Why does Marketing Suck for an Introvert?
I feel I suck at marketing. And I came up with a list of painful reasons why this is so. Please add as many as you can.
Published:
Hey all,
this is Matthias again with another progress update about 2Quiet2Market, the new marketing software for introverts like solopreneurs, writers, musicians, and so on.
Today, please help me answer this question:
Why do introverts seem to suck at marketing?
I love to build SaaS (software as a service) systems on the Internet. 2Q2M will be my 6th one. So, you see that I love building stuff.
But every time I need to tell the public about what I'm doing and why it is so great, it sucks. It feels like ... well, I prefer building over marketing, to say the least.
To find out why that is, and what to do about it, I sat down and brainstormed a number of possible reasons why I suck at marketing, and other people don't (at least, it seems so).
I came up with this list. Does any one of these points sound familiar to you?
- Marketing feels like bragging to me. Being a modest person, I don't love to brag about what I do. As a marketer, I feel like I have to "pound the drum" to make people aware of my product.
- I have learned to not repeat myself. As a marketer, I have to repeat myself to get people's attention.
- Marketing is complicated. I need to think about my customer, their jobs to be done, my product with its benefits and features, the different marketing channels like Twitter, a blog, a newsletter, and more! And I need to write about all that. This looks totally daunting!
- I don't like to talk to people, at least not many people at the same time. I totally enjoy a deep conversation with one or two others, but "talking to the masses"? Nooo way! As a marketer, I always felt like I have to broadcast to whoever is out there. (At least, I saw that this is simply a false assumption that can be easily cured). But look at the next point:
- Context switching from building to marketing (and back again) is painful for a solo creator. After a full week of building my product, when I tell my brain to switch into marketing mode, it looks almost empty. No idea. Nada. No response. It takes me almost a full day to get the ideas flowing again.
- In my day-to-day work, I tend to forget about the overall direction or strategy behind my marketing. In fact, until now, I almost had no strategy at all. So I sat down and made one. But where do I keep it, so that I remember it when I "have to" write the next marketing material?
- Because marketing feels like pain, I don't put it into my calendar. In fact, I have no marketing calendar at all. November is coming, and guess what? I'm not prepared for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, like all the other cool kids on the block. How uncool is that?
- Marketing is an ongoing job. I cannot do it "once and for all", like I do it with coding my software. There is no feeling like "yay, problem solved!" So, how on earth will I keep up my energy to do my marketing every other week or so? What energy or motivation will keep me flying? (I am not good at using sheer willpower for that).
Do any of these pains resonate with you?
Please reply to this email and tell me which items in the list above feel painful to you as well. And please tell me your story, your feelings, in your own words. And feel free to add to the list – as many painful points as you wish!
Introverts deserve more marketing success
As introverts, we make up at least a third of the population (says Susan Cain in her bestseller "Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking").
So I ask you this:
Does it make sense that more than 30% of all people suck at marketing?
No it doesn't. It can't be true. It must be a false story that we keep telling ourselves.
As introverted makers, software devs, writers, musicians, photographers and other creators – we deserve to have as much marketing success as all the other people!
How I'm going to help introverted makers
I decided to make this possible: With a special software called "2Quiet2Market", I am going to help us all get better at marketing, and make marketing a job that is easy enough to do so that we can all stop hating it.
Today, I am going to deploy the software on a test platform so that I can officially go live with it on the Internet, in November.
How you can help others
Please support me on Twitter and other social platforms.
Tell all your friends that Matthias is about to release 2quiet2market.com and invite them to join the movement. (Oh yes, I think it will not only be software but a movement!)
Let's all keep going!
Cheers,
Matthias
Comments welcome: