The only choice in marketing

Marketing has really become just one decision: Are you focused on who arrives or who stays?

In a bygone era, marketing was almost entirely about who arrived. Teams and agencies ran campaigns based on promotional messaging, meant to capture the imagination and drive action, not by adding much value to someone’s life in that moment in time, but by describing potential value — if only you called, visited, shopped, and bought.

When marketing today focuses on grabbing attention, not holding it, the race is on — a race straight to the bottom.

I never really understood that phrase. How can you race to the bottom of something without it being concrete and physical? Work is open-ended and infinite. There’s no finish line until you’re finished. Then I realized: “race to the bottom” is code for “race yourself right out of existence.” There is a finish line, because if you do it enough … you’re finished.

Arbitraging your way into people’s lives to quickly grab attention results in a singular strategy: “annoy the many to convert a few.”

But what if you solely focused on the few? That might mean a few people, a few dozen, a few hundred or thousand or million — whatever “a few” means to you and your team, as marketers. These are the people who already trust and love you — or the handful of true believers who don’t need much convincing to join you when you’re just starting.

What if you just focused there, equipping them with the experiences they need to go deeper with you … and to go tell others?

This is only possible when the work comes from a place of service, which is still, today, a shift for most marketers. And that’s because we’re in the habit of measuring totals — total visitors, total impressions, total followers, total subscribers. But “totals” isn’t the goal. “Value” is.

Focusing on who stays instead of who arrives means you also have a singular playbook: provide a genuinely good experience, an experience worthy of their continued time investment. All the hyping falls away here, and we’re left with what marketing really is:

It’s not about who arrives. It’s about who stays.

There’s no race to the bottom, no finish line in embracing this truth. You can do great work for as long as you choose. Because you’re focused on who stays, others want you to stick around awhile.

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