In this episode of Show Up Real, Cat explores the concepts of conditional and unconditional marketing, and why it’s so important of build trust and relationships over immediate sales.
She discusses why having a conditional marketing mindset, leads to burnout and inconsistency, and contrasts it with the benefits of an unconditional approach that focuses on serving the audience.
Work with me 1:1 (Doors close next week):
Get my emails: La Pistola Newsletter
Learn about Show Up Real
Follow @catdelcarmen and @showuprealpodcast on Instagram.
Learn more at catdelcarmen.com.
And some unhelpful, kind of some unhelpful, like an unhelpful mindset I see among a lot of new, I don’t want to say new people in business, but a lot of people who struggle with marketing. So I’m so excited to talk about it. It’s gonna be so good. Besides that, I wanted to give you a little update. So there are a couple things moving and shaking in the business and I gotta be honest, I…
have been struggling a little bit. I’ve been struggling a little bit to take action as quick as I would like on some things just that I need to do in my business to move forward. And I’ve been doing a lot of, I don’t know, I go back and forth with like taking care of myself and my mind and my body and like all these other goals that I have.
and then looking at my business and wanting it to grow so fast. And I think this episode is actually perfect because a lot of what I’m going to talk about in conditional versus unconditional marketing is how conditional marketing is very much like a tit for tat in terms of like, I’m going to put energy into this and I better get something out of it. When the reality is that it takes time.
to build trust. takes time to build an offer that you’re extremely proud of. It takes time and energy and effort to build trust with your audience and for you to become known as a person who can help them solve whatever problem, right? It takes energy, effort, time, commitment, right? And any time…
that I struggle with either taking quick action or if I’m procrastinating, anytime I’m in that energy a little too long, I know something’s up and I know something has to be uncovered. And I feel like I’ve been doing a little bit of, not a little bit of that, a lot of that in my, for myself, in terms of knowing kind of what my standard is. I’ve been just doing so much contemplating and it’s…
of been annoying to me. It’s kind of been annoying to me, but I go through these little spurts of like, okay, I’m going to fully trust myself and take action. And then if I’m emotional, honestly, it’s so much to do with my emotions. If I’m like burnt out or sleep deprived because my son didn’t sleep or whatever, my mindset goes crazy. Like it just goes, not crazy, but it just goes array. And like I, I
I just ignore the things that I wanted to do. So as I have been kind of managing my own mindset around that, I’ve been thinking about my clients and how they could have that relationship with their marketing. And I mean, and I do too in some way, shape or form. So that’s what I wanna talk about today. And let’s hope, let’s hope by having this conversation, not only do I share my lessons in business so far,
but I also kind of give myself the pep talk I need, okay? Because the reality is that like at every level, you’re going to have a new devil. I know they say that, but like it’s so, so true. And I think that, yeah, anyways, I’m not gonna go down. I should do a whole podcast about me and this year and kind of the shifts that I’ve made this year and all the learning I’m doing about myself.
But anyways, besides that, I’m very excited. We are making changes to show up real. We’re adding some really great features. We’re doing a lot of changes in there. So those will be, I’ll be in, me and my team will be implementing those in the next couple of weeks. And I’m so pumped about it. And then we’re getting ready for a launch that’s happening at the end of April. And along with that, I’m selling a one-on-one mentoring offer.
It’s a long-term 10-month voxer. You basically have access to me via voxer all the time for 10 months along with VIP days, three VIP days to plan your business quarterly, like basically quarterly VIP days and some additional calls. So that offer is specifically for my past and current clients, but.
If you’re interested, let me know. I don’t recommend this offer for brand new people in business unless you’re trying to go slow. This is really for the person who is leading and wants some accountability and structure. And they know they want to be able to problem solve with a coach anytime they want via Vox or so. Anyways, that’s what I’m kind of selling this month. And then next month,
at the end of this, actually next week, we’ll be going deeper into Show Up Real and that launch, which I’m so excited about. So anyways, let’s get into it. Let’s talk about conditional versus unconditional marketing. Now, the reason that I decided to create this episode, a couple of things. I was thinking about different clients of mine and their challenges. And what I’ve noticed is that
Some people have this relationship with their marketing slash business that’s so conditional. It’s very conditional. And when I say conditional, mean like it’s this energy of like, I will put this out, but if it doesn’t work, I’m gonna slow down, right? Or I will create this, but if.
It doesn’t go, I’m gonna edit this and make this really edited and pretty, but if it doesn’t go viral, then like I’m not bought in. And it’s just this very arrogant almost energy of like, I’m only gonna do this if I could get this back. And it’s just a horrible mindset to have when it comes to marketing because it doesn’t work that way. Like marketing just does not work that way. And that’s what I wanna talk about.
