Marketing Without Ego
Ego is the enemy of marketing. It's what makes your boss think you're smarter than everyone else, it's what leads to that fight with your coworker, and it's the reason you don't listen when your partner asks if they really look that bad in that dress. More importantly, ego effs with marketing by making you think people will be more interested in what you have to say than they actually are.
Luckily, there are ways to avoid this self-defeating trap! In this post I'm going to discuss how you can market without ego and hopefully some techniques for overcoming this pesky problem.
The first technique is to realize that ego is a toxic mindset to have. This takes time, though, and many people might not even be aware they have it. So let's talk about that next.
Ego is the omnipotent sense of superiority over others and an intense desire to be liked by everyone all the time. It's the attitude that has you constantly worrying about what others think of you, constantly trying to impress them with your thoughts, ideas and goals, and constantly looking for ways to prove yourself more valuable than others.
You see, ego may be linked to insecurity, but it doesn't mean you can't also also be confident. In fact, there are a lot of ways to have both confidence and challenge ego at the same time.
For example, by realizing that other people think you're already a great marketing professional – this assumes that you already know what marketing is (see Self-Esteem), which we all know isn't true. After all, when it comes to marketing this is where many smart people get themselves in trouble. They assume they know more than they do and end up harming their business, because they're not really aware of what they don't know. But as long as you recognize that you don't know everything, and that you need to do more research to get better at marketing, it's easy to prevent yourself from being an egoist.
The second technique is to realize that you're not the best at marketing (which is true). This too is a way to help eliminate that ego. It's also the reason why some people are better marketers than others. In fact, there are few things more tempting to people with ego than trying to make themselves look better by comparing their sales/revenue/success figures against someone else's business or blog.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing to do – but it's absolutely something that should be done with an eye on showing who's the best at what they do (this isn't marketing–it's the world of who gets to be the king and who gets be shoved into the background). It's not about you proving yourself, it's about proving someone else wrong (this is obvious to everyone with ego).
The third technique is to not lecture people about marketing. In fact, if you're constantly rambling on and off about your marketing techniques and knowledge, then you probably have a problem with ego.
Some people do this (and I'm one of them), I just realized it was because I thought I was better than the other person. I was a little worried that they were thinking I was better than them, so I needed to show how highly I thought of myself by trying as hard as possible to prove how knowledgeable/good/important I am. It's this kind of thing that leads to that invisible battle with your coworkers and friends.
But if you want people to like you (and they do, in the end) then stop trying to force them into liking you by constantly trying to prove how great you are. After all, it's pretty obvious from the get-go that some people are going to have more experience and knowledge than others – even if you think nobody would ever notice.
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Marketing Without Ego