I might have mentioned this before here on 200wad, but for learning, for self-reinforcement and reminder, and for my own sake, I want to write this down as a way to concretize a new way of thinking, a shift in mindset and narrative.

Problem:

I make products but I HATE marketing. I hate it because I always hated how it’s always been done. I hated being on the receiving end of cold calls, telemarketing tricks, annoying emails from strangers selling you stuff you didn’t ask for. I hated the very image of a salesman – cunning, conniving, money-minded, annoying. Correspondingly, I mostly hated anyone in a sales job, like insurance agents, door-to-door sales people, property agents. When I had to get my own insurance or property, I ironically preferred those who have non sales-y personality more than their salesmanship, when actually I should really be optimising for salesmanship (like say for property when I was selling). And greed for money was a huge turn-off factor for me. I always felt money was dirty, and anyone who’s greedy for it automatically got pigeonholed into the same category as charlatans, capitalist pigs, unscrupulous businessmen, and human traffickers. Even though I very much tried to work on my narrative about money being dirty, the old narrative remains pretty sticky on reflex. Hence, because I HATED marketing, I realised I suck at it when I tried to market my products and services. I believe this remains one of the key problems why I’m struggling to get my products to take off as an indie maker, because I resent marketing. I think one law of the universe is that when you resent something, it won’t work out for you, even if your actions show otherwise.

Solution:

I really need to solve this. But how? I cannot start change my perspective about marketing overnight. The narrative runs deep in my core values, not something that I can shift at the snap of my fingers. I think I need to approach it differently. How it seems to have seen some success in the past was when I approach it from a stance of helping someone. I’m not selling anything, and I’m especially not trying to sell you anything you didn’t ask for or don’t need. I’m just trying to be helpful, to help you. I’d always felt that I love helping people, helping society or my country. If I approached it from a positive lens like helpfulness, it will come from a more authentic place within me, not forcibly trying to sell or market. That’s why doing things for free, out of altruistic intentions, to help people and society, had always worked so well for me, exactly because I was going at it from a helping stance (though to my own current dismay, doesn’t provide money). That’s why I could do my consultancy in human-centered design previously because it was always coming from an authentic place of addressing people’s painpoints and needs. If I reframed marketing to helping people, then that completely shifts the tone for all my ‘marketing’ efforts:

• Cold emails becomes less about converting leads to customer but about being excited to share something that could be helpful to your customers. 
• Posting on social media becomes not about ‘badvertising’ or self promotion, but sharing your gratitude about something (progress you made), or about how it’s valuable to someone out there.
• Leaving your link in comments threads and discussion forums feels less dirty as it’s about trying to offer value and help to others rather than trying to slide in your link sheepishly. 
• Content marketing becomes less about SEO keyword hacks but coming up with tools and content that actually makes a difference to your customers’ lives.

Basically, how would I approach marketing as I would with my own user-centered design work? 

How would human-centered ‘marketing’ look like? Perhaps I can not use the word “marketing” altogether (since I’m so averse to it)!

How can I reframe marketing as helping others from an authentically altruistic heart?

What do you think? Have you ever met anyone who was able to ‘sell’ you something from a stance of helping you?