First, a couple definitions:

Expertise Marketing- Positioning a company as the knowledge and skill leader of a related topic to their niche

Awareness Marketing- Plastering a company’s name, key products, and reputation in front of as many targeted eyes as possible

With that said, Expertise Marketing will always pay higher and cost less than  Awareness Marketing. Not because of some new trend in technology (though the internet does make the fact painfully obvious), but because Expertise Marketing works to build a clear, solid, trustworthy path to your sales floor using capital any good business should already have.

By publishing a blog, writing a book, attending/forming industry events, or even training your damn staff, companies can show customers first-hand why they’re products are trustworthy.

By providing advice that works and telling stories that resonate, you’re essentially giving customers a test-drive of your company without spending a single cent in production costs. Awareness costs thousands up front and

The downsides to Expertise Marketing exist, certainly, and here’s a few off the top of my head:

• Somebody is going to have to spend time on it, no matter how busy the company is
• That time is best spent on an individual with good writing skills, which is less common than any reasonable person would hope for
• The returns aren’t immediate

By not immediate, I mean the test-drive has to ROCK. It has to work, work well, and look good doing it. Essentially, you have to prove your expertise one drip at a time.

But Awareness Marketing does reach more people faster, and the sensible approach would dictate a few ads here and there and maybe a supplementary campaign. (Yeah, that means a marketing campaign for your marketing efforts. I know.)

I haven’t been in the marketing field for very long, just my entire professional career. Which is about a year now if you don’t count my years as a ‘struggling’ (ie not popular) musician (which I would argue is entirely marketing, even if not good marketing.)

But I have been in the field with more vigor and intensity than most people I know at this stage of their career.

And I’ll tell you what, there are many things about marketing you would never expect. Not if you learned about it from a school, or from MadMen (although MadMen is probably closer to reality than school is.)

Learn to write

I don’t mean reports. I mean literary. Short stories. Journalism. In other words, copywriting. If there is one skill I implore anyone to learn, it’s basic copywriting.

Face to face interaction will always be King, but the written word is quickly gaining even more traction. Hell, that’s all the internet is.

What is copywriting?

Copywriting is a style of writing specifically designed to get somebody to do something. It’s persuasive writing. It’s influential writing. In other words, it’s the only writing that matters in business. This blog uses copywriting principles, but if you want a great example to learn from, visit Copyblogger.com

Learn to take risks

Why? Risks are interesting. Risks aren’t gambles, they’re investments. Invest in risk all the time and develop your sense of good risk vs bad risk.

But more importantly than that, take risks because marketing is full of safe bets that aren’t actually safe at all. The ‘right way to do something’ is often very wrong in marketing because marketing is the process of standing out and doing something the ‘right way’ is the quickest way to blend in. Simple as that.

Learn to learn

Have you ever heard how it takes 10,000 hours worth of practice to become an expert? Well it only takes 20 hours to become competent at anything.

It only takes about 20 hours worth of practice with a guitar before you can strum chords well in a band. It only takes about 20 hours worth of learning time before you can code HTML better than 90% of the internet. Most other computer languages are the same way.

That 10,000 hours is the space between competent and amazing, but you don’t need to be amazing at everything. That’s a waste of time. Just be good at what you need to be good at and most importantly…

Learn to relax

The worst marketer is a stressed out marketer. The one way to make your marketing messages and ideas seem forced (and quite frankly pathetic) is to force them out in some desperate attempt. Desperation smells like death, and nobody wants to be around it.

Not only that, but when you’re not relaxed, you take shortcuts. You start believing snake oil salesmen. You start doubting yourself. You end up looking like a wimp who shouldn’t be around. But don’t take it too easy.

Learn to never put a limit on your ambition

Ambition is a marketer’s best friend. In fact, ambition is a marketer’s only job. If you can be ambitious, the rest will take care of itself.

Aliens? No, don’t be stupid.

The Pharaohs were an interesting lot of people. They had huge visions of legacy and prosperity, and they would stop at nothing to achieve it. And they did a pretty good job.

But what did they actually do to make that happen? They certainly didn’t do it themselves. And the projects were so massive and complex it clearly wasn’t pure brute force against an enslaved population. (Besides, evidence suggests a big slave population in ancient Egypt has been historically exaggerated.)

So who were the linchpins that turned one man’s ego driven vision into reality?

Talented people, of course! People who intuitively understood the rules of engineering and architecture and could draw up some plans for others to follow.

And so it is in business. If you’re going to start an operation, there’s really only one talent you really need, and that’s finding talented people.

If you can effectively discover, hire, nurture, and keep talented individuals, then there isn’t much stopping you from succeeding.

This is true with any project that requires more than one person. It’s true for companies, rock bands, political activists, even social and friend groups. (Who’s going to have a better time, a group of people who are talented at the art of interesting conversation and empathy, or a group of people who sit around and wait for someone else to say something interesting?)

So maybe the first thing a business does shouldn’t be ‘find a customer.’ Maybe it should be ‘find someone good at finding people.’

Build an empire. Conquer the world.

Nothing will stop your dreams faster than not dreaming big enough. Don’t aim to be mediocre. Aim to be the best.

But don’t get cocky.

Business is a very detail oriented…well, business. Don’t get so caught up in your grandiose vision that you think you don’t have to show up and say hi once in a while. Don’t think you can’t make incremental improvements.

Don’t get caught with a dull sword when you attack the dragon because you didn’t think to sharpen it.

