I’ve Discovered a Breakthrough Marketing Secret

marketingOn Saturday, August 1st, I posted a YouTube video about a unique wedding where the wedding party all came in dancing to a Chris Brown song entitled, “Forever.” I got to looking at it, and as I was, I started getting emails and twitters.  And even on yahoo, it’s one of the number one posts.  Everyone, it seemed, was discovering this unique, happy, feel-good video at about the same time.

As I watched the video and listened to the song, I had a breakthrough in my mind about how to market your stuff. It will cost you almost nothing.

Now let me stop and say, if you don’t have stuff worth marketing, this won’t work.  So you can stop reading.  If you have good stuff, compelling stuff, stuff that makes a difference; stuff that isn’t about you and your genius, but about people, helping them, and giving them hope, then this is for you.

Here’s the breakthrough I had; the aha moment. I don’t care for Chris Brown music, okay?  I said it.  I don’t own any Chris Brown music and I don’t listen to Chris Brown music.  And since the truth has come out about him lately, I don’t plan on owning any Chris Brown music.

I mean, I don’t like Chris Brown music.  You can market Chris Brown music, you can Twitter Chris Brown music, you can send a flier to my home, and you can even walk up to me on the street and say, “Here is a free Chris Brown CD.”  Out of politeness (and of course that’s important) I’d probably take it.  But I’d ditch it the first chance I got.  Did I say I don’t like Chris Brown music?

But all that changed when I watched this video.  My first response after I viewed the video was to find out who is this person and where can I get it?  I went to iTunes and immediately found the song entitled, “Forever,” but I had two major problems.  One, hey, it’s Chris Brown.  I don’t like Chris Brown and I don’t buy Chris Brown music.  Two, and more importantly, I don’t buy $1.29 downloads from iTunes on principle.  So what did I do?  I went to my trusty back-up, Amazon, who always has it for 99 cents, and guess what?  They are selling it for $1.29 as well.

So what did I do?  I went back, swallowed my pride, bought the song, and I’ve been wearing it out all week.  Here is the breakthrough: the way Chris Brown got to me is through handing his music off and letting me see what it can do to people, and what they can do with it.

There is the secret, ladies and gentlemen.  What does the stuff you create do to people?  Does it inspire them, move them, change them, cause them to rethink their position, get up, to move around, to dance?  Could your music convince an entire wedding party to risk looking really stupid?

What does your stuff not only do to people, but what can they do with it? This guy and gal created a forever moment with something created and handed to them by an artist.

So here’s the deal.  Whatever you’re creating.  Are you so inspired that whatever you’re creating does to people, will also inspire them to do something with it?  Will it lift, love, and create forever moments?

If you’ve got a book, got a song, get it in the hands of the people for which it is intended and see what they do with it. They might make a crazy video.  They may start a hash-tag twittering campaign.  They may put it on their Facebook and it may go viral.  All this by-passes Madison Avenue and all the big, expensive, graphic-intense web site programs.  Bottom line: content rules; always has, always will

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