an example of bad marketing from the past, from http://blogs.citypages.com/amadzine/2008/01/In the Yogi Incubator program we spend a good time reflecting upon our resistance to the idea of marketing, "unloading" the word (removing negative energy that we have attached to it) and filling it up with new, inspiring meaning.
When I ask people I work with what has been keeping them from embracing marketing, here's what comes up:
- Marketing myself sounds desperate
- I feel like I am selling myself, it's degrading
- Marketing is too expensive
- Fear of rejection comes up, I feel vulnerable
- Why should I do it in the first place? A good product should sell itself
Like any other change, acknowledging we are stuck in a paradigm that is limiting, and wanting to transcend it, is an indicator that we are already half-way there.
The other half entails creating a new, expansive and freeing definition of marketing that works for you. Let's say that marketing is still to be invented, and you are the person inventing it. Can you define it in a way that feels valuable, meaningful, authentic? Recently, in Asheville, a participant defined marketing as "an extension of who I am and how I share my story." I am thinking of inviting her to work with me!
Once you have that definition, you will also be able to understand how to stay in integrity when you are marketing. Whenever you are marketing yourself and you feel a contraction, chances are you are violating your own law. It stopped being an extension of who you are and became "please love me and validate me by signing up to my workshop". It's no longer a way to share your story but an attempt to fit into what you think the client/student wants.
Sounds too simple? It is. Truth is simple. Not necessarily easy, but simple. And practice makes perfect.
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