What Is Marketing About (Other Than Using The Internet Like a Money Tap?)

'If I could teach all broke people ONE skill,' I thought to myself this past weekend, 'It would be to teach them how to use the internet like a money tap.'

In other words, it'd be MARKETING.

Here's why I think so.

I fell into a YouTube hole over the weekend and I watched a few 'Paris in the 1920's' clips, then 'New York in 1911', both just blissful eye-candy.

Then the YouTube vortex closed in around me and I started heading into the darkness (as you do!), clicking on things like, 'The Most Miserable City in America,' about Gary, Indiana.

Coal mining fueled the growth of Gary until renewable energy sources made coal obsolete just recently. Now Gary is shrinking fast because there's no more future in coal and no other industries to give those left jobless any hope.

More than half of the population has been living on unemployment benefits. And for many of those people, that was only for 6 months. The city is so desperate, many would starve if there were not charitable churches feeding them. 😢

'But if they have an internet connection and a computer,' I thought to myself, 'and someone taught them how to start online businesses and learn how to market them - the entire city could be saved!'

Silly, idealistic, hungover brain fart, I know. 💁‍♀️💨

For starters, there are tremendous obstacles to even having internet and a computer, for many people.

But everything else is just a matter of access to education, then the ability and capacity to study and to implement.

And the internet is our access to education. It's a golden tap of knowledge, a freakin' oracle at our fingertips!

And while I can't go to help Gary myself, I can still be someone who reaches out to people across the world and says 'Hey, you can learn this stuff. You can make money online. You can make a living online.'

Marketing is the skill to turn the internet into a money tap, IMHO.

It's worked for me and it can work for you.

Now allow me to give you a starter kit of resources...

What Is Marketing About & How Does It Work?

Anybody can put something up for sale on a site like Ebay or Etsy. I sold thousands of dollars of handmade accessories on each site when I knew shit-all about marketing. Those platforms do the marketing for you. They've gathered all the buyers onto the platform for you to sell to.

But when you open your own shop, say with Shopify or your own website, you're just a tiny star lost in a galaxy of stars. You have to learn how to drive traffic to that site to buy your products or services. That's when you need to learn the 5 essential steps to marketing:

1. Building awareness (that you even exist)
2. Attracting attention and holding interest (through your amazing product inventory or what you keep talking about in your content)
3. Converting (getting people to accept what you offer them)
4. Retention (keeping customers coming back for more)
5. Loyalty (getting to where your customers' loyalty is the natural outcome of your first-class customer care and nurturing.)

These are the 5 essential foundations of marketing that you need to build to earn money online.

You Don't Need To Work-Your-Ass-Off To Sell When You Know How To Market🪄💫

'Whoe, Christine, this sounds like a lot of hard work!'

☝️ What my friends say when they mistakenly come up to me with a business idea and they ask me what marketing is about. It's like they have opened a direct portal into my heart, and I unleash my inner marketing geek on them. 😄

There are so many different types of marketing mediums, like blogging, having a podcast, a YouTube channel, social media marketing, etc.

And when people start to learn about each type of marketing, they think that is the marketing itself. They get buried alive in the tactics and in trying to stay consistent with frequent posting.

But those are just the tools and tactics of marketing, the essence is simpler.

Marketing is more about the connection between what you're selling and the hearts of your potential buyers.

If you say meaningful things to people that connect them to what you're selling, that is what will get people to buy from you.

For example, if you're selling things people want but don't need, like handmade jewelry, you're selling what those things can mean to people.

They are never just buying a 'necklace,' they are buying what that necklace will mean to them at their sister's cruise ship wedding, for example.

So you focus on all the imaginary scenarios you can think of where your products would mean things to people.

Or, if you sell things people do need, like design services, you sell solutions to relieve people's pain. So you focus on all the areas of pain, describing each of them in detail so that people will see your service as the perfect fit for their problem.

The 'hard work' of marketing isn't in a bunch of rote actions, like writing blog posts or scheduling Instagram stories. It's getting your connection-message down.

This takes practice and skill, but it's not crazy complex, either.

Finally, Marketing Isn't A Damn Scam

I can't not say anything about this for the bumpkins out there who are (in 2024!!) surprised that people can make money online and it not be a scam.🙄

Good marketing sells people the things they want to buy.

Scams take people's money and either don't give them anything in return or not at all what they paid for. I got scammed last year - I saw a Facebook ad for a clothing brand, ordered two items, and got nothing like what I had thought I was ordering. I should have noticed the red flags - shitty images, hardly any followers on Facebook, and very little said in the return policy or terms & conditions.

Anyway.

Scammers abound, but they are just a few rotten onions in the internet fruit basket.

There are also some forms of marketing you want to stay TF away from, like the ''master resell rights'' bullshit that's so popular on TikTok.

Here's what I think about THAT.

Want to learn how to market in a fun & easy way?

If you love to learn but you hate boring, let me teach you how to market while having fun.

If you're a feminist woman or gender diverse creative, join my Facebook community, Marketing For Creative & Unconventional Women & Gender Diverse. It's small right now so you can practically get a free marketing coach outta me because I'm always in there answering questions and geeking out about cool marketing stuff. 😉

I'd love to help you learn how to make the internet your own money tap like I have.

Everyone can IF they learn how to market!

Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts below!