Dissonant Marketing: What It Is and How to Avoid It

Have you ever received a piece of marketing that made you feel, well, off somehow?

Recently, I went to check out the website of this well-known intuitive-guide. Her site is gorgeous and has this fun interactive oracle reading tool you can click on. To get the results, you enter your email address in. I happily complied understanding that her free offering was really a trade.

Once I hopped back to my inbox, I found a somewhat generic yet well-designed interpretation of my “reading.” The problem started the next day - and continued the day after that and the one after that (and so on). In other words, when I started receiving additional emails from her.

It’s common for companies and business owners to establish an automated series of emails to send once someone subscribes to their list. Sometimes it’s called a Welcome Series, and it’s a type of nurture sequence.

I think it’s a lovely way to say ‘hello’ to people who want to know more about your business.

It wasn’t the frequency of the emails that was bothersome. It was the dissonance between the message in the email and the ‘marketing’ tactics built around it that left a bad taste in my mouth.

Dissonant Marketing: When Something Is Not in Alignment

Do you know how it feels when someone’s words don’t match their energy? Like when someone says they’re happy to help but everything else from their body language to their general vibe tells you they are anything BUT happy?

That’s what dissonant marketing feels like.

It’s when the overall copy is not in alignment with how it’s being marketed. It can happen for many reasons, and while readers won’t always be able to point to what feels off about something, they will likely have a feeling that something doesn’t feel right. And, they may just turn away without knowing why.

In one of the emails I received, for example, the subject line read “Just Days Left.” While it is OK (and necessary) to remind people of an upcoming deadline, it’s also a common tactic in disingenuous marketing to use specific subject lines tailored to push someone into acting. This was not a well communicated, actual deadline on a program the company had been telling me about over time. This was the third in a series of emails trying to upsell me on a product because I had signed up for an email list. The product was available on their site (and has been for years) and, based on what I know about opt-in sequences, it was the ‘next step’ in the company’s marketing funnel.

The message here, seen from the perspective of the company looked like this:

You signed up for this email list, and I sent you your free reading. Plus I also included a killer deal so I can upsell you, and now…time’s running out (Insert mental images of people running with their hair on fire.)

And here’s where things got strange.

When I opened the email and began to read, the message had a completely different tone and take. It started out by saying, “Dear Diane, the most important relationship you can have is internal….” It then went on to talk about how it’s important to connect more deeply with yourself and find your own inner compass. All good and a worthy message for sure.

However, then the email wrapped up and entered the urgent call-to-actions, such as “don’t wait” “buy now” “get yours now!”

The following emails I received over the next four to five days were largely the same.

As a potential customer, I was left feeling pushed into something I didn’t ask for. And that feeling of being pushed was completely at odds with the messaging from the business owner herself – which seemed to focus on listening to your own inner wisdom, finding your path of ease and freedom, discerning your own guidance.

How to Avoid Dissonant Marketing

So, what can you do to make sure your marketing is not only effective but in alignment with your business’ essence and messaging? It’s something I work with my clients on all the time, and today I’ll offer you four steps you can take to help.

Check Your Intent

Remember why you’re putting your marketing together in the first place. In its essence, marketing helps you make connections between yourself and your business and your potential clients. You can’t “make” someone buy from you, ever. So make sure you’re clear about what you want to accomplish with each piece of marketing you create.

Watch Your Language

I’ve got a whole article on how language affects your marketing, and you can read it right here.

But in short, to avoid that dissonant marketing, be on the lookout for any buzzy, marketing-y type words designed to push people into certain actions - or, as one client put it are made to “make people think this is a smoking hot deal.” If you wouldn’t say it to a colleague to her face, maybe it’s not the right phrase for your marketing.

Make a Welcome a Welcome

If you want to welcome someone to your business and create an automated sequence, offer them something of value, instead of trying to sell them something out of the gate. If you invited someone to your house for the first time, would you offer them a cup of tea or convince them to buy something, like 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies or a timeshare to a condo in South Carolina

Understand Your Potential Clients’ Journey

The client journey can be simplified down to Know-Like-Trust. First, your ideal clients need to know who you are, then they need to decide if they like you, and finally, they need to decide if they trust you enough to help them with what they’re struggling with. There are milestones in each of these stages, but understand that when your business is at an earlier stage of development, most people will not learn about you and immediately become paying clients. It’s too big of a leap.

Aligning your marketing language and processes in a way that respects that is much more likely to make people feel like they can trust you. It’s also much less likely to leave them feeling off as they interact with your business.

To help your business grow and thrive, your marketing needs to be about making authentic connections, To share the essence of your business authentically, you want to align your words with your marketing actions so your clients feel good when they interact with you.

If you examine what your marketing is designed to do, pay attention to your language, review your email sequences and understand your potential clients’ journey, you’ll be able to avoid dissonant marketing, steering clear from communications that, at best, leaves your ideal clients scratching their heads and, at worst, can just turn them off.

Photo by Echo Grid on Unsplash