Act fast to get this limited-quantity item! Your life is not good enough without this product. Sound familiar? Business-as-usual marketing relies on scarcity, but it doesn’t have to be like that. As you’ll learn in today’s episode, changing the way that we look at marketing starts with framing it in a different context. Rather than incentivizing consumers to buy products, Next Economy marketing focuses on relationship-building, a process that is focused on listening, empathy, and truly understanding someone’s needs in order to create opportunities to meet them.
Join Shawn Berry and LIFT Economy Marketing Lead Jeanette Morelan to find out what marketing looks like in the Next Economy, from iterative design grounded in reality to responsive audience research and user testing, factual and emotional messaging, authentic storytelling, and more. Although we use some of the same tools as business-as-usual marketing, Next Economy business principles inform a slower and more intentional approach to commerce.
At the end of the day, we believe that marketers have a moral responsibility to meet people where they’re at and offer solutions to basic needs rather than manipulating people or manufacturing desires. Tune in today to learn more about your role in fulfilling a vision of collective liberation and “speaking the Next Economy into existence.”
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Key Points From This Episode:
• Relationship-building over manipulation: what Next Economy marketing looks like. [0:01:55]
• How marketing fits into an organization’s overall business strategy. [0:04:12]
• Recommendations for developing a responsive marketing strategy. [0:07:50]
• Zones of marketing activity for Next Economy organizations. [0:12:35]
• Digital campaigns versus partnerships and word-of-mouth marketing. [0:16:08]
• Why word of mouth is the most effective and least expensive zone to pursue. [0:19:38]
• What we mean when we talk about factual and emotional messaging. [0:23:59]
• Examples of Next Economy organizations that apply these strategies. [0:29:03]
• How authentic storytelling fits into brand messaging. [0:34:25]
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Tweetables:
“Fundamentally, business-as-usual marketing relies on this lens of scarcity – That underlying theme creates the sense that there’s not enough. It creates siloes between us. It creates competition between companies and industries where there doesn’t necessarily have to be any.” — Jeanette Morelan [0:02:38]
“If you’re not solving a known need for your community, it’s going to be a lot harder to market and sell that.” — @sd_berry [0:05:32]
“[Audience research] doesn’t always turn into a direct sales and marketing relationship, but that information is super valuable because I’m not making assumptions about what people need. I’m actually hearing from them directly.” — Jeanette Morelan [0:18:37]
“At the end of the day, openness, collaboration, speaking the Next Economy into existence, and tossing away the idea of scarcity and competition is a moral responsibility that all of us have, but particularly marketers.” — Jeanette Morelan [0:36:46]
“You might be talking about a cup of tea or a sneaker or a small product, but it’s nested in this vision of collective liberation.” — @sd_berry [0:37:16]
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Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Our Table Cooperative — https://www.ourtable.us/
Red Bay Coffee — https://www.redbaycoffee.com/
Allbirds — https://www.allbirds.com/
The Next Economy MBA: Redesigning Business for the Benefit of All Life – https://www.powells.com/book/-9781523002573
Shawn Berry on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdberry/
Shawn Berry on Twitter — https://twitter.com/sd_berry
Jeanette Morelan on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanettemorelan/
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LIFT Economy Newsletter
Join 8,000+ subscribers and get our free 60-point business design checklist—plus monthly tips, advice, and resources to help you build the Next Economy: https://lifteconomy.com/newsletter
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Next Economy MBA
This episode is brought to you by the Next Economy MBA.
What would a business education look like if it was completely redesigned for the benefit of all life? This is why the team at LIFT Economy created the Next Economy MBA (https://lifteconomy.com/mba).
The Next Economy MBA is a nine-month online course for folks who want to learn key business fundamentals (e.g., vision, culture, strategy, and operations) from an equitable, inclusive, and regenerative perspective.
Join the growing network of 350+ alumni who have been exposed to new solutions, learned essential business skills, and joined a lifelong peer group that is catalyzing a global shift towards an economy that works for all life.
Learn more at https://lifteconomy.com/mba.
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Show Notes + Other Links
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Music by Chris Zabriskie: https://chriszabriskie.com/