As my mom used to say "Just be yourself".

I've mentioned below, in previous blogs, that most Marketers attempt to guess at what their target audience wants. They seem to check their brain at the door and not use themselves as a focus group. So what am I getting at? It's like this - when Marketing, just be yourself.

Ask yourself this: do you enjoy being sold? Do you enjoy the used-car salesman approaching you with the best offer ever? Do you roll your eyes? Do you run away? Fast? I do. I can't stand it. I hate it. I despise it. I will leave the store and never come back again. Do you agree?

Okay - so you agree. Great. So then why do we do promotions that are full of marketing-ese and sound like earth-shattering hype when in fact you're blatantly trying to sell something and everyone knows it?

A friend of mine, who has his own rare books business, was chatting with me the other day. He was about to issue a newsletter promoting some great deals for Mother's Day. The email content was good. It was consistent with what his opt-in list would expect. But his email headline was too salesy. When questioned he responded that he had scanned the headline for any words that the spam protectors would reject. And he acknowleged that he was being defensive (don't you hate defensive Marketers? If you've got a better idea then share it with me. I won't be defensive. I have no concern sharing the glory if you make me successful). So I asked him to think of himself, arriving at his home computer after a hard day at work, opening up his email client and seeing the bold subject headings showing him his new emails. I asked him what he would do if he saw an email heading that started with "Last Minute Deals...". I asked him to be objective. You know what? He didn't even answer my question. He simply said "I know. You're right. Help me.".

You know what the answer is? Just be yourself.

Talk to your prospects and your customers. Don't go on the attack. Engage them but don't sell them. To a degree, if they're interested, they'll be your customer. Where you really should be investing your time is on how to convert them once you've got them interested. When I mentioned that, he outright told me that that was his biggest challenge. He's not alone. His issue was that he was going to scare away potential clients before he ever got to the conversion challenge.

Ironically enough, after I finished talking to him I checked my own email and saw my latest newsletter from MarketingSherpa.com (BTW - the headline was "New Email Marketing Data". Does it get any less promotional than that? I opened it immediately.) The newsletter had a case study about which email subject lines work best. Check it out here. It says exactly what I had told my friend, but it proved it with actual statistics.

Bottom line, as I told my friend, use smaller control groups to trial your messages first. Then launch the campaign to your entire audience with the knowledge learned from your control groups. It's not rocket science, but the reason common sense is so common is because everyone has the same challenge.

So what's the point of my blog, this time. It's this: stop trying so hard, and just be yourself.