Apply Carnegie's Leadership Lessons to Your Marketing Approach

Often wise words transcend their original context and can be applied across many facets of life. (Click to Tweet!)  From a broad concept can come very specific ways of applying it in business, in personal relationships, in reaching goals and in defining individual success.

Such is the case with many of the nine lessons from Dale Carnegie outlined in this SlideShare from Sidekick by HubSpot. While they originally were designed to guide leaders and were a part of the Carnegie training program and outlined in his infamous book How to Win Friends and Influence People, several of these broad lessons can be narrowed to apply directly to how you conduct inbound marketing campaigns.

The ones that rang especially true to me regarding marketing:

Be friendly. From a broad view, this seems painfully obvious. If marketing and sales approaches aren’t friendly, no one will want to do business with you. But if you drill all the way down to how you create content, “be friendly” translates into being approachable. Don’t create content that is overly formal, dry or aloof. Make it conversational.

Be respectful of opinions. Again, don’t come across as a jerk. If a prospect or customer gives you feedback, be open to it.

Appeal to the other person’s interests. Isn’t this at the heart of marketing? Appealing to your customers’ interests means showing how you can solve their problems. It’s about them, not you. Your content should be about them, not your company.

Sincerely make others feel important. Learning about your prospects and tailoring messages that match their needs is a vital part of building a relationship. This may begin as seemingly superficial as addressing them by name in emails or when they return to your website, but B2B offerings and other large-scale purchases and contracts should evolve into truly knowing as much as possible about your customer and letting them know that you want to help them, not just sell your product.

We can all learn something from Carnegie's leadership lessons when applied to our work or personal relationships. What lessons from the SlideShare do you feel are most important for success in marketing?