3 Signs of Ego-Driven Marketing

Seth Godin recently said in a podcast that what matters most is what matters to your audience.

To us do-good content marketers, this advice rings true.

It's intuitive -- of course I care about what matters to my audience. The challenge is that it's not so easy in practical application. Why? Because all humans on earth are naturally wired for survival, not for service. It's not kindness and honesty that get you the cool spot on the playground. We are not wired to surrender our egos. I see this struggle often in myself and in many areas of content marketing.

The secret no one wants to admit? Ego and fear often go hand in hand. In my experience, it's terrifically difficult to identify when I've taken my eyes off the real prize. And it's even more difficult to correct course.

In the interest of being useful, I'd like to share a few tell-tale signs that a company's content marketing is being driven by ego.

1. It talks about itself a lot.

Does a company often use itself as an example? Yawn. How many times do I begin a blog by sharing a personal experience such as "I was riding the bus yesterday when..."? Double yawn. The fact is: content marketing is about surrendering your ego to get someone's attention (a person who is also driven by ego). It's a complex situation, isn't it? Don't talk about yourself or your company because being egotistical is bad -- but in order to be successful, you must appeal to your audience's inherently ego-driven decision making habits. 

Sentences like that last one make me want to stay in bed all day.

This is why people who create content from a place of care, passion and conviction are the ones who will save everyone on the planet. When you care, you think about the person you hope to reach. I hope I've made some business owners or content marketers laugh so far in this blog. I also hope by the end that I will have inspired them to think in a newer, fresher way about content marketing. Is that my ego talking? Yep, sure is, and it's the best I've got for today.

A common place that ego shows up in content marketing is website copy. If you want to stir people to action, talk about a common struggle or a theme that resonates with the human spirit and your audience's particular plight. But for the love of grandmas, please don't talk about yourself or your product. It doesn't work.

2. It thinks gimmicks are forgivable.

The wonderful thing about inbound marketing software is that it gives you data. Lots of data, lots of insight, lots of ways to think cleverly about reaching your audience. The problem is there's a vortex that all well-meaning content marketers can get easily sucked into, and it lures us to start thinking in mathy terms like traffic numbers and conversions and click-through rates and blog views. We start thinking about numbers, and that invariably leads to the greatest sin of all: content marketing gimmicks.

The gimmicky content marketer isn't concerned about making a difference in a person's life, and thus believes that gimmicks (think click bait, think crappy e-books, think keyword-stuffed blogs) are forgivable because at least the numbers went higher on the spreadsheet.

Ask anyone who's used an online dating service and agreed to a first date where the person was 6 inches shorter than he purported to be -- or the very opposite of articulate and educated. Until the moment of truth arrived (meeting in person), the extra short person on that date was winning the attention of a person.

The gimmick exists everywhere. Like in online dating, being found out in content marketing is just a matter of time.

3. It thinks its audience won't know the difference.

How a company markets itself is a direct reflection of how highly (or poorly) that company thinks of its audience. We could give companies the benefit of the doubt and say that they simply don't understand how the Internet works, but that wouldn't really be fair.

Ego drives content marketing initiatives when we believe our audience won't be able to smell BS. In life, there are innumerable do-overs. In marketing, there are not. There is a finite number of chances we're given to win the trust (and eventual attention, and perhaps even business) of our ideal audience. Ego-driven content marketing doesn't believe this is true because a core value is disrespect toward its audience.

The next time you sit down to write a blog or a headline or some website copy or a social media post, let your Content Marketing Fairy Godmother repeat this in your ear:

Darling, don't talk about yourself.

The backspace button on your keyboard, like mine, will likely get a workout, but it's worth it. Instead ask very simple questions like, "What does my audience think?" or "What worries my ideal client?"

Writing and communicating with this in mind often gives me headaches, or even worse: a blank piece of Word document abyss. It hurts to write with the audience in mind because oftentimes, I've only been thinking about myself all day. But when I stop and set myself aside, often the best ideas come rising out of the ground like magic.

Soften the ego, render the sale.