How to Sell Without Being Salesy
Are you not marketing your work because you're afraid of feeling salesy or self-promotional? Today, I’m going to give you some tips to help your mindset—because that’s where it starts—and then tangible tips and strategies to incorporate in your marketing to make the sale!
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I'm Shelby, a bestselling author and marketing teacher, and I've sold tens of thousands of books through social media marketing without cold DMing people or doing marketing that feels unaligned to me.
We all know that you have to sell if you want to make sales. You have to talk about your product on a regular basis if you want people to know it exists. But selling without feeling “salesy” or self-promotional is one of the number one hurdles I hear from my community.
I don't want to feel salesy or self-promotional either! When I first started sharing my work online, I did it anonymously because I had so much fear around self-promotion and people seeing me market my work. So let’s talk about mindset tips first.
Mindset
The first thing to address is just our mindset around selling. A lot of us creatives have this thing about feeling self-promotional. I want you to flip the script and really think about what it is you're doing when you market your product.
Whether that’s a book, art, music, or anything else, we’re adding good into the world, usually in the form of entertaining others—which is something that everyone needs. So whenever we think about being self-promotional, it's not that you created a product just like any other brand, and you’re simply getting it in front of the right people.
Whenever I get that salesy feeling, I really have to dig deep and think about my mission and remind myself of my why I write poetry books about mental health—to help others feel less alone, to inspire them, to help them feel seen and heard. By marketing my poetry books, I’m helping other people find words they can connect to.
My mission here is making marketing education more accessible for creatives who want marketing help. Who know they have an amazing product but are having trouble getting it seen. I believe wholeheartedly in that mission, which is why I'm able to show up here every single week and why I can promote my guides and my products and my courses—because I know that they’re a really good fit for so many creatives out there, and I have the testimonials to back them up.
So remind yourself of your why the next time you go to sell!
That Scary Word—Marketing
Whenever I think of the word marketing, I'm very comfortable with it now, and I teach it and talk about it all the time. But when I first started out writing my books and selling them, I didn’t like that word. I shied away from it, and I shied away from marketing my products. It wasn't natural to me.
A lot of us have this view of marketing or sales as being this pushy thing, when we're just putting out content that relates to our audience, makes them feel seen and understood and listened to. Then they opt to purchase our product if it's a good fit for them. All we really need to do is show them why we're right for them. If you're feeling uncomfortable with this, try to get comfortable with soft selling first by casually mentioning your product.
TANGIBLE TIPS
Be a Good Listener
If you've created a product that fulfills a need—you listened to the readers of your genre or customers in your niche—then you already created something that's really going to help them. Now that you have this amazing product, you can do even more research on how readers or customers of your niche are talking about the products, including yours. Then you can use the words and phrases (not word for word) that people are using in your own marketing to let them know you have them in mind.
Your Ideal Customer
One of my favorite tricks for coming up with content for marketing my books or my products is imagining that perfect person, the one I’m creating for, that will benefit the most. I literally close my eyes when I'm about to create content, and I picture who I want to be seeing this post or opening this email or reading this book. I think about what I want them to feel as they go through it. This helps because then it doesn't feel like you're trying to make everyone happy. You're just speaking to your ideal customer like a one-on-one conversation between two friends.
Natural Storytelling
My next tip is incorporating storytelling naturally into your content and then pitching your product, or connecting it back to your product, at the end. You can share as much or as little as you want to. I like to incorporate storytelling because it feels like a more natural way of talking about my products—the story behind why I created it! Another thing you can do, depending on your brand and what feels natural to you, is incorporating humor or inspiration into your posts.
There's no one right way to sell or to market, but the more you do step out of your comfort zone and practice this on a regular basis, the better off you'll be and the more sales you'll make. It does take some work and effort to get over this mindset block, but I believe in you!
There is a lot of marketing and sales advice out there, so just remember that you don't have to take advice that doesn't align with you or your goals. Take what works for you and leave what doesn't. And if you want more details on what I talked about in this post, head over to the YouTube video or podcast (buttons listed under the opening image).
I’ll see you next time. Bye!