Why don’t people just recognize what’s best for them and then do it?

While people like you and I can clearly see, from our lofty vantage points the best course of action for the people we’re seeking to engage with and serve, they seem more than happy to persist in their irrationality.

They walk in circles, bang their heads against any of the many walls they encounter, and then have the temerity to whine about how hard life is.

Can’t they see that we have the solution available to their problems? We’ve offered it to them dozens of times, clearly explained its benefits and features, and demonstrated how it will help them get to where they’re looking to go.

Shouldn’t that be enough?

It probably should. But it’s often not.

No matter how obvious the road maps and solutions are to us, our audiences will seldomly make cool level-headed decisions based on data and facts alone.

It’s easy to assess our marketing, our website, our podcast and say “This should be working!” But the world, and the people that make it up, seldom behave as they should.

As marketers and creators, as much as we might wish that the equation {customer problem + our product = customer solution + our profit} was enough to make a living off the work we do, it’s rarely the case.

The world doesn’t exist on paper or formulas, but in relationships, beliefs, biases, internal stories, and all of the other messiness that makes us humans the intolerable, confounding, surprising and sometimes inspiring creatures we are.

Our job when marketing the work we do then is not to structure our marketing around the way the world should be, the way our audience should react, but to meet them where they’re at, and adapt our work to the way they are.

This takes empathy, patience, and curiosity. But the relationships it leads to are worth the effort.

Besides, surely someone further ahead of you and me is currently watching us bang our own heads against walls of our own.

Wouldn’t you rather they met us where we’re at, took us by the hand and showed us the way around the wall in a language we understand?

https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/good-marketing-starts-with-empathy-a0b239c2bafahttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/good-marketing-starts-with-empathy-a0b239c2bafa