Why marketing gets easier when you stop trying to persuade your customer (and what to do instead) …

Read more thoughts on the art of communicating week-daily at https://michaelgerharz.com/blog

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New Book Out in October

My new book “The PATH to Strategic Impact” is coming out in October. It’s about how to make your big ideas happen and turn ambition into true progress, with case studies from some of the world’s most successful organizations. Learn more at https://michaelgerharz.com/the-path

New book

Traditionally, marketing is about getting the audience to do something.

Let's say, buy your product, vote for your cause or donate for your organization.

Marketers use all sorts of subtle techniques to gently and sometimes not

so gently push or pull their audience in the direction they want them to go.

If the customer doesn't buy, well, we've gotta try harder and for example,

incentivize the purchase, decorate the packaging a little better, pay

a celebrity to endorse the product.

Lighting the path is different.

It trusts the audience with the decision to follow your advice, because it turns

out that people above the age of one prefer not to be pushed or pulled.

They prefer to walk on their own.

And they're so much more loyal when they do.

This can only work when you start with empathy.

When you deeply care for what matters to your customers, then

you're going to build products that truly change things for the better.

You're going to understand their struggles.

And know what they strive for.

And you are going to speak their language.

Guess what happens when you solve someone's struggle and explain

it to them in their own language.

They're going to resonate.

No need to push or pull.

Don't persuade harder, resonate stronger!