The Be-Have-Do of Marketing

I love a good mash-up in terms of conversation. And this morning, I've got Be-Have-Do on my mind.

What IS Be-Have-Do you might ask?

It's a mindset shift from what most people are raised believing.

We're raised to believe that if we DO something, we will HAVE something. And then that thing we HAVE will create a sense of being for us.

In other words, we DO something, it EARNS us something, and we'll BE happy.

In school, if you answer the question RIGHT, it earns you a GRADE, and you'll be happy.

At work, if you do your TASKS, you earn your MONEY, and you'll be happy.

Even in prison, you do your TIME, you earn your FREEDOM, and you'll be happy.

Mush of society is programmed this way. But it actually DOESN'T work that way with human happiness. I experienced it myself in my corporate work. Maybe you've experienced it too.

We do all the things, earn all the things, and still aren't happy.

Well, the same thing happens in Marketing.

We do all the things, we hit all the "KPI's", and yet, it' still not contributing to the business in any meaningful way. And if that's happening for you and your team, it's time to flip the script.

Marketing: A Way of BEING

So, if we change the assumption that we don't END with being, but instead START with it, what does that look like when it comes to Marketing?

I means: how are you BEING YOURSELF in your marketing efforts.

You see, so many companies get stuck in features, benefits, scalability, activities (yup, that's in the doing category, folks), that they forget about BEING in their marketing messages.

• We worry about how many keywords are in our blog posts instead of writing TO your people to help them solve their problems.

• We worry about how to scale systems that don't even work today.

• We worry about how to make sure people can find ALL our features and benefits on the website instead of helping people understand why they even WANT to come hang out with us.

And we spend so much time worrying about THOSE things that we don't MAKE time to BE in the energy we want the world to feel from us.

So, how can we turn that around?

LIVE your values in your marketing.

And no, that doesn't mean just WRITE your values on your website.

It means, we look at our values, and actually BE those people when we create our marketing.

It sounds simple, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say about 90% of Marketers, at any given time, are creating under pressure instead of BEING their corporate values.

And this doesn't make you bad, or wrong. It just means you're aligned with the old way of thinking that starts with DO. And you always have the option to turn it around.

Marketing: What Do We HAVE?

So, if we're starting with BEING instead of DOING, how does that change what we HAVE? Or what we EARN, if we want to look at it that way?

Let's look at it from the reverse side first:

We DO marketing tasks, so we'll HAVE money, and we'll BE profitable.

Pretty common way to look at it, right?

Now let's say we've flipped it around to start with being. The concept of "profitable" probably doesn't fit unless we ARE already profitable as a company (or department). And if we look at our values, Being Profitable probably isn't listed on there.

Let's use a random corporate value I grabbed from a local company's website: Raise the bar.

So, who we're BEING is people who raise the bar.

What would people who "raise the bar" do?

• Would they post the same old, same old content on social media?

• Would they go to the same old, same old tradeshows and continue to get no leads?

• Would they force a program that doesn't work into scale mode?

• Would they just execute a program even though they know it won't work?

Umm, I would say NO. To all of the above.

But this comes back to how accountable we're holing our people to demonstrating what we say are our corporate values.

According to ChatGPT, raising the bar requires, "a clear vision and goals, self-awareness and honesty, skill development, consistency and discipline, accountability, adaptability, leadership and motivation, innovation and creativity, and resilience and perseverance".

But does YOUR team even know what it means for them to demonstrate "raising the bar"?

And do you even measure your marketing against how it's doing that?

Only when we DO measure that performance can we actually EARN what only we can.

And that's the CONFIDENCE that WE can achieve OUR goals, OUR way.

Marketing: Branded, Confident DOING

If any doing is going to be happening in Marketing, then I would prefer for it to be branded and confident.

Why?

• We stand out from our competitors as a unique brand.

• We confidently rise above the noise to find OUR people.

I mean, isn't that what marketing's all about, anyway?

Showing people who we are? In a confident way? To help the people only we can?

That's what I think it is, anyway.

And if we're going to be doing DOING, then that doing should contribute to that goal.

So, what happens when our doing is the RESULT instead of the INPUT?

• We do things that WE would do.

• We do things that make sense.

• We do things that are in alignment with our goals.

• We do things that manifest in connection.

• We do things without expecting a follow-up result (like a sale).

• We do things that show the world who we are, and why they want to choose us.

I'll tell you, I see a LOT of marketing "doing" on a daily basis. Corporate LinkedIn Pages are FULL of them. We create content because we're "supposed to", instead of because of our desire to build relationships with specific people (target clients).

And I've GOT to believe it's because people still think that relationships and business are earned in a linear way.

I create a post, it earns your trust, and then you buy from me, which makes me happy.

How's that working for you?

If it's not, then maybe, just maybe, flipping the script WILL.

And I would be SUPER happy to support your team in that exercise 💖 Let's chat.