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Books by Spiritus Members

Lynn Serafinn – Can Spiritual Marketing Save the World?

Note from Shelagh: Lynn is in the process of completing her seminal book, The 7 Graces of Marketing, and I am delighted she has agreed to share here some of the themes she will explore.

Can Spiritual Marketing save the world?

In a word—yes.

Ok, I suppose that warrants some further explanation.

The first thing would be to define what ‘marketing’ is, whether ‘spiritual’ or not.

The next thing would be to define why and from what the world needs ‘saving’.

And lastly, we would need to look at how ‘spiritual marketing’ might be able to rescue both humanity—and the planet.

In my view, ‘marketing’, in any form, is the act of communicating you have something of value to share. Of course, what you deem as ‘valuable’ may or may not fit the perspective of those to whom you are communicating, so the art of marketing is to provide information to your audience about the value of your product so they can also see that value.

Notice I said, ‘so they can also see that value’ and not, ‘so they will buy your product.’ You might think that is an odd way to define marketing, but this important distinction is vital to our understanding if we are to see the difference between what I call ‘old school marketing’ and ‘spiritual marketing’.

The truth is very few people will purchase something based upon a single exposure to a marketing message. People take time to decide where they want to spend their money, and ultimately they will spend it on what they deem to be valuable to them. The challenge of that for marketers is that this process takes time, and if you ultimately do want people to buy your product or service, you have basically two choices:

1. To create a sense of urgency to ‘convince’ your customers to spend their money faster than they normally would prefer

OR

2. To take the time to develop a long-term relationship with the customer so they come to the decision to purchase your product or service in their own time.

‘Old school marketing’, or at least in my observation, is pretty much focussed on the first of these two approaches. I am sure many large marketing companies might disagree with me and cite the fact they spend quite a lot of time and money on their customer relations. And while on the surface that might appear to be the case, if we look more deeply into the methods by which ‘old school marketing’ communicates, we can recognise a far subtler aspect to marketing, which is actually doing great harm to our culture.

In a nutshell, ‘old school marketing’ is based upon building urgency with the aim of persuading its audience to buy. That urgency is induced through a variety of strategies. As this is just an introductory article, I will highlight the most prevalent of these strategies in two words: ‘fear’ and ‘sex’ (humour is another one, but I won’t be addressing that here).

Nearly all marketing based upon persuasion attempts to instil, sometimes very subtly, the emotions of fear and feelings of sexual inadequacy in its audience. Pay attention to the adverts on your telly or in the newspaper this week (what to speak of the vast amount of Internet marketers) and see where you can spot this for yourself.

Now the trouble with this is that, while the short-term benefit for businesses is that people might buy their products and services, the long-term effect of this kind of marketing is that it actually makes us ill as a society. When we are continually being fed messages of fear and inadequacy, it makes us feel disconnected from ourselves, each other and the planet at large. It renders us feeling powerless and insecure at a very deep level.

What this does to us as a society is unbounded. It culminates in crime (especially in the youth culture), a pandemic array of serious stress-related health issues and an obsessive entanglement with debt that has all but destroyed our own economic system.

And it’s not just people who are suffering. The impact it has had upon our planet is equally, if not more, catastrophic. It might seem like an outrageous statement for me to make, but in my observation ALL of our environmental issues today can be traced back to the way we have marketed our businesses over the past century, especially since the rise of mass media. Again, this is a huge subject that is beyond the scope of this brief article.

Now let’s look at the alternative, which we’ll call ‘spiritual marketing’. You might equally call it ‘value-based’ marketing, ‘conscious marketing’ or simply ‘new marketing’. Spiritual marketing, or at least as I define it, is a practice defined upon sound values, the ultimate goal of which is to make the world a better place.

By definition, therefore, it would never utilise any strategy that would create the long-term effects described above, such as disconnection, disempowerment and hopelessness.

Its focus is not to make the sale at all costs. It is, and must be, holistic.

In other words, if it isn’t good for society and the planet, it isn’t good for the company doing the marketing either. After all, you as a business owner are NOT disconnected from society and the planet; you are a part of them, too. So if you want to be happy, you have to create an environment where everyone around you is also happy. It’s really very simple.

When I coach my clients or speak in public on the subject of spiritual marketing, I say, ‘Your job is never to persuade—ONLY to inspire.’ When you market from spirit, your sole aim should be to shine a light that illuminates the very soul of your customers. If you use that as your personal mission statement, you will begin to change the world through your marketing, and become part of the solution to what is ailing society today.

October 2011 – Lynn is about to publish her book the 7 Graces of Marketing. We talk about how her ideas have developed in the last year here.

Lynn Serafinn Lynn Serafinn is an award-winning transformation coach, book promotion coach, talk radio host and bestselling author of the book The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self. Known widely as a “spiritual marketing guru”, Lynn also works as a promotion manager for mind-body-spirit authors and has produced many top-selling book campaigns, including several #1 sellers. She is also the founder of Spirit Authors, a membership site offering training, coaching and campaign management for mind-body-spirit authors, both established and aspiring. If the subject of this article is of interest to you, you might wish to check out Lynn’s upcoming book The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell. In that book, Lynn goes into great detail about how and why we got ourselves into this predicament, and offers you a new paradigm upon which businesses both large and small can reconstruct their approach to marketing, and begin the process of healing our world at a global scale. And even if you do not have a business, the book provides you with great insight as to how to immunise yourself from the damaging influences of ‘old school marketing’, so you can be a part of the solution too. Stay in touch with Lynn via any of the links below so you can receive updates about the book when it comes out in 2011. Website: lynnserafinn.com Facebook (Lynn Serafinn) Facebook (Spirit Authors) Twitter: @lynnserafinn Twitter: @spiritauthors

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Posted by spiritus on October 18th, 2010 filed in Spiritual Marketing Awareness Month