Awhile back, I was introduced to the concept of “Promise Marketing.” Unfortunately, I can’t remember her name but the woman who presented the concept owns an agency that works with doctors, lawyers and accountants. These are professions that by and large don’t have tangible deliverables they can share with prospective clients. The work they’ve done is confidential or proprietary in nature. So how do you market such a business? You need content to demonstrate your integrity.
The promise marketing challenge
I suspect it’s tough to even get testimonials from some past clients in all three of these professions. Most of us consider our money, health and legal issues to be confidential in nature. So the content a doctor, lawyer or accountant needs to share on their blog or website must demonstrate the integrity of their practice. In effect, make a promise that you will be treated in such a way should you choose to engage us.
But wait, don’t we all face that challenge?
I had the privilege this week of attending one of Wayne Breitbarth’s LinkedIn training sessions. Wayne spent about half the class talking about how to build an effective LinkedIn profile. First, he addressed the mechanics of building your profile, which really comes down to utilizing the right key words, which you can learn more about in Wayne’s brand new book The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success (affiliate link). Next, Wayne explained the importance of not just loading the key words into your profile because overdoing that can actually get you banned from LinkedIn. Instead, he discussed telling your story.
If you’ve been in the working world for 10, 20 or even 30 years, odds are you have a pretty interesting and compelling story to tell. So while working the key words in is important to the LinkedIn search engine, telling your story is going to be interesting and compelling to those who find you with a search query. Your profile has to represent who you really are. If you’re a middle aged guy, don’t put a twenty year old picture of yourself on the profile. That picture and all the content in your profile is a promise of who you will be when I meet you.
Make promises you can keep
Key words and search engines are wonderful things. They truly can help the world beat a path to your door if you build a better mousetrap. What they can’t do is be a substitute for integrity and honesty. Most folks I know have well tuned BS meters that can sniff out inconsistencies in your promise marketing almost instantaneously. And even if it’s not instant, lies and embellishments always seem to catch up with you.
Make promises you can keep. While your mileage may vary, you won’t go wrong with this approach to your online content. For example, I promise that if you sign up below to receive these posts by email each day that I will never spam you. Give it a try. I sometimes offer special tidbits to folks on the list.