George Kao contrasts dark side marketing, which uses manipulative funnels and persuasion tactics to control buyers, with light side marketing, which respects free will, treats content as ministry, and builds long-term trust without attachment to sales outcomes.
I want to introduce this concept of light marketing and all of us who are business owners, if you have a service or a product to provide to the world, you know you have to do some marketing. And starting today you get to have the decision of whether to do marketing from the light side of the force or, or the dark side of the force, which unfortunately is how most marketing is taught from, is the dark side of the force. So let me explain. Well, you might say, first of all, why does anybody go to the dark side of the force when it's clearly right? Clearly the light side is good and the dark side is bad. Really? I'm curious, what do you think? Why do you think people go to the dark side versus the light side? Because that same answer or that answer you give to that is probably true for you because you're making that decision in other areas of your life between the light side and the dark side. And the answer you give is probably applicable to how you think and how you're going to do marketing and to spread your message and bring your offers to more people. So for example, this is speaking from my own experience, okay. I found that sales funnels are typically from the dark side. A sales funnel is where you might see a social media ad which brings you into an email sequence or webinar. And the ad seems to suggest that they will give you gifts that will enlighten your life, that will bring you joy and transformation and all that good stuff. And yet it is a non transparent, cleverly designed process to manipulate you from being a stranger into a buyer. And you say, george, isn't that what marketing is? No. This is why I try to teach the light side of a force type of marketing as often as I can. The dark side essentially does things that are, they believe it will convert someone from a visitor to a buyer in these particular sequence. If they read this email and they come to this webinar and they watch this video and they read the sales page, then they said they're supposed to buy and well, gosh, have you met a human being? Are they one dimensional like that? No, of course not. But the dark side believes so because the dark side wants it easier to be able to control a pipeline or a particular journey. Whereas the light sides, the light side is very much respecting a free will and of diversity of thought and of type of person. And so the light side says, well, what we know what, the light side says this, it's harder to track your marketing than you believe you can do. So if it was that easy to track Marketing. Marketing would be figured out for every company by this point, but it's not okay. And for every businesses, no, the light side says there is, there is an X factor. There is, you might say a divine timing or you know, sort of like destiny type of thing where all you can do from the light side is to bless, is to serve from the heart, is to care genuinely for the person in front of you and yes, to do it diligently right through content and through humble offers that have no attachment to whether people buy and through also market research to find out what people want and what people are buying. Because market research is basically the light side says market research is understanding how to meet people where they're at to serve their wants because that's what they want. We want to give them what they want, but also giving them what we believe they need as well. So the light side says, listen what we are going to think of our content as mostly a ministry. Whether people buy from us or not. We're going to deliver this content with our heart and with non attachment. And we're also going to diligently, consistently do market research so that we can provide, humbly offer a product or service that we believe meets their wants. But if it doesn't, that's okay. We are not attached. We're not going to make them buy. We're not going to use any kind of tactics that shortcut their free will so that we can control them better. Because this is mainstream marketing. Mainstream marketing wants to control you. Calls to action should work. It should be a higher conversion rate. And the light side says screw the conversion rate. Not really. Completely disregarded. But the conversion rate shouldn't come as a result of high persuasion, clever copywriting. The conversion rate is higher if the market research is good and if the product or service is so excellent that it has natural word of mouth and that you have high trust with the audience because you've been serving them with content as a ministry for years or months at least usually. So this is just a brief brief Some thoughts about the light side of the force Dark side of the fourth with as regards to marketing, which all of us solopreneurs particularly must do if we're going to have a livelihood. So I really do look forward to seeing your comments below. How does, how might you apply this to your own business, your own marketing? Because you have to make that decision about light side, dark side almost every day that you work you're making that decision. So I hope that this is inspiring in some way and thank you so much for joining me on this journey.
