Tips, Tricks, and Secrets
Whenever I see those words in marketing copy, I immediately feel a bit suspicious. I crave real relationships, openness, and authenticity and I try to integrate these values into my work and my marketing efforts. I don’t want to offer tips, tricks, or secrets through my work; instead, I hope to inspire deeper and more expansive thinking and feeling to elevate the tenor of, and meaning in, our work. Is this realistic? Is this what people want? I’m not so sure. By aligning my work and my marketing with my lofty ideals, I may actually be alienating and excluding a lot of people that would eventually be open to pursuing more complex ideas. Tips, tricks, and secrets might actually be superficial entry points to strong, meaningful relationships.
I felt a bit of dis-ease as I wrote the copy for two of my recently published books, The Fruition Coalition Grant Proposal Workbook and The Fruition Coalition Marketing Plan Workbook. I wanted to convey that they were simple and easy to use, which they were and I did. But I feel that there are also a handful of profound ideas within each book that could change the way we think about proposals and marketing. This was not captured in my marketing. I made this choice because I feel the books would be really, really, helpful to organizations and I want them to buy and use them.
Thus has been my marketing conundrum with the Fruition Coalition – balancing meaning with pragmatism, depth with superficiality, and complexity with simplicity. Any suggestions?