DVR. Netflix. Adblock software. Gmail Priority Mailbox. Spam filters. Do Not Call lists.

All of these inventions can tell you exactly how much demand exists for services that block unsolicited marketing. How much demand is there? Pretty much all of the demand.

And who can blame them? Nobody wants obtrusive, self-serving pitches and annoying loud as hell advertisements crufting up what is supposed to be a channel for valuable communications.

So interruption marketing doesn’t work. It’s a model so broken you can’t even find the pieces anymore.

But that is just one model. Just one idea somebody had long ago. It was embraced because it worked when consumers had three channels to choose from and companies had ad budgets bigger than their personnel budgets.

You can’t afford that anymore.

There will always be a competitor with a bigger budget than you. Compete here, and you’ll compete your business nose first into the ground.

So where do you compete? And how do you do it?

You compete with trust and intelligence. Allow yourself to become an information leader in (your niche in) your industry. Be the wikipedia for people looking for the information you specialize in.

Bricks, springs, telecom, software, hardware, pencils, notebooks, candy, cheap stuff, expensive stuff, services, freelancers, contractors…

All of these can benefit from the new type of marketing. The type where permission is asked for, not ignored. The type where interruption is not a part of the equation and people are. The type that pushes a company to create value with (wait for it) creativity, rather than transfer value by moving money around and hiding secrets.

Yes, it requires intelligent people on your team. Yes, it requires you to think hard about what you can bring to the world. Yes, it requires tenacity.

But, for God’s sake, that’s what business is.

Don’t bother with formalities.

Yes, get an education and learn as much as you can every day, but forget the formalities. They’re not needed, and more often than not, they hinder your efforts.

I’m talking about the over-the-top sales pitch, the diehard standards for mediums like social media (usually coming from companies and artists with little to no following), and, my favorite, the endless slew of lingo and easy phrases that just cloud your conversation. (Conversation is for sharing and growing a mutual pool of information, not showboating or time wasting.)

If you want to be a marketer, all you need to understand is the function marketing represents: Help people find your company.

Help people find your company literally. Keep a moderate budget for simple and obvious advertising. (Need springs? We sell springs. Click here.)

Also, help people find your company in the right mindset. No use telling somebody about your cold medicine when they feel great. But when someone catches a cold you have their full attention.

One last thing: help people feel delighted when they find your company. Provide free expertise they need immediately or a genuinely enjoyable experience that’s easy to share. (Then help them share it.)

So no, nobody but your boss has a clue where you were educated. Nobody but your boss knows you show up exactly on time every day. Yes, your boss pays your paycheck, but who pays his? Serve them. Forget the rest.

There are only two things you need to make an impact.

First off, you need ambition. Duh, right? It’s difficult to make an impact, so you need the ambition to undertake a difficult task. There’s a lot of different ways to succeed, but they all take work. They all take hustle.

Secondly, you need creativity. Creativity? That’s it? Yes, that’s all you need besides the ambition to make an impact.

With creativity, you can pivot. With creativity, you don’t need to be afraid to change. With creativity, you don’t have to accept the status quo and build something from a template. With creativity, you can create something new. Something unique and scarce. Something valuable.

With creativity, you’re not competing in the marketplace, you’re defining the marketplace.

School is great for making you aware of something.

You go to class, and a professor with subject expertise (hopefully) will talk at length about all the things you should be aware of in his field.

At the end of the day, you graduate and can officially say you are aware of a lot of things. Which is great!

But you are not an expert.

Expertise is something that is developed over a long period of concentrated effort. (Not time, effort.)

People say school is bad, designed wrong, and useless. But that’s not true. School is one way we become aware of the world. It’s your job to take that awareness to the next level.

The things you think are expensive (and of course they are…to you) might not actually be that expensive. That is to say, what’s actually expensive tends to slip beneath your radar. In fact, billions of products ranging from the everyday to the once in a lifetime are priced at absolutely ridiculous margins (that you will never notice.)

Think about it. If somebody had a revered, expert opinion on a product or service, how much room do you have to actually negotiate price? Or, if a product you are purchasing is a small part of a much larger scheme (think as small as Q-tips or as big as an electron microscope), there really won’t be much time to find an arguement against it. You need the thing because you have this much bigger more important thing to deal with.

“Ain’t nobody got time for that!” -Said the person buying Q-tips and the person buying a part for an electron microscope, in unison

So, why start here? That should be obvious…

This is where marketing shines. By telling a good enough story, appearing as a thought leader, building a trust that nobody else has, customers will be more than willing to pay a premium.

You can only drive costs down to zero (and good luck getting there.) But you can build trust to infinity.

Lists work.

Yes, I’m talking about literal lists, like email lists, bullet lists, lists of accomplishments, lists of ideas, even this list of lists.

How do they work? Very simply.

A list is just a long (sometimes short) series of nouns. And people find nouns very impressive.

In fact, most resumes are glorified lists of accomplishments (just a bunch of nouns) and the more bullets people see, the better their immediate impression of you is.

This impression, however, is fleeting.

As soon as you make your mark and show up, you’re expected to add to that list. And that requires obsessively focused verbs. In other words, it requires action.

Not a list of actions, not an intent to action, but real, unbulleted action.

If that action doesn’t happen, the trust and rapport you built with that impressive series of nouns will vanish faster than it took you to write it out.

So when you prepare to impress someone with a list, don’t waste your time putting bullet points down. Instead, use your time to prepare two or three things that highlight what your next action will be, and learn to impress someone in the long run rather than the short term.