Inauthenticity in your marketing comes across like vegan meat substitutes
Much better to be YOU — a delicious, inherently vegan Lentil Salad with Garlic and Herbs — than to be an imposter like No-Tuna Tuna Salad or Walnut "Meat" Loaf.
We've been having a lot of SAD during Covid — SAD being the Standard American Diet. Weekly pizza takeout, mac and Velveeta, cereal for dinner on the bad days. Ugh.
I tell myself I care about my health, so I borrowed a new cookbook from the library. It's called The Blue Zones Kitchen by Dan Buettner. It shares recipes and secrets of longevity from 5 regions of the world with the most people who live to 100+.
The first 4 sections share recipes from tiny regions in Italy, Greece, Japan, and Costa Rica.
As I scanned these chapters, I wanted to hop to the kitchen and start cooking. I was actually hankering for these simple meals made from "peasant" ingredients like beans, rice, sweet potatoes, garden veggies, and herbs foraged from the mountainside.
This is what had me salivating: Cabbage and Sun-Dried Tomato Sauté, Black Bean and Potato Soup, Sweet Potato and Onion Hash, Lentil Salad with Garlic and Herbs. Yum.
Maybe the guy is just a great cookbook writer. But considering how basic and vegetarian these recipes are, they sound delicious.
Then the final section featured recipes from a group of Seventh Day Adventists who live in Loma Linda, California. They're mostly vegan and live on average 10 years longer than their meat-eating neighbors in Southern California.
The recipes were a turn-off for me, though. Things like Walnut "Meat" Loaf, Veggie No-Meat Balls, No-Tuna Tuna Salad. Not appealing.
Nothing against the Seventh Day Adventists. The food is probably tasty, but I'm instantly turned off by them. Meat wanna-bes don't do it for me.
I'll happily eat a good vegetarian meal any day, especially if there are plenty of carbs, but I have no respect for food that pretends to be something it's not.
Same goes for your marketing.
Inauthenticity comes across like a TLT — that is, Tempeh Lettuce & Tomato — Sandwich. It'll never be as good as a BLT.
Even though you provide great service to your clients, your marketing fails when you don't present yourself as YOU, in all your rice-and-beans glory.
How does this mess with you and your business (and your happiness and life satisfaction)?
-
For starters, you have a hell of a time coming up with blog posts. You haven't written one in a month and a half, even though you told yourself you'd post every week.
-
You've been meaning to rewrite your website for the past year, but it's still hanging over your head.
-
You have this annoying worry that people who read your marketing are thinking, 'She doesn't know what she's talking about.'
-
You're overwhelmed, and you feel less than your perceived competitors.
When you're feeling like an imposter — like a Tofu Chocolate Mousse will next to the real deal — talk to me.
I'll help you figure out what you want from your business, what you do so well, and how to convey it à la Sardinian Summer Pasta with Fresh Tomato and Basil.
Let's get cooking!
Sign up for my daily emails: Where small business marketing meets the principles of minimalism: intention, connection, values, & space for joy.
You’ll also automatically free get my Easy Emails Guide for taking the complications out of marketing emails that connect. Update the frequency of your emails or unsubscribe at any time.