4 Enchanting Ways to Improve Your Inbound Marketing

A big personal highlight from the recent Inbound Marketing Summit was seeing my friend and mentor Guy Kawasaki speak in person for the first time.

Although I'd already read Enchantment, watching Guy dig deeper into each of the 10 enchanting actions was a fantastic reinforcement of what the book has to teach marketers about the art of changing hearts, minds, and actions. 

Here are all 10 actions, from start to finish: Achieve Likability, Achieve Trustworthiness, Prepare, Launch, Overcome Resistance, Endure, Present, Use Technology, Enchant Up, Enchant Down. 

As can be expected, all of these can be applied to inbound marketing. Here are my top takeaways.

4 Marketing Takeaways From Enchantment

1. Likability, trustworthiness and quality are the three pillars of Enchantment and the best way to turn visitors into customers into fans. 

Anyone can improve their likability with a genuine smile, a firm handshake, and the habit of dressing to equal the person you're meeting. Trustworthiness is earned by trusting others first, providing more value than you consume (bake, don't eat), and defaulting to "yes" whenever you can. Quality comes from your preparation -- is your product DICEE (deep, intelligent, complete, empowering, and elegant), your purpose clearly stated, and have you done a rigorous pre-mortem to anticipate everything that could torpedo your success?

2. To endure, marketers need to build an enchantment ecosystem around their products and company.

From the Grateful Dead's contrarian approach to bootleggers to Justin Bieber giving free tickets to fans passionate enough to come to sold out concerts without one, enlisting and empowering your fans is an incredibly powerful way to do marketing. 

Don't assume you can rely on money (affiliate and referral fees) to make this happen. Instead, generate feelings of reciprocity ("you're welcome -- you're the kind of person who would do the same") and provide lots of ways to participate in your ecosystem. User groups, resellers, consultants, an API, websites and blogs, special interest groups, and conferences are all great ways to extend your ecosystem.

3. Know your "short, sweet, and swallowable" mission statement -- what you're truly, memorably about.

Never mind language like "patent-pending, curve-jumping, paradigm-shifting" in your mission statement; what do you truly DO? If your company had a mantra, what would it be? Here at HubSpot, we make all-in-one inbound marketing software. What do you do?

4. Social proof -- clear evidence that others are doing it -- is one of the most powerful ways to overcome resistance.

As the iPod rose to popularity, its distinctive white headphones were an increasingly visible reminder that more and more people were buying them. Guy himself is creating social proof for Enchantment by sending autographed covers to anyone in the world. 

In exchange for the "social proof" (a photo of you with your book), Guy will send you an autographed copy of the cover sleeve. Post a picture of you and your copy of Enchantment to Google+ or his Facebook wall, and submit the link here along with who and where the cover should be sent to.

Missed Guy's IMS2011 talk? Watch this 11-minute abridged version now:

OR, the full talk and slides are here:

Your Turn

What about your current internet marketing is helping you enchant? What one thing do you think you could work on next, inspired by this talk and book? Tell us in the comments! I'll personally buy a copy of Enchantment for the person who gives the best answer.