342. Can non-coercive marketing really work? ☮️
A look at the pros and cons of non-coercive marketing for startups
Hi there 👋
Here we are in the middle of October, and my life at the moment is all about 2023. Is that the same for you? We are in the thick of company planning for next year while at the same time working toward our Q4 and end-of-year targets. I find it to be one of the most exciting times of year, probably because I identify more as a starter than a finisher and there’s so much new stuff to start in the new year. I’ll put together some resources we’re using for our annual planning and share them here in the coming weeks. In the meantime, let me know what you’re working on and thinking about. I’d love to help!
Wishing you a great week ahead,
Kevan
(ᵔᴥᵔ)
Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Can non-coercive marketing really work in tech?
Recently at Oyster we’ve been sharing around this amazing essay from Rob Hardy at Ungated called Non-Coercive Marketing: A Primer.
A new philosophy of marketing, rooted in letting go of control, and trusting people to be their own authority.
Rob’s website is full of amazing resources about unique ways to build a business, much of which is aligned to the theory of 1,000 true fans — that if you have 1,000 people who connect with what you do, that’s all you need in order to build a successful business.
His perspective on non-coercive marketing struck a chord with a lot of us at Oyster, probably because the core of non-coercive marketing is designed to resonate a personal level:
The key ingredient in non-coercive marketing is the golden rule. We should market to others the way we'd want to be marketed to ourselves.
Sounds pretty great, right?
I know exactly how I would like to be marketed to, which is to say, I don’t really want to be marketed to at all.
And therein lies the rub. As marketers, our job is to connect our company with its customers. So if we as individuals have unique attitudes about modern-day marketing, if some of us go so far as being allergic to marketing tactics, and if non-coercive marketing asks you to market in the way you want to be marketed to, then where does that leave us?
It’s been an interesting thought exercise for me to figure out just how realistic non-coercive marketing can be for our efforts at Oyster and for startup marketing in general and how we can continue making progress toward a more human-centric marketing approach over time. I thought I’d let you in on my thoughts so far.
First, a definition. I’d encourage you to read the whole essay, but here is Rob’s one-paragraph definition of non-coercive marketing:
Non-coercive marketing places full authority and trust in people. It creates the conditions under which they can make empowered decisions for themselves, and do so in their own time. It doesn't seek to persuade, manipulate, or pester people into a decision that's already been made for them. It merely opens new doors, tells the truth about what's behind those doors, then surrenders the outcome, trusting that the right people will step through when they're ready. In that way, non-coercive marketing is a leap of faith, rooted in the idea that if you stop trying to control people, and encourage them to be their own authority, you can build positive sum relationships that lead to organic and mutually-enriching transactions. This relational shift is also at the heart of how we begin healing the emotional wounds lying beneath humanity's many problems.
This can be summarized in the following nine bullet points:
Optimize for aligned, empowered customers
Surrender control, and embrace emergence
Cede authority
Treat people as ends, not means
Enough is enough
Play long games
Tell the truth, even when it's scary
Create invitations, not ultimatums
Trust fully and unconditionally
What’s possible now
Treat people as ends, not means. Fortunately, this principle is at the core of Product-Led Growth (PLG). With PLG, you are building for the end user and obsessing over how to deliver the most value to that user … and to deliver it fast. Ironically, to Rob’s point in his essay, “when you're dealing with data, it's easy to depersonalize the marketing process, and treat people in ways that violate the golden rule,” but the beauty of PLG is that you’re creating data in order to make the marketing process even more personalized.
Play long games. For the most part, I believe that marketing teams can and should live partially in the long-game world today. At Oyster, we try to balance our short-term progress with long-term planning. We also talk a lot about the infinite game.
Examples of the long game:
Choosing to build an SEO moat
Investing in foundations for marketing operations and infrastructure
Category creation (which has a three-to-five year - or more - payoff)
Tell the truth, even when it’s scary. Perhaps the best example that comes to mind with this principle is when you’re talking to potential customers about the competitive landscape and you’re able to say to them, “If you want feature X, then we’re the best choice; if you want feature Y, then you should probably try this other product.” That level of truth is scary because it might mean you lose a customer, but it’s ultimately the best outcome for your business and your prospect.
Create invitations, not ultimatums. Generally-speaking, I’ve found it easy to bring an invitation mindset to the marketing efforts that we do — everything from ad copy to email subject lines to website to creative can have an invitation feel without losing out on conversion. People like to feel invited and included. Where this gets tricky is if you overemphasize scarcity and fear to drive conversion.
What’s been tough
Optimize for aligned, empowered customers.
Surrender control and embrace emergence
Cede authority
Enough is enough
Trust fully and unconditionally
Rather than speak to each of these principles individually, I thought I’d leave them grouped together because they all share a similar obstacle: growth expectations. Now, I’m not saying that marketing teams shouldn’t have growth expectations — far from it. But if startup marketing is to truly embrace non-coercive marketing, we’ll have to think about targets and KPIs and timeframes totally different.
For instance, it’s hard to optimize for aligned customers when you have a very particular customer goal to hit this week. It’s hard to surrender control and to feel like you have enough when your investors expect a certain growth rate and your next fundraise depends on your growing by a certain linear amount.
When I think about non-coercive marketing, I often come back to a lot of the brand leadership that I’ve learned over the years. Books like Emily Heyward’s Obssessed talk about the importance of Why:
In fact, a fair definition of how to think about “brand” is “why should people care?” …
The consumer need and the brand idea are two sides of the same coin. The consumer need identifies the problem; the brand idea (which is intimately linked to the business idea) is the solution.
I believe that you can’t have a good brand strategy without having a foundation of non-coercive marketing.
In theory, if the why aligns to something that people truly care about, then you should have a clear path ahead with your non-coercive marketing strategy, even as it relates to growth. The hardest part will always be surrendering control, trusting fully, and believing that the growth will come, and it will remain that way until we set different expectations for our startups.
Misc.
Good channel manager / Bad channel manager
The massive unlock to building an effective remote company — Mutiny’s playbook for their remote marketing team
50 ways to be ridiculously generous—and feel ridiculously good.
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I currently lead the marketing team at Oyster (we’re hiring!). I previously built brands at Buffer, Vox, and Polly. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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