I want to talk about conditional marketing, I also want to talk about unconditional marketing and how you creating this relationship with your marketing that is unconditional and really thinking about it in a different way can help you create more content, probably better content, and just have this very unattached energy when it comes to your content.
Let’s set the stage. Let’s talk about conditional marketing. So conditional marketing, the way I want you to think about it is creating content with the expectation of an immediate return, right? If I post this, I should get a client from it. Whereas unconditional marketing is sharing content from a place of service, trust, and long-term relationship building without obsessing over immediate sales, okay?
Now, I get it. We all need sales in our business, right? Like, I understand that. But right now, I want to talk specifically about content and marketing and why unconditional marketing is the way to go. It’s the way you want to think about your marketing, OK? Many entrepreneurs struggle with content because they feel it’s not working fast enough for them, OK?
And this is why this is such an important topic. It’s like so many people are like, when is my marketing going to start converting? When is it going to start doing this? So that’s number one. The other thing I want to mention is that the most successful marketers, period, end, and point, build trust first, which leads to consistent revenue over time, which leads to consistent revenue over.
So this is what we’re going to be talking about. Let’s get into it. So here’s the problem with conditional marketing. Conditional marketing is directly related to scarcity mindset. If every post, email, or live session is measured by instant sales, content creation becomes stressful and forced. When you have this mindset that something should
I should get a return on this, right? Like if I do a month full of content and I post every single day for a month, I should be able to get this, right? If you have that mindset, content creation will feel stressful. It will feel forced. Like it will feel hard. It creates pressure for both the entrepreneur, but also the audience. Also the audience.
It makes selling super transactional.
It makes it really transactional. And it’s just no fun to experience from a marketing point of view. So examples of this would be, OK, I posted this three times and no one bought
What’s wrong? I’ll only go live if people actually show up. Well, why am I going to go live if every time I go live, nobody shows up?
I’ll stop sharing free content because it’s not converting fast enough.
Conditional marketing leads to burnout. It leads to inconsistency.
This is why you’ll have people, you’ll see people, or you might be one of those people. This is why so many people take like a month off, two months off of content and then come back and they’re creating content and the content is like confusing or it’s over performed and it just feels fake and it feels whatever. y’all.
The burnout is coming from this conditional marketing energy.
Conditional marketing will repel the very people you want to attract.
it will repel them because it’s all, because it’s so transactional, because it’s very salesy. This also happens a lot when people only show up when they’re selling something, right? It’s like the thing that you don’t want to do. If you’re only showing up when you’re selling something, then especially as a coach or online service provider, that kind of approach, imagine what it feels like for your audience.
They come, they see something that you created, they like it. They’re like, I like this person. And then they look, and every single post has to do with your offer. It has to do with you trying to convince them to think about something different. And maybe it’s not even salesy content, right? Even if it’s more audience building content, if they come to your page, platform, whatever, and they see this like,
heavily, heavily performative, like inauthentic content that just has like no personality or realness, it’s going to repel them. They’re like, this is just not my, be my person. I don’t know. This feels a little bit, like I don’t know who they are. I don’t really get a gist of their energy of their heart, their personality, nothing.
That is the energy it creates. And I think more than anything, it just feels very transactional. Like, you’re only here to sell to me, so why should I follow you? There’s so many people giving so much value in content all the time. So many people.
So many people. So they don’t have to stay or follow you because you create content, especially if it’s conditional marketing, especially if it’s conditional content.
Let’s talk about unconditional content and the power of it. So unconditional marketing shares values. It shares your experience. It shares stories. It shares interesting facts. It shares knowledge. It’s helping people see a full picture.
It shares transformation. And it has this energy of not expecting anything in return.
It doesn’t mean you’re not selling. It doesn’t mean you’re not making an offer at the end. It just means that it’s created and written in a way where the expectation to buy isn’t there. You could easily, easily read a piece of content that is incredibly conditional and forced versus a piece of content that’s unconditional.
and you could feel the energetic difference.
you could feel the energetic difference.
And I know you know this because you’ve experienced it. You’ve read a piece of content that has felt incredibly salesy. And when it feels incredibly salesy, there’s this disconnect. It’s like literally the opposite of connecting. Whereas with unconditional marketing or unconditional content, that creates long-term demand.
People need to see and trust you before they buy.
They need to know that you are a human that has experiences, your content, like the point of your content, the content that serves, that actually serves, that’s unconditional, it builds credibility. It builds authority. Not because you’re telling them you’re credible, not because you’re telling them that you have authority in this, but because you’re sharing your experiences, you’re sharing advice with them.
and you’re not expecting anything in return.
shifting to an unconditional marketing approach leads to less pressure, more consistency, and more sales over time. You know, it blows my mind that I spent, I mean, I was creating content for years before I started my business.
