November 12, 2008

Always be marketing

Guy Kawasaki argues that you should always be selling. Specifically, he suggests:

Creating a successful business requires effective persuasion. This study shows that great persuasion sometimes occurs when people don’t expect it. This means that you should always be selling—you may persuade people when you least expect it. This is also a good argument for the potential power of tools such as Twitter and blogs. These new approaches can open doors for people who haven’t thought about a new concept.

If you think about it, what Kawasaki really means is: You should always be marketing.

Looking at him briefly from afar, I’d guess that Kawasaki’s priorities are something like:

  1. Keep building awareness.
  2. Stay on message.

Judging by the recent election season, most political campaigns would agree. In enterprise IT, however, I’d tweak and flip them, to:

  1. Stay on one or more of your messages.
  2. Build awareness in the right audiences — prospects and influencers alike.

Comments

3 Responses to “Always be marketing”

  1. Seth Grimes on November 12th, 2008 10:06 am

    “Always be selling” seems like a weak cousin of the old sales ABC mantra, “Always Be Closing.” I first encountered that myself in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross and it makes sense.

    You’re right that Kawasaki, in that quotation, seems to be talking more about marketing than about selling.

  2. Daniel Tunkelang idealizes Twitter | Text Technologies on January 2nd, 2009 10:34 pm

    […] serve or should serve as both, in no small part because the areas of marketing and communication overlap heavily. And in my opinion Twitter (microblogging) and ordinary blogging aren’t that far […]

  3. Note to technology startups | Strategic Messaging on July 30th, 2009 1:19 pm

    […] Always be marketing Categories: Technology marketing  Subscribe to our complete feed! […]

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