I am a fan of a few people doing some cool stuff out in the world. Sometimes what they share or create makes me hit reply to one of their emails. I might even go out of my way to find their contact information, and send them a note of thanks for bringing their unique viewpoint to the world. No pitch, no ask on my part...just a genuine note of thanks for being who they are.
Sometimes I get a note of thanks back and sometimes I don’t. Here are a few people who wrote back recently - Jonathan Fields, Alexandra Franzen, and Dan Blank.
Of course there were people who didn’t write back. I had no expectation that they should...but here is what I am learning: I feel differently about the people who wrote back.
I feel connected to them and their message even more deeply. I feel like they are real people not just platforms. I believe their marketing as honest communication between two human beings not just a mouthpiece blasting out to a faceless audience.
And I want to follow them even more and further support the work they are doing in the world. I want to tell other people about them. (I included them in this blog post...so you could check them out too.)
I am learning about better marketing from their examples. Marketing is about relationships. It might seem time consuming and trivial to reply back to an email sent your way...especially if you get thousands.
But why are you marketing? Aren’t you trying to engage your audience and make them into raving fans? Aren’t you trying to connect to your audience and truly hear from them? And even if you have thousands of fans, don’t you want them to stick around?
Sometimes the best form of marketing is already right in front of you: the fans you already have.