To Magnetise Your Market, Let Your Core Values Shine Through
What would it be like if ideal customers or perfect employees just turned up at your doorstep?
No more pitches, proposals or wading through CVs.
Just ‘POOF’, the phone rings or your email pings and a voice says, ‘I love what you do, can I work with you.’
Sound farfetched?
Well for one company it’s a reality.
‘They turn up. The fact they come to us is the best possible advertisement.’
That was Ian Hislop on James O’Brien’s Full Disclosure podcast.
They were discussing the ongoing success of Private Eye and how the magazine continues to attract some of the best journalists in the world to its small corner of satirical journalism.
In many ways, Private Eye is part of a dying breed, whose principles and core values are quite different from that of the modern media.
Something that’s reflected clearly in the style and quality of the writing.
While most of the mainstream drives for the largest audience with hyperbolic, clickbaity headlines and short, superficial puff pieces, Private Eye does the opposite.
With its focus on investigative journalism, deep research and social and political observation, it harkens back to the golden age of London’s Fleet Street.
A time when papers sought to tell the truth rather than create division in pursuit of their own ideological and commercial ends.
However, far from losing out, its dedication to its core values attracts a very specific community of readers and journalists.
And with 700,000 readers, not necessarily a small one.
You see, when looking to recruit the right talent or attract ideal clients, the best advert is not a shopping list of skills and preferred experience or a page of features and benefits.
It’s the principles and values that drive your business and the way in which you communicate them to the market.
People don’t buy things. They buy into the things that are meaningful to them. The things that they can see themselves in.
So next time you’re updating your website or creating some marketing content, forget about what you do.
Instead, help your audience see what you stand for through the quality of your thinking and the beliefs that drive your approach.
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