I love talking to other writers — from all walks of life. The other day, I was chatting with a fiction writer who focuses mainly on short stories. When I told him that I do a lot of brand and content marketing, he scoffed a bit.

“I can’t imagine doing that,” he said, “Marketing makes me feel dirty.”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard something like that, but it some how manages to surprise me every time. Thinking of marketing as “dirty” is a point of view that I just can’t understand.

Now, I consider myself to be a creative person. I love fiction just as much as I love my “day job” of writing blogs for businesses. I don’t dislike being artistic — just don’t understand why being creative means that you have to roll your eyes at the idea of marketing.

Mostly, I think it comes down to some misconceptions. Misconceptions like …

“Marketing doesn’t matter if my content is good!”

There’s this mindset that I think a lot of creative people have. The motto “let the content speak for itself” gets thrown around a lot in the circles I’m in.

And I have some sympathy for that! In a perfect world, only the best pieces of art would get recognition, while pieces of art that clearly didn’t have effort or thought put into them would fade away without anyone noticing them.

But you only have to take a look at the bestseller list to know that we don’t live in that world.

It comes down to noise. We live in a world that is positively oversaturated with content. So a lot of the time, it isn’t the best content that gets noticed — it’s the loudest. And marketing it is the only way to make your voice heard over all of that shouting.

“Marketing is selling out!”

This is the natural reaction to the last point, I think. People look at the best seller list, or whatever the equivalent is in their preferred medium, and they think, “This is all garbage! I’m not going to care about selling. I’m just going to care about making good content.”

And this is a great way to be! … During your first draft.

You shouldn’t create for anyone but yourself. But once you’re done creating, why is there such a shame in admitting to other people, “Hey, I like this thing, and I want you to like it, too?”

Marketing is all about finding the right audience for your piece. If you like a thing that you made, there are other people out there who will like it, too! But if you don’t market it, they’ll never even get the chance to see it, and that seems more sad to me than noble.

“Marketing is dishonest!”

It’s easy to look at something like, say, a food advertisement — with glue in the place of milk and mashed potatoes instead of ice cream — and write all marketing off as fake.

But real marketing (or good marketing) isn’t about tricking people into buying your product or going to your event. At the very least, that isn’t the sort of marketing that I do.

Instead, my main focus is on getting your product or event in front of the people who want to know about it. Utilizing hashtags on social media, or creating a mailing list, is not about trickery. It’s about giving people the choice to choose your product by making them aware that it exists.

And I don’t think there’s anything dishonest about that.

“Marketing is too boring!”

Whoever said this has never tried marketing a creative work.

Imagine answering someone’s question about your novel on social media. Or receiving a compliment on your art on twitter and being able to respond to it. Or being interviewed and having a blog published on your latest album.

All of these are legitimate marketing techniques. And they all sound pretty fun to me!

If you’re feeling bored by your marketing technique, that’s not an excuse to give up on marketing altogether. It’s just an excuse to try out something new.