Home - Marketing For Hippies

Ethical Marketing

Starter Kit

Want to learn a way of marketing that is ethical, effective and beautiful? In this Starter Kit, you'll learn my best core strategies on how to market your business in a way that’s genuinely good vibes, deeply respectful, trauma-informed, consent-based, conscience-driven, courteous, and that honours the dignity of everyone involved (including you). Get more word-of-mouth. Market your beautiful work beautifully. Market in a way that makes the world better. No scripts. No pitching. No inauthentic self-promotion. No high-pressure sales tactics. No manipulating anyone. This is marketing you’ll actually do. You don’t have to choose between ethics and effectiveness.

Name

A Foundational, Feel-Good, 'Breath of Fresh Air' Approach To Marketing

Marketing can feel good.

That's the core idea here. It can be effective, ethical and beautiful all at the same time.

And, given the overly saturated marketplace in the holistic and coaching world, your marketing itself needs to stand out.

In a world of fast food, slow food stands out.

In a world of fast marketing, slow marketing is like a beacon to people.

Ah... But the only thing we hate more than marketing is marketing ourselves. So many people feel deeply ill at ease with the idea of self-promotion.

Most entrepreneurs I know feel torn between either doing marketing that feels good (but doesn’t work) or marketing that works (but doesn’t feel good).

I am suggesting that there’s a way to approach marketing that actually works better than the pushy and manipulative approaches you hate and that feels genuinely good to all involved.

You can be a better marketer and attract all the clients you can handle – without sacrificing your integrity.

This work is all about developing what I call ‘ethical marketing for uncertain times’.

This work is about learning to create marketing you are genuinely proud of.

It's easy to get discouraged and desperate.

It's so easy to feel anxious about marketing.

Maybe you spent a lot of money with and got burned by other marketing coaches – even 'heart-centered' and 'conscious' – ones before coming here. Maybe they told you to do a lot of things that either didn't work or felt deeply against your conscience or, worse, both.

I get it. Me too. That's what had me start Marketing for Hippies.

I believe in creating marketing that weaves together three things...

Ethics because it needs to be honest and feel good for everyone.

Effectiveness because it needs to work.

Beauty because it makes the people who see it want to jump up and live again.

Depth Is The Antidote To Desperation

When times get uncertain and people clutch onto their purse strings a little tighter, it’s easy to feel desperate. It’s easy to feel like one’s marketing must become more disruptive and deceptive. It's easy to distract ourselves or get discouraged. Or feel like you need to get another degree, diploma or certification to make your business work.

But those things rarely help and often make things worse.

The long-term fix is this: you go deeper.

If you need the branches to be bigger and higher, you start at the roots.

You go deeper.

You deepen your connections with your people. You deepen your clarity on who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it and for whom you do it. You deepen your commitment and your consistency in showing up.

As personal branding expert Jessica Zweig said once, “Content is no longer King. Clarity is king.”

Depth is the antidote to desperation.

And then there’s a certain amount of crossing your fingers, too.

In your Ethical Marketing Starter Kit, you won’t learn the latest bells and whistles of the online marketing world or any cutting edge persuasion tools. We aren't trendy around here.

You’ll learn a lot about the fundamentals, the long game, about Slow Marketing, about the roots you need to set in order to have long-term, believable, sustainable, organic, word of mouth results without the hype or the pressure. Results you can lean on and feel great about achieving. In short, you’ll be invited to go deeper into what really matters.

In short, this is marketing for hippies.

Hi, I’m Tad, owner of Marketing for Hippies.

My name is Tad Hargrave, and since 2001, I’ve been weaving together strands of ethical marketing, Waldorf School education, a history in the performing arts, local culture work, anti-globalization activism, an interest in his ancestral, traditional cultures, community building and supporting local economies into this work of helping people create profitable businesses that are ethically grown while restoring the beauty of the marketplace.

Right out of high school, I got involved in doing sales for a leadership development company and learned a mixed bag of sales and marketing approaches. Some of it was beautiful. Some of it wasn’t.

I spent a decade unpacking why the gross stuff felt gross and the good stuff felt good. I then travelled all around Canada, the United States and some of Europe with this very workshop (most of the time it was offered on a PWYC basis), sharing what I’d discovered and learning more along the way. Back then, I was one of the only ‘conscious business’ marketing coaches I knew of.

I’ve read a few marketing books and attended a few workshops, but most of what I have learned came from working with clients, one-on-one and in workshops and seeing what worked and what didn’t.

If you’d like to learn more about me and my story, click here.

“Now marketing is easy!”

“When I first heard of Marketing for Hippies, I thought “Yay! A hippie!” I find everything that Tad shares so inspiring and I can really pace the process so that my business grows comfortably. There’s no need to put more effort into marketing, just to keep on top of it with Tad’s videos and newsletters.

The most useful message that he’s given me is to say thank you. I applied his method of the win-win and mentioned it on my website and invoices. I say thank you as much as possible. I am grateful to be able to be a part of a win-win. I can be honest about the services that I provide and I truly feel that I have become a better therapist as a result of Tad’s teachings. Now marketing is easy!

Others would always tell me to work harder and put more effort into my marketing, which of course, they wanted to do for me as long as I paid them. It wasn’t necessarily unethical, it was just annoying. I love Tad’s work–how he does it and how he looks while doing it. If I felt more need to expand, I would buy more.

Tad, thanks for being you. I recommend you to all of my friends who could benefit from your wisdom and attitude.”

Janneke Vasse

Jannekevasse.nl

What we’ve got here could be a fit for you if you. . .

Are not great at marketing: You love your business and it’s a success because you’re very good at what you do, not because you’re excellent at articulating the unique value of what you do. It’s not because you’re a great marketer. In fact, most of your growth has come from word-of-mouth.
Keep putting your marketing off. You have been secretly “intending” to give your marketing more time and focus... but uhhh... just never seem to get around to it? You just don’t “love” the idea of marketing (even though you love your business). If you’re honest, you feel allergic to it all. It feels gross. You never want to come across like, ‘that’.
Want to get much better marketing results and attract many more clients (and better ones) more consistently. You know in your heart, mind and gut that if you could clearly articulate the essence of what you do to more of the right people, you would have all the business you could handle, and more. But you don’t know how to do it.
Like the notion that marketing could feel good. What if it could be guilt-free, respectful, beautiful, inspiring, honouring, fun, warm, gracious, quirky and honest (and be even more effective because of that). You want to have your marketing not only sell good things that make the world better, but actually be a good thing that makes the world better. You want to have a no-hype, non-gross, inspiring and uplifting marketing plan that makes sense and is both easy and affordable to implement.
You're finally ready to take your business seriously. It's been an expensive hobby for years, but you're finally ready to stop messing around and have this become a profitable and sustainable venture.

We might love each other a lot if . . .

you love local and organic food, farmers' markets, local bookstores and craft fairs
you love to celebrate what makes a place special – their local businesses, music and arts and know that real wealth is always found in community
you’d love to see your city filled with urban beekeeping, orchards, food forests, backyard chickens and front yard gardens
you’re deeply critical of our current dominant society and economic systems (and where it seems to be heading). You just don’t trust ‘the man’.
you resonate with the idea of restoring beauty to the marketplace.
you resonate with my philosophy and feel like you might be a fit.