ones who are going to transcend the threat? They’re saying, Bring. It. On.

Embrace the chaos. Make it work for you!

A massive part of marketing going forward will be understanding and integrating what is possible with AI and other technologies. If that excites you, this is the career for you. You’re needed more than ever!

Would I pursue a career in marketing?

What a career I’ve had!

The early days of my marketing career touched on the very end of the “Mad Men” days of private clubs and three martini lunches (for real). I eventually became an internet pioneer at my company, taught the world’s first college credit course in social media marketing, and wrote many books that helped guide marketers into the future.

And I’m just starting. It’s so much fun!

Marketing is the all-time best career choice in the business world. We’re on the front lines of commerce, imagining products, creating customers, changing the world.

We are the creators. We’re innovators. We’re beacons for positive change.

We’re sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and sometimes even therapists for our clients! But through it all, we solve problems, make things grow, move, and change the world for the better.

At the end of the podcast episode that prompted this essay, Tim had this advice for aspiring marketers: “Don’t make plans, have goals.”

I agree. In marketing, there is no such thing as a five-year career plan. But you can have a career goal and adjust to whatever comes your way to meet that goal.

Would I recommend that a young person pursue a career in marketing? As my spoiler alert indicated, the answer is, “maybe.”

If you’re just checking a box when you declare your major and you’re not ready to commit to a career of, well … chaos … then you’re going to fall out. But if you want to command that chaos to change the world, let’s go.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Illustration: This is a photo of me with Jasmine Branca, who was then a student at Bournemouth University.

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