How to Promote Anything Without Seeming Sleazy

There comes a time when everybody has something they want to promote. Maybe it’s an event you’re running or a charity where you volunteer. Maybe you’re an author and it’s your own book you’re promoting. Maybe the thing you’re promoting is… YOU. You’re trying to get more visible in your field, so that you can get a better job.

As well as being the author of psychological thrillers, I’m also a marketing expert with 20 years’ experience. Marketing gets a bad rap. People associate it with slick salespeople selling you things you don’t need. There’s a grain of truth to that, and an unfortunate number of marketers are all schmooze and no substance. (By contrast, I like to represent for the marketers out there who are honest, pragmatic and down-to-earth.)

Despite the bad reputation of marketing, the bottom line is: as soon as you have something you want people to know about, you need marketing. But how can you promote something – yourself, your book, your business – without coming across as a sleazeball?

I’ll tell you.

The secret is content marketing. This is where you create and put out into the world a piece of interesting and informative content, (such as an article, video, photo, podcast, a newsletter like this,) and use it as a way to get visibility.

The idea is to inform, entertain and delight prospective clients.

“Inform, entertain, delight”? Hey, wait, you may be wondering, where’s the verb “sell” in that list?

Content marketing is selling without selling.

Why bother, then? Because the old style of marketing, where you blasted out, “HEY LOOK AT THIS, WANNA BUY IT?” to anyone in your vicinity, doesn’t work anymore. Maybe it never worked.

You fast-forward through the ads when you watch TV, right? You roll your eyes when horrible “native advertising” takes over your favourite news site. You’re savvy and you hate being marketed to. So does everyone else.

Therefore, a smarter, less sleazy form of marketing is in order – and that’s content marketing.

Next time you have something to promote, think about a piece of content that you could produce:

– 5 things that inspired my new book

– 7 surprising facts about [the charity you’re promoting]

– 3 weird things I learned when I started my own business

Don’t be sleazy; be interesting.

Now’s probably a good time to mention that I just started my own freelance marketing consultancy and I’m offering a free marketing review to small business owners (yes, completely free!) and a 40% sale on website design and build for authors and business owners.