But I was kind of doing a lot of random things. Like I was, I had a fashion blog and my page was all about fashion and brands and like I would share different brands I was wearing, et cetera, et cetera. Then it became very lifestyle and whatever. And then I got into personal development. I’ve always been into personal development, but I kind of gave myself permission to start talking about personal development in my content.
And that kind of led me into the coaching world. Then I created my podcast. And even in my podcast, I didn’t sell anything. I was just like, let me help my people. Let me help them follow their fear. Let me help them dive into fear and take a chance on themselves. Let me help them see why they can also do whatever they want in this world. Right. That was so much of my energy at that time.
And I was creating one, two episodes a week along with growing a brand new Instagram account. And that was the energy. And here’s what’s crazy. I spent about a year and a half maybe putting a lot of work into personal development content, doing lots of collaborations on my podcast and on Instagram, inviting people to do lives with me.
getting into different communities and making friends there and just giving value everywhere I was. And I was able to build this community. And in 2021, when I really decided to double down on my business and my business started growing really quickly, that demand, the demand I created in 2020 and 2021 has literally…
literally helped me keep selling in my business, keep having six figure, multiple six figure years, even while I was pregnant and went on mat leave and had my second baby, even when I was growing my business postpartum, struggling with my own stuff, all because I’ve given value that is unconditional.
this energy of I don’t need you to buy from me. I’m here to serve you. I got your back. And if you want to buy from me, I have something for you. Or if you find yourself in a place where you’re like sick and tired of your shit and you want some help, I got you.
Clients come through unconditional marketing. Like, they can, you can, I mean, you could do it through conditional marketing as well, get clients, but the clients that come to you in unconditional marketing are more aligned, more committed, and trust you more.
They trust you more than those who need constant convincing.
It’s the truth.
I see this shift happen a lot when people start launching, like doing live launching for their offers. And this is why I don’t typically suggest live launching for people who are either new to coaching or new to marketing. Live launching is something that if you don’t have, if you’re not even familiar with unconditional marketing, if you don’t know how to market without,
you know, having any specific conditions, doing a live launch is going to be hard because it feels like selling and it could feel very transactional and you almost need a level of experience in marketing to be able to separate your content from needing it to work properly. Like there has to be a detachment, right? So I remember the first, first, first time I ever launched
anything. It was a course that I was selling. It was a podcast course and it was, I don’t know, $97 or $57. Maybe there was like a discount I put out about it. I forget. But I remember in that experience, no one ever taught me how to launch. And I was just kind of following the process that I saw some of the people I looked up to, their process. And
Look, I was like a good copycat, like not copycat literally copying them, but like I was copying their kind of, you know, process and styles, watching it from the outside. And I remember just being feeling like every piece of content had to be this like great piece of content. And I had to look like a solid brand and I had to, you know, speak from all these directions. And it felt like I was doing everything right.
And I remember from, put so much effort into that launch and I think I made like $900 or something. And I was so disappointed. Like I was proud of myself for doing it, but I was so disappointed. And at that time I had been giving away free content, like unconditional content for so long. But during that launch, I was so attached to my content and the content was so, it
felt so conditional. People bought, people joined, right? But so much of, I could have had so much more success if I had this energy that was like, I have this plan, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to put it out. I’m going to serve people. I’m going to help them see how this course can help them. And we’ll see what happens. I’ll adjust as needed, right?
a good attitude to have. But instead, I was so attached. I was like, my god, there’s only three days left. What can I do now? There was just this deeply attached energy which made and kind of gave this energy for my content that felt very transactional. I have a client who recently had a webinar, and she was promoting the webinar. First of all, she got like,
It was her first webinar and it had like the most signups or she already hit her her sign up goal like she hit she created a goal she already hit that goal and she was so excited and I remember I was like, oh my god, you could get like a hundred people. I forget what I told her. I told her something big. And when I told her that she she a couple like a week later or something or a couple days later, she’s like, oh my god, I’m kind of in my head now because I feel like I need to get a hundred people, which I was like, shit.
But then I was like, no, look, you already won, right? Like you already beat the goal that you had. What if from now until the actual webinar, you just post valuable content for the sake of people who need to be in the room know it’s available. This is a big deal, right? Like this is a webinar.
Not only is it your first webinar, but it’s a webinar specifically made for a certain group of people who need your help or for who needs some help. Go out there and serve them just for those people. Tell them it’s happening and invite them in. The rest is their choice. But invite them in. She ended up having a wildly successful webinar. She got sales calls from that webinar and she’s in Show Up Real.
Also, I could just say her name Brenda. Shout out to Brenda. Congratulations. But it’s so important to be willing to show up first and also know the people in your audience. Some people have been following you for a long time. Some people are brand spanking new. And the content they’re experiencing, like what is the content?
they’re experiencing.
What is the content they are experiencing?
