Authentic & Transparent Marketing

The first book came out a little while ago called Unmarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. It was written because I was tired of hypocritical marketing; I was tired of people hating getting cold calls at home, but then looking to better cold call for their own business. It didn’t make any sense. I thought “You know what, there’s a better way. There’s got to be people out here who like to be marketed to in smart ways and in engaging ways. That we do business with people we know, like, and trust. So why not do that with our business?”

Authentic Marketing is almost a term that makes me feel kind of weird when you say “authentic is a strategy”. It’s not a strategy, authentic is being you and being true to your customers and being transparent about what you’re doing.

Sadly, the term authentic marketing has become a buzz term and people think “Well how do we do that?” It’s pretty simple: you answer questions when you’re asked, you don’t hide behind a PR person, and you’re open: you have a blog, you tweet, you’re on Facebook answering honest questions so when it hits the fan, you don’t hide behind the fan. It’s time to be awesome and being transparent actually is an amazing way to differentiate yourself for other people. You’re open, you’re talking and you’re really engaged, which builds trust with your customer base.