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In this episode...

Godly Marketing in an UnGodly World

https://faithfulontheclock.captivate.fm/episode/godly-marketing-in-an-ungodly-world

Intro teaser paragraph:

Marketing is essential for personal or company brands. Faithful on the Clock Episode 114 guides you through doing it in a Godly way.

Timestamps:

[00:05] - Intro

[00:44] - The need for good marketing

[01:16] - Don’t chase trends, as those are often world-focused rather than God-focused. You’ll stand out by NOT getting on the bandwagon.

[03:05] - Be authentic. This means CLAIMING the identity you already have, not crafting one.

[05:12] - Cling to truth. Be mindful of what’s actually in your claims, images, etc. Spin has consequences. 

[08:15] - Serve others and God, not yourself. Don’t use tactics that simply appeal to ego, greed, etc.

[11:03] - Summary

[11:27] - Prayer

[12:18] - Outro/What’s coming up next

Key takeaways:

• Marketing is essential for both personal and company brands.
• Tip #1 — Don’t chase trends. Trends often reflect what is popular in the world, not what is right according to God.
• Tip #2 — Lean into your authenticity. Instead of copying others or trying to create an identity according to trends, claim the identity you already have and don’t muddy your calling by expanding into too many areas.
• Tip #3 — Stay truthful. Consider whether you are exaggerating, misleading, spinning, overpromising, omitting, etc.
• Tip #4 — Ask yourself who you are truly serving; keep others and God as the priority.

CTAs:

• Review your current marketing practices. Identify which of them adhere to the character of God and which ones do not.

What’s coming up next:

Entrepreneurs and innovators are pushing limits — and ethics in the process. Episode 115 of Faithful on the Clock looks at some of the most controversial ventures and practices in the Christian context.

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Support Faithful on the Clock

Well, hello, listeners. Thanks for coming back or joining me if it’s your first time here. I’m your host, Wanda Thibodeaux, and you’re listening to Faithful on the Clock, the podcast where the squirrels bury all the nuts to get your faith and work aligned. No matter what company you might be in or type of career you might have, marketing is essential to getting whatever you’re selling out there. But most of traditional marketing doesn’t really fit into a Christian way of working. So, today, I’m offering tips on how to approach marketing in a way that keeps God at the front of everything you are doing. Stay with me, now.

As any professional is gonna tell you, you can have the best product or service in the world, but if you don’t market it well, it’s not gonna sell. You’re gonna be done before you even start. But even if you’re not an entrepreneur or CEO, we are in this age where we’ve kind of accepted that you have to market yourself and have a full brand of your own to advance your career. So, I want to make it clear right out of the gate that this message today is gonna apply to everybody, OK? It’s not just for the people out there in charge of company campaigns.

[1:16]

But the first tip I want to offer you, it’s probably gonna be the one that’s gonna upend things the most for you in terms of tools and processes. But the advice is, don’t chase trends. And that, I think, is the exact opposite of what most marketers are told. Most marketers are told to focus on trends and then use them to decide what to produce, how to design specific campaigns, or who to market to. But the problem for Christians in this is that so many of the trends that are out there directly contradict what God tells us to do. It’s that old saying, you know, that just because something is popular doesn’t make it right. So, for example, you look at any female pop artist right now, and you’re gonna see them in really skimpy outfits. Like, they have no pants, OK? Everything is about sex appeal and aesthetic. So, the way I see it, your toughest job is not to give people the trends, which is what people want. Your toughest job as a marketer is to give people what they need, and to make those things seem appealing. And sometimes, what people actually need is gonna directly go against what everyone else is doing or selling. But here’s the genius, OK? If you do not chase the trend, if you don’t hop on the bandwagons, then you set yourself up to serve your market in a longer term way. And you get to forge your own path as you do that. You’re gonna stand out specifically because you don’t do what everyone else does or look like them. And you’re not gonna get distracted by every new thing that comes along. You can just focus really hard on your mission and be consistent. And when you’re consistent for people, they tend to trust you, and ultimately trust means sales and loyalty.

But this idea of not chasing trends connects really closely to the next tip, which is, lean really hard into your authenticity. I think we hear that a lot in business these days, that you should be authentic. But in the context of marketing and branding, it really means that you’re really committed to not copying others. It means you’re not trying so hard to paint an image you think the public is gonna like based on whatever the trends of the day might happen to be. You’re not trying to craft your identity. What you’re trying to do instead is claim the identity you already have. It’s about fully embracing who you are, what you want to do, where you’re currently at, all of those kinds of things. And it’s about being open with people about how you operate and having honesty about what you can and cannot offer. And at every step of the journey, you cling to your core values, and you, even as you grow, you don’t start expanding into a bunch of other things. You know, companies like Amazon, that’s what they typically do. The bigger they get, the more they get diffused with more and more different types of offers. And in a way, that makes sense, because having different offers can diffuse risk. You don't have everything in one basket. But all I’m getting at is that you do not need to be everywhere or do everything. You know, if you’re a communications company, you can do software, you can make phones, you can offer Internet, all those things, but you don’t have to open a restaurant chain. You don’t have to get into a bunch of different markets. Now, I wanna be clear, this doesn’t mean you can’t seek new opportunities and make use of new talent and resources. I’m just saying that there’s a point where your original goal gets lost. And I just want you to keep clarity on what your objective is. Don’t get lured in by what you could do. Just keep asking yourself what God needs you to do. You know, don’t muddy the calling so much that nobody can tell what it is. Just sell yourself where you are without comparing yourself.

