When Home Office Cat #1 had a health issue a few years back, he needed pills and potions several times a day. I’d grind and blend some of those powders into his food. Some days I’d do a fairly good job of hiding it and he’d gobble it up.
Other days he’d approach the bowl, take one sniff, turn up his whiskers, and refuse to eat. He’d sensed that smidgeon of un-blended powder – undetectable to human nose or eye – and now he didn’t trust the entire meal. Or the guy who dished it up.
Turns out today’s audiences have a similarly refined sense of smell.
Audiences are becoming more sophisticated by the year, and on average tend to have a finely-tuned BS detector. Most consumers can spot hype a mile away.
You might be thinking that can’t possibly be right. We all see the ad campaigns raking in cash using the most dubious, laughable claims. And yes, plenty of people apparently discard their BS filters along with their common sense and willingly buy the magic pill hype.
So how can both things be true at once?
Both things can be true because there are two different kinds of buyers, and they rarely mix. The same person might fall for hype in one area of life and stay skeptical in another. But once someone decides to buy the exaggerated claims in your category, they stop being the buyer you want.
That BS detector isn’t evenly distributed. It maps onto the familiar 80/20 rule — and understanding that split will change how you show up every time you communicate.
Audiences Follow the Pareto Principle
Most marketers have been fighting over the same market for decades: the minority who will buy almost anything right away vs. the large majority who are more discerning and require more time, trust, and credibility. Those people willing to buy the hyperbole are actually the minority, let’s say 20% of all the people your message could reach.
This 20% seeking a “magic pill” are less discerning and more distractible: easier to reach, but also harder to keep. They are the least likely to commit to real change or value what you offer.
That leaves the other 80% potentially open and willing to discover something real. But, they’re holding out for better information and better-informed experts, because they’ve been burned by bad information and faux experts so often.
This is what matters for your marketing: the 80% you most want to connect with are sensible, realistic, and zealous about protecting their attention and trust. This silent majority would never buy into the exaggerations. If you try to reach them that way – even just once – they’ll never listen to you again.
Is this 80% cohort more difficult to reach than the people who’ll fall for anything? Damn right they are. That’s why so few practitioners are willing to put in the effort to connect with them. But these are the people worth reaching: the ones who can spot exaggeration and manipulation a mile away and who reward the rare voice that doesn’t traffic in it.
Two Types of Marketing, Two Very Different Buyers
There are two types of buyers because there are two types of marketing:
Force Marketing sells through interruption. It forces the message into feeds, shouts over the noise, leans on hype, exaggerated claims, emotional triggers, and sales tricks. It primarily attracts the less sophisticated 20%.
Flow Marketing meets people where they are and builds trust by messaging through relationship, value, reality, and resonance. The right people recognize the signal, respond, and form deeper, sustained relationships. It engages the more sophisticated 80%.
Put that way, the choice is obvious enough. But obvious and easy aren’t the same thing. Flow Marketing requires patience that many people aren’t willing to trade for the dopamine hit of a quick click.
You Are Your Marketing – And Your Marketing Determines Your Buyers
Once you see the difference between these two paths, something else becomes obvious: the quality of the buyers you attract is not random. It is a direct reflection of the claims you choose to make.
Seeing that clearly raises a more difficult question: how willing are you to make the claims that actually select for the right people—and how tempting is it to reach for the short-sighted tactic that feels easier right now?
That difficulty is exactly why so many practitioners ask themselves: “I don’t want to be seen as a smarmy, shifty, sleazy marketer. That’s not who I am. But is it okay to use [some short-sighted smarmy tactic] just this once?”
The honest answer is that the tactics aren’t really the issue. The issue is what happens afterward.
You are your marketing. This isn’t a philosophical idea – it’s a practical, often permanent one. The version of yourself you present, even briefly and tactically, has a way of becoming fixed in the minds of the people you most want to reach.
They don’t know it was a one-time experiment. They only know what you showed them.
What This Looks Like in Practice
The ideal clients you want – the discerning ones who’ve done their research, who are genuinely ready to commit, who will do the work – those people are making a judgment call in the first few seconds of any encounter. One off-note, one whiff of something that doesn’t match the rest of your message, and they’re gone. They rarely explain why. They just leave.
Let’s say you’re a respected coach, advisor, or specialist with years of real results behind you. You want to attract clients who are genuinely ready to commit to change — the kind who’ll do the work and value what you actually offer. If that’s your ideal client, don’t promise timelines or outcomes that your real work can’t deliver. Talk instead about what the work actually involves, what it demands, and for whom it’s a real fit.
If a part of you thinks – even for a moment – that this kind of honesty might “scare people away,” pause for a moment and remember the audience you most want is so fed up after decades of manipulation and over-selling, those who do stand up also stand out. This effect will become even more pronounced with the AI-generated slop filling the feeds.
That’s not complicated. It’s just uncomfortable for experts who’ve been told that hype or bold transformation claims are the only thing that sells.
Who You’re Actually Competing With
Now flip the lens and look at the sellers. The majority of influencers and experts online are shouting and climbing over each other to chase the same 20%. Because it’s such a small pool, they’re engaged in an ever-escalating war of hyperbole. That’s most of the advertising you see. It looks like an “easier” path because it looks like everyone is doing it, but it is crowded, noisy, and increasingly more difficult and expensive way to sell.
Some people follow that path by default, not design:
- Marketing the same way other professionals do, assuming they must be doing better than you are.
- Marketing the way the self-styled influencers say to market, because they’ve got a lot of followers.
But their clients or customers aren’t your clients or customers. Their values aren’t your values. Copying them only pulls you into the same crowded fight for the wrong buyers.
If you want a business that lasts – a roster of clients who are genuinely ideal for you – Flow Marketing isn’t the noble choice. It’s the only rational one.
Why You Can’t Have it Both Ways
Maybe you’re thinking,“Why can’t I use both? Why can’t I grab attention with a bold claim upfront, and then build a real relationship of trust once they’re in?”
Because the people you’re hoping to build that trust with never made it past that bold, forceful claim. They left. The only ones who stayed were the 20% looking for someone to tell them what they wanted to hear.
Those folks want to believe there’s a pill, a potion, or a magical solution that will make them slim and vibrantly healthy without requiring any personal responsibility on their part. When the extreme claims don’t pan out – and they never do – that’s not their fault. It’s yours. It’s always someone else’s responsibility.
And if you try to attract that crowd, you face a lose-lose situation with no exit. You either follow up those magic pill claims with the hard truth – which scares them away, or you watch them leave anyway when you can’t deliver the quick fix you promised.
Either way, you are back to the same cycle of refunding and replacing buyers who were never going to stick around.
There is no other way around it with those sorts of clients or buyers.
So the only sensible move is to not attract them in the first place.
Look at Who You’ve Already Attracted
Look around. Think about your most difficult client, patient, or student — whoever’s in your world. If you’ve been doing this long enough, you’ve probably already attracted a few of them.
You attracted the customers your marketing signaled for. That’s either who you advertised for, or who came by default because you haven’t yet been clear – and consistent – about who you really want to work with.
Any customer relationship you create doesn’t begin with the purchase. It begins in the very first seconds of the first impression you make. The followers in your social media feed, the subscribers to your email list, and the people who raised their hand and said yes to an offer are all a snapshot of the communication choices you made six months ago.
Decide who you want to work with and focus only on them. Be brave enough to say what you believe and turn away those who don’t share your values. If any question about your marketing ever gets answered with “everyone,” start over. Aim every message you put into the world at the right people — and only at them.
When you’re crystal clear about who you are, every time you speak and everywhere you speak, your tribe will recognize you. That clarity is the whole game.
