If you market a charity that benefits children, you probably don’t have any trouble getting behind your organization and the services it offers.
You know that the work you do helps kids get the medical attention or the everyday necessities or the clean water that they need to survive and thrive. You’ve seen pictures of volunteers and smiling little faces in action. You can write impassioned marketing copy because you love being part of something so wonderful and fulfilling.
But if you market a trash collection service, you may feel less than enthusiastic about what you sell. After all, trash is trash, right? There’s nothing glamorous or life-changing about a truck that picks it up, right?
Does it matter? Do you have to love, even like, what you market?
No. You don’t have to love what you sell, but you do have to believe in it. You do have to take the time to understand it. To understand who it helps and how. To understand what makes your company or organization good at what it does. To understand what it does or how it does it that’s unique.
And you have to love helping people. If you don’t, your market will hear it in your tone. They’ll sense it in your descriptions.
And they’ll wonder why they should care if you don’t.