You have probably seen or heard of the classic scene from The Godfather where they say, “It’s not personal. It’s business.” Businesses love this line because it keeps them distant and guilt-free. It lets them think of consumers as nameless, faceless masses that just need to be enticed with the right offer. This used to work pretty well. Used to.

Today it’s all personal. In fact, it’s always been personal to the consumer, only now it’s more obvious that it’s all personal, all the time. The businesses that get this win. The businesses that don’t lose.

If you need proof, just do a Google search on AOL’s customer service. You’ll find videos and blog posts from consumers talking about how difficult it is cancel their subscriptions. They took AOL’s business approach to service termination very personally.

Or ask the executives at Motrin about baby carrying moms. Last November, Motrin offended a segment of highly connected moms, the moms took to Twitter, YouTube, and their blogs and shut the Motrin site down in less than 48 hours. It was personal, not business.

Consumers today live in a new culture. It’s a hyper-personal, conversational, always-on, highly aware, information in my pocket, find the people like me, start a revolution kind of a culture. That may not sound like business, but it is.

Consumers are smarter than ever about the brands and products they love and hate. Consumers seem fickle, and sometimes they are, but most often they’re passionate, aware, connected, and willing to talk about everything they love and everything they hate. They speak the new language of smart, informed consumers. It’s the language of smart.

The good news is you don’t have to be perfect. You do, however, have to be personal.

If your business doesn’t speak the language of smart, who’s still listening to you?

Many companies seem to be looking to change their marketing these days. Actually, that’s not true. A lot of companies are considering trying some new marketing approaches these days. They have become enamored or curious about the new social media tools that are widely publicized and are trying to determine how it can work for them. This is a good spot to be in, but I’ve realized something is still missing. What’s missing is the appropriate mindset needed to use the social media tools, techniques, and stategies well. The old mindset won’t work with the new tools. They don’t mix. Seth Godin wrote an entire book about that called Meatball Sundae.

New marketing only works with the new mindset. Simply using the new tools with the old mindset won’t bring about the marketing change you need and want.

The old marketing mindset can be summed up with these five traits. I referred to them as the characteristics of an arrogant marketer yesterday:

1. Arrogant marketers assume consumers are interested in their products or services.
2. Arrogant marketers assume consumers care about whatever they have to say.
3. Arrogant marketers donít care that they completely interrupt peopleís lives.
4. Arrogant marketers tell consumers their product or service is the best even when they know it isnít.
5. Arrogant marketers are willing to sit back while bad marketing ideas are discussed and ineffective campaigns are created. They know better but remain silent.

The new marketing mindset consists of these five traits. If the old marketing mindset is arrogant, it’s fair to consider these the characteristics of a humble marketer:

1. Humble marketers know consumers are already bombarded by an average of 4,000 promotions every day and therefore don’t want to create marketing campaigns that consumers won’t pay attention to anyway.
2. Humble marketers assume the consumer is smart, saavy, and knowledgable. They speak the language of smart.
3. Humble marketers try to add value to the people they hope to reach and understand that by adding value they earn the attention they desire.
4. Humble marketers know they’re violating a trust with consumers when they interrupt their lives and that interruptions become annoyances and annoying companies don’t succeed.
5. Humble marketers are just as interested in protecting the interests of the people they want to reach as they are protecting the interests of their company or client.

The Two Things You Need

If you really want to change your marketing, you need to do two things: adopt the new mindset and then (and only then) begin to learn how to use the new tools. As you can see from the image to the left, that’s where change happens.

There’s hope for the people who make the mindset shift and haven’t gotten the new tools yet. They’re so close to change. They just need to get started with the new tools.

For the group that has the old mindset with the new tools, prepare to be disappointed. You won’t see the change you’re looking for. You can only get what you’re looking for with a paradigm shift. Perhaps you’ve tried a few things and they didn’t work like you thought they should and have determined the tools don’t work. That’s not the case at all. The tools work fine, just not with the old mindset.

And finally, for the those using the old tools with the old mindset. First, let me welcome you to this blog. You probably haven’t been here before. Second, I hope you’ll consider what’s here. It’s not that what you’re doing doesn’t work. It does. It just doesn’t work as well as it used to and it’s continuing to be less effective every year. At some point the tide will turn completely and then what will you have?

One big misconception about using social media in business is the idea that it’s only about the technology. It’s not. There is much more than that. Social media, particularly from a marketer’s standpoint, is about getting an entirely new perspective on marketing. Some people will tell you this new perspective is only about engaging people in conversations, embracing transparency, or building community. Frankly, it’s all of these, but at the heart of each of them is one thing: the social media mindset assumes that people are smart.

Have you ever been around someone who was trying to speak English to a person who doesn’t understand English? You’ve seen it. They slow down, get louder, and pronounce things more elaborately as if it will help convey the words they are saying. It’s like they think the person is deaf or dumb because they can’t understand what they’re saying. We know neither are true. The person simply speaks a different language. No amount of increased volume or slower speech will teach someone a language they never learned.

To me, traditional marketing is like the rude English speaking person. It assumes a lot of things about people that aren’t true. What if the best thing marketers could do was to quit trying to be louder, more elaborate, or more easy to understand, but change their marketing language altogether to the language of smart?

Learning the language of smart is a massive shift for traditional marketers. If you believe people are smart you treat them differently from people who are dumb. You explain yourself to a smart customer but not a dumb customer. You listen to the criticism from a smart customer but not a dumb customer. You value the lifetime relationship with a smart customer but not a dumb customer. You know the customer has more options than what you do if you think they’re smart, but you think your business/product/service is their only option if you think the customer is dumb.

Your customers already speak the language of smart, so are you yelling at them in a different language? If you don’t assume your customer is smart, you’re not speaking the language of smart. Your customer already assumes she’s smart. Shouldn’t you?