There are many ways to learn about marketing.

Countless marketing gurus have endless quantities of material available, paid and otherwise.  You can download e-books, buy physical books, listen to recordings, watch video, read blogs … it goes on and on and on. 

And it quickly becomes overwhelming.  How do you sort out which approach – out of all the myriad you’re exposed to – will work for you?  How do you know which guru – out of all the hundreds clamoring for your attention – is the one you want to trust?  How can you tell which task – out of the many queued up on your To-Do list – is the one that will bring you the best return for the precious time you’ll invest?

The answer is simple:  listen to yourself.  Trust your own self-awareness to help you sort through it all.

And trust your self-awareness to teach you as much as – maybe more than – all those gurus put together.

Because while they can teach you the nuts and bolts, the “how-to” aspects of marketing, only you can teach you what will actually work for you and your audience. 

Only you can discern what approach is in alignment with who you are, what your work represents to your clients, and how you want to show up.

Let’s look at what I mean by this.

Notice your reactions

You react to whatever you experience. 

You react to how those marketing gurus present their material; you react to the material itself; you react to your imagined experience of using the material to promote your business; and – if you do use the material – you react to your actual experience of using it.

When you study something and then put what you’ve learned into practice, it’s natural to look outside yourself to see the results.  So when you do a marketing activity, you look outside to see what happens.  Are more people signing up for your newsletter?  Are more people retweeting your tweets?  Is there a steady flow of visitors to your website – and are they buying?

Of course you want to track your results.  But you also want to track your experience throughout the process.

How does learning from each person feel to you?  Can you discern your internal reactions – pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral – to the ways different teachers present their material and to the approaches they recommend you employ?  When you use what you’ve learned, even as it may feel like a stretch to you, is it a good stretch, or is it uncomfortable because it’s out of alignment with who you are?

Trust your reactions!

You can respect someone’s expertise and opinion and still be aware that what she’s teaching or how she’s teaching it doesn’t work for you or your audience.

There are so many options available.  Don’t limit yourself to one that doesn’t feel in alignment for you.  Just because someone’s an “expert” doesn’t mean he’s right and you’re wrong.

Notice your responses

Every time you pick up a loaf of bread or a head of lettuce at the store or download an e-book or a recorded teleclass off someone’s website, you’re making a purchasing choice – and yes, it’s a purchasing choice even if it’s not something you had to pay for. 

Whether you like it or not, those purchasing choices are based at least in part on marketing. 

More specifically, they’re based on your responses to how different companies and individuals present themselves through their marketing.

Sometimes you feel repelled by marketing, and sometimes you feel intrigued.  Sometimes you can’t escape fast enough from someone’s annoying website, and sometimes you’re drawn in to browse and read and explore.

It’s easy to believe that the repellant marketing is repellant to everyone, and the intriguing marketing is intriguing to everyone, but of course that’s not true.  People do what works for their audiences, so although it may not work for you, it’s working for someone.

When you pay attention to your internal responses to other people’s marketing, you’ll learn just as much about how to tune your own marketing as you’ll learn from reading all those e-books and attending all those marketing classes.

Which email headlines do you find intriguing, and which ones cause you to hit “delete” without reading the message?  What levels of self-disclosure invite your trust, and what levels turn you off with not enough information – or way too much?  Which techniques around scarcity and urgency make you reach for your wallet, and which make you feel manipulated or angry?

Study after study has proven that we make purchasing decisions emotionally first, and then justify them logically.  Therefore, noticing these responses in yourself requires paying attention to more than just your thoughts about your experience.  It takes being aware of your body – because often a “yes” response will show up in your heart first, and a “no” response may show up in your gut before it reaches your mind. And it takes being open to your emotional experience, even if it doesn’t feel good or when you might not agree with it intellectually.

Constant effective learning

As you’ve probably noticed, refining your message is an ongoing process.  Learning about marketing, learning about your customers, and learning about your business never stops. 

Yet as I’m sure you’ve also noticed, you have only so much time and energy to invest in your business.  So of course you want to invest that time and energy where it will do the most good!

Becoming self-aware of your reactions and responses to marketing, especially how you’re affected by it in your own purchasing decisions, is one of the most effective and efficient ways to use your time.

After all, you’re having those reactions and responses all the time anyway!  The amount of extra effort to pay attention to what’s going on inside you is minimal – and the potential payback in more effective marketing, not to mention greater self-confidence as you develop your trust in yourself, is tremendous.

“The mind’s first step to self-awareness must be through the body.”  George Sheehan (1918-1993), American athlete, cardiologist, and author