Marketing of the 21st century: authentic connection building

Today’s Musings on Marketing and Magic are about redefining marketing as the joy of connection building. Many conscious entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, coaches, and healers I meet respond with “eeew” when they just hear the word marketing. At a minimum there is a forced quality to our relationship to marketing. It’s a “I have to do it”, but certainly not a “I love doing it” relationship.

I would say, much of marketing in its current form is still very much stuck in the 20th century. “We have to sell our products, so let’s find the most efficient way to create lots of hype around it by creating some sense of not enough or fear of missing out in our customers.”

New Marketing: The Need for Long-Term Relationships

But there is a change coming as more and more companies realize that they need to develop long-term relationships with their customers in order to have them excited about their services – think about the various subscriptions that you pay for and where you can make a monthly choice to continue or discontinue the relationship. In order to keep you as a subscriber, these companies will do their best to continuously engage you and help you adopt the product, so you won’t cancel the subscription.

When I started out with my own business, I thought the marketing would be the easiest thing for me, because I had done it for so many years in the corporate world. And yet, it turned out that it brought up all kinds of fears and limiting beliefs that I had to address before I could fully embrace marketing for my own business. In the process, I redefined marketing as connection building. The more I could stay with the sense of connection building, the easier it became to do the nitty-gritty of marketing. Because I really love connecting with others, connection building feels authentic to me and I can tap more easily into a sense of joy when engaging in marketing activities.

The new paradigm for marketing in the 21st century

I believe that marketing in the 21st century in general is moving towards redefining it around authentic connection building. When I talk to other empath and highly sensitive entrepreneurs, coaches, and healing professionals about shifting their relationship to marketing to one of authentic connection building, there’s an immediate relaxation happening in their body and an inner light of excitement is turned on. That’s the place from where these authentic connections with our ideal clients can happen with ease.

Have you embraced marketing of the 21^st century yet?

Until next time – be magical!