[PART 2] HOW TO CREATE MOMENTUM FOR GOOD - AVOID MEGAPHONE MARKETING
To successfully make a difference, as socialpreneurs we need to avoid The Megaphone Marketing Doom Cycle. It’s often the first doom cycle socialpreneurs unknowingly enter and one of the most common.
Part 1 of this series covered how, although we may want to create momentum for good, our well-intentioned but faulty logic has a tendency to instead prime us for a downward spiral.
Rather than identifying a chain reaction or sequence of activities that link together to continuously create and accelerate momentum in the direction of more togetherness, too many of us start accumulating effort in a consistently doomed direction. These doom cycles push us farther away from our bold vision for good. The good news is there’s an antidote that can get us out and prevent us from ever entering one.
But, it’s critical to know how to recognize if we’re currently stuck in a doom cycle.
Part 2 covers how The Megaphone Marketing Doom Cycle begins and what the signs are that this doom cycle is underway.
THE MEGAPHONE MARKETING DOOM CYCLE
In this doom cycle, promotion is mistaken as momentum.
Marketing is a strategy to identify and engage the right people. Advertising, PR, and sales might be part of how to engage the right people in the right place at the right time, but that’s not what most of us have a tendency to do.
Instead of figuring out which people are the right people and which interactions and information will help these folks advance on their journey, most socialpreneurs blast the message we want to share when it’s important to us. We assume there’s an eager and captive audience just waiting to listen.
But, it turns out...even if we have an email list...there’s no passive audience.
By default, we continuously create a one-way conversation of disconnected and one-off promotions.
In this doom cycle, it’s like we’re shouting through a megaphone at an airport gate attempting to persuade folks to get on board. It seems like a good idea. We’re a brand pilot, and these folks are at an airport. Many even have suitcases and appear to be ready to go on a trip. Some people may even stop what they’re doing and listen briefly. But, the problem is that the vast majority of people at this gate are already booked on another flight. Worse, we’ve mistakenly started thinking about the people we’d like to engage as passengers - rather than as the co-pilot they really are. Co-pilots don’t listen passively. They’re part of the decision-making process.
So all this promoting is overwhelmingly to folks who aren’t even the right fit for the message, the timing, or the brand. Yikes!
SIGNS THE MEGAPHONE MARKETING DOOM CYCLE IS UNDERWAY
One of the most common signs The Megaphone Marketing Doom Cycle is underway is the tendency to tell “everyone” about the good news or offer we (or leadership) want to share when we want to share it.
Meetings become devoted to figuring out what to communicate:
How should we tell our story as an organization?
Who are we as an organization?
What do we want people to know?
How can we get this out there?
What do we need to create to get this in front of people?
What should we offer next?
How soon can we blast this out?
Solutions tend to be ads, enewsetters, news releases, podcasts, print materials, social posts, solicitations, web content, videos, and whatever new fad or untried approach there is.
Typically, all this promoting happens without knowing which, if any, of these efforts is working or why. We might be able to track reach, opens, likes, or views, but we have no idea what these numbers actually mean for the bottom line.
Another clue that The Megaphone Marketing Doom Cycle is underway is the meaning of the pronouns “we,” “us,” and “our.” These seemingly innocuous words are an important signal about the kind of momentum we’re creating.
Notice how in the bullet points above the pronouns - we, us, and our - mean the internal staff. That’s a sign we’re stuck in a cycle of advancing a one-way perspective instead of a shared point of view.
When that happens, it’s common to start hearing:
“our” donors
“our” residents
“our” board members
“our” impact
“our” mission
“our” work
“We invite you to…”
“We need your help…”
“Join us…”
“Help us reach our goal…”
These pronouns have become synonymous with the internal staff instead of the entire community. They’re no longer words among peers, but words that convey subordination.
WHY MEGAPHONE MARKETING BECOMES A DOOM CYCLE
In our efforts to unite more people around all the good we’re doing, we assume that if we just tell our story, they’ll feel it, too. So, we seek out novel ways to tell people about what we’re doing, to ask them to help us reach our goal, and to invite them to join us at events.
But, when these efforts fail to get more folks involved, we don’t figure out why the content didn’t do the job it was supposed to do.
Instead, we assume the problem must have been the channel, the medium, the timing, or something else tactical.
The obvious solution seems to be to promote more or create something different to promote.
We continue to send mass communications or invest in paid and earned media, often deeming them successful based on how someone “important” felt about what we did.
Just like that, we advance The Megaphone Marketing Doom Cycle.
We keep accumulating effort in the direction of more promotions and continue shouting our message louder or longer into that megaphone.
We’re so focused on all the creating and promoting, we’ve begun to confuse these tactics with marketing.
Remember, marketing is a strategy to identify and engage the right people.
But, in our excitement to engage people, we skipped over the strategy part. We jumped right to promoting. So, we can never learn from our attempts to engage folks.
By confusing promotion for momentum, we’ve entered a downward spiral away from the sense of belonging we so desperately want to ignite.
Worse, some of us get so far into The Megaphone Marketing Doom Cycle that we segue into The Firefighting Doom Cycle or even The Culture Collapse Doom Cycle.
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