THE MARKETING MEETUP: WHY BEING "LOVELY" WORKS

Morning!

Hope you had a smashing week. I spent mine interviewing for our 5th team member. A team of 5, I still find it crazy.

Anyway, less macca about me, more talking through an unreal marketing strategy. 99% of you will have never heard of this company, but the ones that do will understand the impact they're having in the UK marketing scene. They're by no means an Apple or an Amazon, but this strategy is one that you can definitely take something from. Without further adieu...(Oh quickly before we start. Remember to click a feedback link at the end. It helps a bunch!)What I've got for you:- What is The Marketing Meetup - How being human made them so successful- How you can add a human aspect to your marketingEst. Read Time: 5 minutes

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Chances are, you may not have heard of The Marketing Meetup. So let me give them a proper introduction.

The Marketing Meetup is one of the biggest up-and-coming marketing communities in the UK. They do all sorts of things from E-Learning, networking events, and a marketing newsletter.

They've had some crazy guests speaking at their events and they grew rapidly throughout Covid with their live sessions. Here's one of my favourites with the great Harry Dry:

Before any events, newsletters or marketing though. TMM are well known for being "positively lovely" as they put it.

Everything about them is genuine and everything about them is human. If anything was their competitive advantage, for me it would be this!

As I said, TMM is by no means a billion-dollar company and I have no idea how much it would be worth or how much revenue they do. But just because they aren't doing billions of $$$ in revenue every year doesn't mean that this strategy isn't valuable.

Let's get into it!

Breaking Down The Strategy

There is no one size fits all approach to marketing. This is something that is becoming more and more clear to me every week I spend in the world of marketing. For years, I admired these big corporate brands and honestly, I still do today. But what I am quickly beginning to realise is that these genuine brands that come across as human are really getting a piece of the pie too. There's no better example of this than The Marketing Meetup.

Everything they do just seems well... human. The web copy, the social posts, the newsletter, it all just feels like a human did it. It's genuine, it's authentic (boy, is that word overused) but most importantly it makes you trust them.

Let's start by looking at their website - which literally embodies that human aspect.

Even in their headline, they inject personality. When have you ever seen the word "lovely" in a website headline before? I don't think I ever have. Then you have the emoji that literally sums up TMM. But again, an emoji in the headline? It's unheard of. This theme continues in every crack and corner of their website...

Job board? Littered with personality.

Newsletter sign-up form? Littered with personality.

Lightbox pop-up? Littered with personality.

Even their cookies pop up has personality!

I know, I know... who cares that they added "lovely" a few times across their website?Everyone does. That's why it's so great...

It makes you pick a side

Some people will see the TMM website and think "What a bunch of clowns". But the other half will love it. That's the great thing about going all-in on being yourself. The people in the middle are never going to buy (or attend an event in this case). But the ones who love it? They are going to attend every single one.

It's more valuable to have a 50/50 split of love vs hate than have 100% of people be indifferent to your company.

It breeds trust

After looking at those screengrabs would you trust TMM? Of course, you would. I've never met Joe Glover (TMM founder) but I would already let him hold my wallet while I nipped to the toilet.

I'll probably never attend a TMM event. But I do subscribe to the TMM newsletter. Why? Because I trust them. I trust that they will go out of their way to try and add some sort of value every time they click send.

And so does everyone else...- People trust them enough to give their email.- People trust them enough to drive hours to the events.- People trust them enough to give them their money (most important part).Being genuine breeds trust, and with trust comes money.

It just goes to show, similar to last week's article, that being this big authority isn't always the right method for success.

I want to be clear here and say that being genuine definitely isn't more valuable than being an authority, but more an equal. Yes, people will buy from authorities. But they'll also buy from genuine people/businesses too. It's when you can combine the two that the real money will start rolling in.

To that point, I think TMM is nearly getting to that point (if not already being there). Which is why the community is growing so fast and their events have been so successful.

And if you don't know quite how successful TMM have been over the last few years, as always I brought some stats to paint the picture.

For context, TMM started in 2016 so this has all been built in just 6 years:- 38,550 followers on LinkedIn- 16,430 subscribers to the TMM newsletterHosted events with guests including:- CMO of Manchester United- Co-founder of Social Chain- VP of Drift- VC of Oligavy- And about 100 more that I can't fit on this list.

So yeah, they're doing pretty well for themselves. But I don't want to leave you by proving TMM's success. So let me give you one final takeaway line. If you learn anything from this newsletter, let it be this:

How To Implement It

This is the easiest but hardest "How to implement it" I've ever done. The easy advice is simple. Just put your personality into your business and be genuine. The hard part is actually doing it. Like, how in the world can you add that personality to your business and how much personality is too much - because this is 100% a thing.

Honestly, I'm still trying to figure this out myself. But I think there are 2 key things to think about here:1. Understand people will hate itThere's always going to be people that don't like you - no matter what you do. Have a really corporate brand? People will hate it. Have a very friendly brand? People will hate it too. Before anything, you have to understand that.2. Don't force it.Just because TMM has "lovely" everywhere doesn't mean you need to start throwing random words in with your branding. In fact, you don't need to go half as far as TMM has. It shouldn't be all personality or all the corporate feel, just somewhere in between. Make some of your copy like the way you talk.

Think Innocent smoothies. They have the serious side of the brand, but they also have the side that makes them, well them.

That's all for this week. Like I said at the start, TMM isn't the biggest brand on the planet. But I just really felt like there was a lot of value to take from it. Hopefully, at this point you've soaked up all that value!Until next time, enjoy the rest of your weekend!

— Niall

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This has been a breakdown of The Marketing Meetup's marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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