Poker Faced Marketing: Benefits and Best Practices

Posted at December 12, 2009

Matthew Kammerer’s recent article entitled “Transparency: Benefits and Best Practices” provided an excellent overview of how transparency, laying your cards on the table, can benefit a business’ profile and build an instant rapport with their audience.

I enjoyed the article and commented that, although I agree, there’s still an argument for offering less transparency in some cases. He suggested that would warrant an article in itself, and here it is.

Keeping a Poker Face

While some feel comfortable adopting an open approach to marketing themselves, their products or services, others defer to a more conventional approach of developing a brand foundation and sitting back from the front line.

The factors that inform this decision tend to be:

1) Brand establishment – Do people know who I am or am I nobody?

2) Target audience – Are they touchy feely ‘people’ people, or suits?

3) Personal preference – Will I present myself better as a profile or a logo?

In the case of Sam and Zach of Build Internet, it’s appropriate to usher site visitors straight into the living room to meet the duo. T’hey’re not directly selling anything and they have thousands of subscribers implicitly vouching for them.

Me, Myself, & We

For those starting out the personal touch is a luxury. Being open about your basement setup, unrecognisable clients and lack of colleagues will give exactly the wrong impression to your friendly neighbourhood marketing exec looking for an enterprise solution. It doesn’t matter that you’re a prodigy, easily able to blow away the competition.

The man with the cash is looking for the little touches that signify professionalism: suits, ties, stock imagery of people in meeting rooms looking at charts, and no one man bands.

Hence why some very talented, professional consultants end up referring to themselves as ‘we’.

Of course, it’s extremely unwise to overexaggerate to the point of misrepresenting yourself. But using ‘we’ is not against the rules – after all, you’ll undoubtedly have your own network of suppliers you use for the big jobs so technically you’re team is greater than 1.

The ‘I’ Generation

Social media is core to the transparent approach. In the case of Sam and Zach the rapport is facilitated by Twitter.

As these tools become less of a novelty and more of an everyday way of communicating across all generations the benefits of transparency will no doubt become more apparent.