Now, if you are gonna be authentic, that connects to the third pillar I’m gonna offer for your marketing, which is truth. This one is really gnarly because there are so many ways where you can be false with people. So, a really good example here is urgency statements. Marketers use urgency statements all the time. They’ll say things like, “Don’t wait! Limited time only!” or “Last chance! Act now!” And all of that really, when you think about it, is based on fear. You’re triggering a fear in people that they’re gonna miss out. That by itself is not all that great. But ask yourself, you know, “Are these kinds of statements genuine, or am I just using them to manipulate people to do what I want?” Or another good example might be where your ad says people can get something for free, and that gets people to click or come into your store, but you’ve conveniently left out the fact that if they want that free item, now they have to sign up for something or make a purchase. Or even something like your marketing photos. Are you touching those up so things look better than they are? Are you using little tricks to give the impression of an experience people won’t really have? You know, I don’t know if you know this, but it’s common practice for people to use some glue in pizza commercials to get that really gooey cheesy look. You can find videos online of all these tricks that marketers use and how it looks on camera. So, how honest are the tactics you’re using? Can you deliver exactly what you said you would, or are you going to disappoint people? Are you exaggerating or overstating your offer in any way? And you know, if you read Genesis 12, when Abram went into Egypt with Sarai, he told the Pharaoh she was his sister. And that technically wasn’t a lie, because they had the same father but different mothers. And his reason for spinning the story the way he did wasn’t entirely malicious, OK? He was trying to keep himself safe. But his lack of honesty caused trouble for Pharaoh, and Abram was just lucky that the Pharaoh showed a little mercy and let Sarai come back to her husband. So, just be careful about the spin you put on things and understand that your presentation is going to have consequences. Ask yourself what might happen if the customer knew everything you know. And I just encourage you to find as many ways as you can to show things as they really are, because if you do that, you know, maybe you’re not the best offer in the market, but you’re always able to give people exactly what they were expecting from you, right? You’re not gonna ever disappoint them or have them get upset because you misled them in some way. And one last point here about truth in marketing is, go ahead and admit when you are not the expert and what it’s gonna really take to put everything together. If you need to hire somebody to do your video, you do that. If you’ve gotta spend more than you initially thought, you’re upfront about it with people and you explain the reason you underestimated the cost. At every single step, everything stays centered in humility and transparency.

Now, humility brings me to the idea of service. And so the fourth marketing tip is, always ask yourself who you’re really serving. And there are two parts to this. Because on the one hand, it’s easy to let your own ego drive. You know, you’re thinking about what you want to get from people and what you deserve. And all of your marketing is centered around where you want to go or focuses on how awesome you are as a professional or company. It’s not focused on the audience at all. And you might say you’re meeting people’s needs, but what you’re really doing is just manipulating them to line your accounts or get whatever else you think will make you happy and respected. So, it’s really self-serving. Or maybe you’re so busy thinking about your business standards and trusting your own expertise that you don’t even see that you’re missing the mark. So, for example, online, it’s common to use pop-ups when people go to a website. But most people, honestly, they hate those things. So, you think you’re giving them information or an opportunity, and really, you’re interrupting the task they were doing. Another big issue I see all the time is that companies will push or tempt people to spend even when they can’t afford it. That’s absolutely in your company’s interest rather than theirs. It doesn’t serve them to get them into debt or create a habit of using buying to drown their problems. You really have to constantly ask yourself what people need from you and focus on that rather than on what you personally might want to give. That’s making sure your marketing serves people. But the second part of this is, making sure your marketing serves God. And here’s the deal. You don’t do that if you constantly appeal to the greed and ego people have. That’s what a ton of today’s marketing does. It says, “Oh, you deserve this!” or “Treat yourself!” And it makes them want all this pleasure and leads them to covet everything of the world, and it makes it seem like the offers are the ticket to being happy or having a good life. And so, what I’m telling you is, good Christian marketing helps people understand that God is the way to being happy and having a good life. It helps them understand how to use the offer to work better for Him. It appeals to the character He has and promotes all the values He operates under, and that includes loving others instead of overly focusing on yourself. So, the job isn’t to get people excited about themselves. The job is to get people excited about something bigger than they are so they can have a sense of purpose around what they’re buying or doing. It’s about looking out for others and genuinely helping them flourish.

So, to sum up everything we’ve covered, there are four big keys to marketing well in a Christian way. You’ve gotta ignore trends, be authentic, be truthful, and focus on service to people and God. There are definitely other areas we could cover, but these are the points to me that really are central to getting a message, service, or product out in a Godly way.

I’ll invite you now wherever you are to just take a second, bow your head or just do whatever you need to do to be comfortable, and join me in prayer to close out the show.

Lord, selling today is really tricky, whether we’re talking about our personal brand or something for a company. Almost all of the tactics and strategies in modern marketing are focused on profit instead of love. They promote so many ways of thinking and doing that can cause pain for people. So, today I ask for courage so that we can do what most people don’t do. Help us to not cave in to the pressure to manipulate and make money the focus, because you need to be the focus instead. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

So, with that, I will declare this episode over and done. If you haven’t done so already, go to faithfulontheclock.com. That is the sister site for the podcast, and it’s home to videos, audio, exclusive essays, and tons more. Much of the content is completely free with your registration, but you also can sign up for a paid tier, as well. For the next show, we’ll be covering the ethics behind some of the most controversial ventures and practices in the professional world…freezing yourself for the future, for example. Join me in two weeks for that, and until then, everybody, be blessed.