Honest Belief, and Marketing
As the person marketing your project, you might be comparing your approach to others who talk like this:
“This is the best thing in the world. Trust me, you’ll love it.”
“Are you kidding me? This stuff is made in-house, the best of the best.”
“You won’t believe it when I tell you how good it is.”
We’re not used to speaking like this, especially not as a software creative. (These examples come out of a New York pizzeria, from YouTube).
This kind of talk has two effects. First, you know that somehow it works. And second, it leaves you wondering: do they believe this stuff?
“Honesty is good. Beliefs, not so sure. Marketing? I have to do it.”
This mental impasse is what happens when we misplace our empathy. Our empathy, focusing on what we feel when looking at the marketing speak above, is stuck in a middle: it’s not directed deeply at the customer, nor for own deeper self. Let me explain.
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“Do they really believe what they’re saying, when they state that this is the best thing in the world? Are they honest?”
When it comes to belief and honesty, analysis and precision require you to pause. Analysis, precision, those are skills that are needed for software work. An eye for the empirical truth, a binary view of facts. No need for belief.
Honesty, in this worldview, is about sticking to the process of truth-finding. But honesty, in this worldview, doesn’t require empathy, and that’s the thing that’s missing. At least for marketing.
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When marketing, we’re in the world of storytelling. We’re stringing together words that pack nuance, similarities, analogies, echoes of something else. We’re relating, that is to say, we’re bridging the world of your customer with the world of the product. We’re bridging their present to a better future. We’re recognizing the ground they stand on, and we’re showing the landscape of where they could be going.
In this mode, you can stay honest, truthful, in service, and you can withhold all your beliefs. You can do all that when you string together a story. It’s all the better if you do.
But a story will be much better if, having done all that empathy work, you can then add your beliefs. “This is a good product. I made it because I care for situations like yours. I’ve been ‘user number one’ from the beginning. It’s made with my quality attention to detail. I’ll make it up to you, and if this isn’t doing the job, no sweat. We’ll be here when you need us.”
Finding the words for saying a sentence like this, to stay truthful and to help tell your story, that requires empathy for yourself.
There’s a way for you to enter the world of storytelling where you stay truthful and you state your beliefs. It requires you to work your empathy on two places: on your customer and on yourself.
That also happens to be the right starting point for good marketing.
