Promoting yourself is all about how well you manipulate? Gross. Is manipulating your clients really the way to promote yourself?
Well, yeah. But the way I look at manipulation is probably not the way you’re thinking of it.
Promoting yourself with ethical manipulation is, actually, an ethical way to sell.
Okay, okay… I know most personal development coaches, holistic practitioners, and honest people have probably already clicked away because that statement made them so uncomfortable. But you’re still here (hurray), and that means you’re at least curious about what I have to say.
Are you afraid to promote yourself?
Is one of the biggest fears keeping you from marketing your business that your ideal clients will perceive you as sleazy and, well, unethical?
About 95% of the coaches I talk to live with this fear. I hear things like:
- “I hate when people ask me to make an appointment.”
- “If people want to work with me, they will. I don’t need to push.”
- “I’m just not good at marketing.”
The fear of self promotion is so strong that they don’t do any marketing beyond growing a Facebook group or Instagram following (both of which are great, but not enough).
Ethical manipulation in self promotion
Recently, my friend Frank posted a blog about ethical marketing and it was so spot on I had to share (if you want to see his whole post, here is the link).
The gist is that all marketing is, to a degree, manipulative.
Not because the marketer is sleazy and untrustworthy. But because to serve clients and help them see how they can change their lives requires interrupting their current lives in some way.
It’s about enticing them the join a group, watch a webinar, read an article. That requires persuading them to stop doing something else.
Ethical (that is, not sleazy) manipulation in content marketing is about serving your audience.
It’s about keeping your message relevant to their needs, letting them know you are there for them to help them on the journey, and building trust through showing up with integrity.
It’s also about shunning scare tactics, false claims and results, and aggression. I can’t imagine you using any of those techniques, so you have nothing to fear!
The #1 way to promote yourself then
The way to ethically promote yourself is by identifying where your ideal client is right now and where they desire to be. For example, right now they have no energy and live on caffeine and sugar to get through the day. They desire vibrancy and the energy to hop out of bed in the morning and sail through the day awake and alert.
Your marketing is about how to bridge the gap, from identifying the real cause of the problem to showing how great life will be when they cross the divide. The manipulation comes from helping them realize what the real problem is when they believe it’s something else entirely.
That changes lives. That is service.
Your challenge today is to figure out how you uniquely help your ideal client reach that future state, write it down, and spend the rest of the month ethically manipulating your audience. Can you do that?
If you’d like some help, I’ve got something special coming up. I will be conducting another round of the Killer Content Formula Bootcamp starts April 29. I’ve love to have you join me. If you’d like to learn more about it, book a quick call and I’ll give you the details.