These days, you’ll find traditional marketing methods lost amongst the cacophony of brand placement that makes up modern life. And that which is able to cut through the noise, more often than not, immediately hits a wall of consumer apathy. (Generated by the same system.)

So, how do you get through?

Stop marketing your product and start marketing the mutual purpose your business and your target market share. If I sell blenders I shouldn’t tell my customers how much better they are than all the other blenders out there. I should show them that if they own my blender, they can blend anything their heart desires.

You got into this business for a reason right? This is a good place to start looking for you and your market’s mutual purpose. What was that reason?

I started working in marketing/communications because I hated all the amateurish crap sales pitches I received daily. Local commercials drove me nuts. Unusable, ugly websites left me frustrated. Traditional media’s clumsy pandering to my generation was insulting. I was tired of being marketed to and communicated with in uninteresting ways. Ah ha! That’s the mutual purpose: to sincerely engage people in an intuitively involving story instead of patronizing them into buying something. This gives me personal satisfaction, and is valuable and helpful to my agency’s clients.

What’s the mutual purpose you share with your users/customers? If you can’t immediately think of an answer, you’re in trouble.