Marketing tactics are fundamentally changed when you do them with the explicit purpose of getting something immediately in return.
There’s a time and a place for a transactional interaction, but it’s almost always long after some trust and confidence is earned.
And yet, so much potentially good marketing is turned bad by bolting on an ask that is often far larger than what’s given.
Worse, when it fails because of this, it can even cause us to claim the tactic was fundamentally bad.
A literal example of this, which I’ve seen posted about a few times recently, is gifting.
“Nobody ever bought expensive software because of a coffee gift card”
“Bribing someone to take a meeting never produced good meetings”
These statements, while factual, miss the entire point because the motives were never correct.
The act of a gift is to create a real connection through a human moment, sometimes of celebration, consideration, commiseration, and simply to show that they’re valued.
Giving a gift to get a better one is the opposite of this.
But it goes beyond gifts, of course.
This same thing applies to content, events, even advertising. Most marketing is trying to create awareness, association, and memory for what you do.
Which means the majority of your marketing is in pursuit of getting your audience to think of you, and think well of you. That’s entirely an act of giving the most value you can and asking only for attention.
We’re in the business of trust, not transactions.
We may ultimately be goaled on those transactions, but they are almost always a lagging outcome of the real job we do.
The real secret, though, is that when you have trust, those outcomes you want take much less effort, often even coming your way without even having to ask.