So I just want to give you this permission. You might not like it, but this permission to embrace unconditional marketing. And I promise you, if you’re willing to stop, not stop, I should say, if you’re willing to really have enough self-awareness to
Listen to your brain when you are creating content and shift the mindset out of, I hope this creates sales or I hope this creates a sales call.
to.
I’m gonna do, I’m gonna create a lot more content, so I hope this helps someone today.
hope this helps someone. hope someone needed to hear this. If you have that energy, I promise you, you will build more trust, more credibility. Your content will be better. It’ll feel less transactional. And people will actually love what you’re creating because it’s literally made to serve. Stop measuring success by instant sales. Measure it by engagement, by trust.
by how much you’re helping people. Trust that consistency compounds over time. It will if you’re willing to put energy in just serving to your people. And again, I want to be clear here. You can sell to them. You can sell one on one.
But the content can’t be about selling one-on-one. The content has to be about helping people get the results, helping them shift their mindset, helping them see something that you’ve seen before and you want to explain to them. The content has to be about helping people, not about you getting a sale. Because when you create from
from a conditional place, it smells like transaction. It smells like selling. Focus on serving without attaching pressure to every piece of content. So those are some mindset shifts I want you to practice. Stop measuring success by instant sales. Measure it by trust, engagement, and how you’re helping people. Remember that trust
that consistency compounds over time. Focus on serving without attaching pressure to every piece of content. Every piece of content doesn’t have to be your best work. If it’s gonna help a person, if it’s really gonna help a person, create it quickly and put it out there. Now, here are some strategies I want you to remember. Show up even when it feels like no one is watching. That’s why…
There’s another job, which I’ll do a whole another episode about this, but so much of the work that you do in your marketing, one, it’s creating content, but it’s also creating connections. So you have to think about creating connections in a different way. It’s going to feel like nobody’s watching a lot of the time. But the more you can detach from that and just say, there’s a couple of things that will improve.
when I create content, one is I improve as a marketer and two, I improve. I’m creating a space, I should say, creating a platform where people can come and get value because the content that you put out, it’s not just about who experiences it today. It’s who experiences it in three months from now when they’re scroll, when they’ve just find you and they’re scrolling through your page. Are you going to have content that feels unconditional?
Okay, another more practical step I want you to take or practice is share your ideas, your content ideas, your insights, your experience, your stories. Share them in your content without overthinking if they’ll work. Who gives a shit if they’re going to work sometimes? Sometimes you just have to share what your brain has to say. And this is what’s slowing down so many people in their content is…
They’re having this conversation with themselves that like, is this good enough to share? Is this actually going to sign a client? Is this going to make people more interested in working with me? It’s like all of those reasons are exactly why people don’t want to work with you, because it reeks transactional when your content is thought of in that way. Stop thinking, let me create a piece of content that’s going to go viral.
or let me create a piece of content that’s gonna make someone sign up for a sales call. That’s like literally a recipe to no sales calls. Literally a recipe to not going viral. Reframe your goals. Instead of I need clients from this post, shift it to I need to make my audience think differently. How can I help them think differently today?
Create content from a place of generosity.
from a place of service, that is unconditional marketing. That is when they feel that love and care. Like this person really gives a shit. They really give a shit. And I want to be clear. You could still sell. You could still make an offer. But the actual content, right? The actual content, when you are making that, when you are putting it out in the world, when you’re writing it, whatever you’re doing, when you’re recording it,
When you’re doing it, your energy should be, how can I help my audience think differently? How can I help them take action today?
All right, I’m going to wrap this up, OK? So here are some key takeaways that I want you to remember, OK? Conditional marketing is rooted in fear and short-term thinking. Unconditional marketing builds trust, it builds authority, and it builds long-term revenue. Success comes from consistency, patience, and service.
and service. So here’s what I want to challenge you with. How can you show up today in your marketing?
unconditionally. What can this week look like?
If you just decided, literally, whatever I got to say, I’m going to tell my people and it’s for them and it’s just in service. And for this week only, I don’t need shit from them. I’ll still make the offer. I’ll still let them know that I have one-on-one coaching or I can help them with, you know, whatever service at the very end, I could let them know. But the actual content will be all about helping them get a result.
Helping them take action, helping them think differently.
All right, I hope this was helpful. And if you did find this valuable, I would be so appreciative if you shared it with somebody, with your friend, if you shared it on your Instagram stories, tag me if you do, or just reach out to me and DM me. And if you have a question, I’m mainly on Instagram at Kat Del Carmen. I would so, so appreciate that. I hope this helped you kind of shift your brain or something clicked today.
And if so, let me know. I will see you on the next episode. For those of you interested in Show Up Real, my signature content group program, we’re opening the doors next month. So stay tuned, make sure to subscribe, and I’ll see you later. All right, love you. Bye.
View comments
+ Leave a comment