As someone who lives in Pittsburgh’s North Hills, I spend plenty of time driving along the chronic traffic jam called McKnight Road. What was once beautiful fields and wooded land is now littered with asphalt and commercial buildings.
Every block is packed with distracting signage and massive billboards that loom over the chaotic traffic.
In a word, McKnight Road is ugly.
And, unfortunately, there’s no escaping commercial advertising today—in the real world or online.
And consumers are fed up. Research shows:
- 93% of consumers skip or block ads when they have a chance.
- 53% of consumers still feel uncomfortable with personalized ads.
- 61% of consumers say they are actually less likely to buy from a company that shows the same ad repeatedly.
Industry leaders call this “ad fatigue,” and it’s a real issue for business owners who want to connect with a wider audience.
But how do we market in a world that seems to hate marketing?
The Hidden Truth About Marketing
I don’t have the stats to prove it, but I’m going to make a bold claim here:
People don’t hate marketing.
Quite the contrary: As long as we have curious consumers with disposable income or individuals with problems that can only be solved with a new product/service, there will be genuine demand for marketing.
What people do hate is bad marketing. That includes:
- Marketing that feels cheap (Research from Gartner found 49% of consumers believe Gen AI has made content quality worse, even though it’s technically cheaper.)
- Marketing that disrespects the consumer’s intelligence
- Marketing that feels forced or invasive, like the commercials on the dashboard screen that BMW launched over the summer.
What we need, then, is a paradigm shift. We need marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing.
How to Create Marketing That Doesn’t Feel Like Marketing
Marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing sounds like an impossibility, but it’s actually quite accessible. One of the greatest examples of this is Red Bull, which spends more than $3 billion per year on marketing, including sponsoring extreme sports events like skydiving from outer space.
Whether it’s F1 racing or BMX stunts, Red Bull is there—not as a product, but as a critical voice and presence in the arena.
Over time, Red Bull has become synonymous with extreme sports.
And that keeps it right in front of its target audience. Red Bull sold nearly 14 billion cans in 2025 for $14.3 billion in revenue.
Pretty nice.
Now, what do we do if we don’t have a $3 billion budget for record-breaking initiatives?
Well, three of my favorite strategies include:
- Talk Triggers
- Providing Free Support
- Demonstrate Expertise
1. Talk Triggers
I’ve always been fascinated by talk triggers—little pieces of the customer experience that are so incredible, people can’t help but talk about them to their friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers.
The idea was popularized in Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth by Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin, and I recently wrote about the concept in a LinkedIn post:
As I mention in the post, I had an incredible coffee shop experience where the barista was willing to wave away my costs simply because I mistakenly thought I’d forgotten my wallet.
It was a generous, compassionate gesture on her part, and the experience stuck with me (enough that I ultimately shared it with others).
A few more examples:
- Chewy’s sympathy gestures: When customers tell Chewy they’ve lost a pet, some have received flowers and a handwritten condolence card. Customers have shared those experiences publicly, giving others a story about how the company treated them during a difficult moment.
- Ritz-Carlton and Joshie the giraffe: After a family left their son’s beloved stuffed giraffe at a Ritz-Carlton, his father told him Joshie was enjoying an extended vacation. Hotel staff played along: they photographed Joshie around the resort and sent the photos home with him. The father shared the story himself.
- Skip’s Kitchen: Perhaps the most famous example of a talk trigger, Skip’s Kitchen is one of the highest-ranked burger joints in the country, but what’s most impressive is how the company has spent $0 on marketing. Instead, customers are shown a deck of cards when they order. If they pull a joker, their entire meal is free!
2. Provide Free Support
“Gated” content gets a bad rap, and that’s because it’s misunderstood.
If you don’t recognize gated content by name, you definitely recognize it in practice; it’s when a piece of content is only available by offering up your email (or similar information), basically getting you through the “gate” by getting you into the company’s CRM.
It’s fallen out of favor in the last 10 years because consumers want better, hyper-specific content, and that’s challenging for some businesses to get right.
But when it’s done well, it becomes a high-powered lead generator.
In one of my favorite case studies, we helped the Station Inn—a rail-themed B&B—tap into a major industry event to collect more than 1,500 email addresses from rail-obsessed travelers.
As a bonus, their map helped them earn more than 4,600 likes and 120 shares on Facebook, which helped them gain more social traffic than nearly any other piece of content they’ve ever posted.
We’ve also seen gated content play out in less traditional ways.
One of our Poetica experiments with AI led to the creation of a marketing self-audit, which led to an opportunity to build a similar product for one of our clients in ScoreApp:
While it’s still in development, communications coach Charlie Krebs currently has a working self-audit that:
- Establishes himself as an expert (more on demonstrating expertise below)
- Provides critical feedback to potential clients
- Outlines exactly where someone needs help (which Charlie can provide)
Although the tool is designed to help the user, it also functions as a seamless step in a larger sales process, creating an invaluable win-win.
Related Reading: How to Build the Ultimate Lead Generation Landing Page
3. Demonstrate Expertise
Two of my favorite ways to demonstrate expertise (and generate new leads in the process) include:
1. Speaking Opportunities
I try to speak as often as I can—via webinars, seminars, podcasts, and other opportunities—for one reason:
They generate sales.
When you have an opportunity to demonstrate expertise, your audience has an opportunity to do two things:
- Vet your intelligence.
- Gauge whether they like your personality enough to spark a conversation about your needs.
And that makes every sales conversation so much easier.
Some anecdotal evidence:
- My brief interview in Marketing Brew generated a client who’s been with us for more than three years.
- Our first-ever Sites, Camera, Action seminar sparked a relationship that turned into two new projects.
- A single presentation at a networking group generated a client who worked with us for a year.
2. Leverage the Team
I often refer to Joe Pulizzi as the godfather of content marketing (he wrote Content Inc.), and lately he’s focused on the massive influx of AI-created content.
In a world where content creation at scale is no longer a key differentiator, trust is more vital than ever.
That’s led to the idea of trust portfolios—strategies for building trust in the larger community.
One of the best strategies: human-led content franchises. In other words: Empowering key members of your team to become influential thought leaders while growing their follower base.
Bonus: You can leverage their content in EGC (employee-generated content)—another emerging (and powerful) trend in social media.
While there’s certainly a ton of forethought and planning that goes into building your team member’s online presence, the results can directly boost your bottom line.
Transform Your Marketing
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