Marketing Guru RANT

[mikecarlooch]

I felt an intense fire of WTF recently thinking back, and figured it may be valuable to share it here.

I am half-way through Gabriel Weinberg's book "Traction".

Holy mother of god, I feel conned by marketing gurus.

Storytime:

When I was running my (small) video editing company, I was trying to do 10 different marketing channels at once of which 9 were literally.. producing 0 dollars, and the one marketing channel that was working was generating thousands in MRR.

My state of mind at the time was to do things that my "competitors are not doing.." and so I treated the other 9 marketing channels as if they were equal or even MORE important than the marketing channel that was working.

Why?

Because I felt "It's too basic".

Brunson says you need a funnel.

X says you need a webinar.

Gary Vee says if you're not running facebook ads and Instagram ads, you're missing out on the biggest business opportunity of a lifetime.. And you shouldn't ONLY double down on one platform, you should be on ALL of them or else you're gonna lose!

B...S...

So you know what I did? I spend 10% of my brainpower building my damn PRODUCT (my knight in shining armor)

I spent 10% on outreach (the channel that was working), 10% on tiktok, 10% on Instagram, 10% on youtube, 10% on facebook, 10% on paid ads, 10% on funnels, 10% on webinars, etc etc..

Needless to say, my product sucked.

These gurus act as if the marketing channel they like the most is some kind of silver bullet, like every business is not different..

My biggest lesson from this?

Imagine if I had tripled down and spent 50% of my brainpower on that one traffic channel that was actually freaking WORKING..

and spent the other 50% on making my product AMAZING.

Do you think while you're a mile wide and an inch deep in a traffic channel/product, you DON'T have a competitor who decided to triple the F down on that one channel? In short, you'll get freaking destroyed by them.

Or a competitor that spends half their time on making their product amazing instead of my 10% brainpower?

The upside to this experience is I know how I'll be operating in the future...

 

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[Chet Shen]

I felt an intense fire of WTF recently thinking back, and figured it may be valuable to share it here.

I am half-way through Gabriel Weinberg's book "Traction".

Holy mother of god, I feel conned by marketing gurus.

Storytime:

When I was running my (small) video editing company, I was trying to do 10 different marketing channels at once of which 9 were literally.. producing 0 dollars, and the one marketing channel that was working was generating thousands in MRR.

My state of mind at the time was to do things that my "competitors are not doing.." and so I treated the other 9 marketing channels as if they were equal or even MORE important than the marketing channel that was working.

Why?

Because I felt "It's too basic".

Brunson says you need a funnel.

X says you need a webinar.

Gary Vee says if you're not running facebook ads and Instagram ads, you're missing out on the biggest business opportunity of a lifetime.. And you shouldn't ONLY double down on one platform, you should be on ALL of them or else you're gonna lose!

B...S...

So you know what I did? I spend 10% of my brainpower building my damn PRODUCT (my knight in shining armor)

I spent 10% on outreach (the channel that was working), 10% on tiktok, 10% on Instagram, 10% on youtube, 10% on facebook, 10% on paid ads, 10% on funnels, 10% on webinars, etc etc..

Needless to say, my product sucked.

These gurus act as if the marketing channel they like the most is some kind of silver bullet, like every business is not different..

My biggest lesson from this?

Imagine if I had tripled down and spent 50% of my brainpower on that one traffic channel that was actually freaking WORKING..

and spent the other 50% on making my product AMAZING.

Do you think while you're a mile wide and an inch deep in a traffic channel/product, you DON'T have a competitor who decided to triple the F down on that one channel? In short, you'll get freaking destroyed by them.

Or a competitor that spends half their time on making their product amazing instead of my 10% brainpower?

The upside to this experience is I know how I'll be operating in the future...

This looks to me as a practical application of the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle. You get 80% of the result from 20% of the channel.

Focus on one channel that works and dominate it by consistently posting or spending more time there. There's always that one channel that get 80% of the result, invest in it.

I'm not competent to go on as I'm a teenager with little experience but I hope it brings value. This just reminded me to focus on one channel that brings result and dominate it. Thank you so much!

 

[Andy Black]

From my thread of favourite one liners:

Be wary of people who say “you need to”.

You rarely "need" to do anything.

People who say you do are often pushing something onto you. Sometimes to sell something, often because of their own limiting beliefs.

As for trying lots of different marketing channels...

"Start by saying Yes. Scale by saying No."

Try lots of things till something works, then eliminate to focus and scale.

That's not just about marketing channels either.

Mike... take what others say with a pinch of salt. I think you're better off taking action and thinking about what you've done, rather than filling up your head with other people's thoughts about what *they* have done.

Act, assess, adjust.

 

[Andy Black]

PS: I don't think you've been conned. I suspect you're arriving at the wrong conclusions when you come across advice and stories. Are you maybe consuming too much? Are you maybe getting confused/affected by different people's opinions too much?

 

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[mikecarlooch]

PS: I don't think you've been conned. I suspect you're arriving at the wrong conclusions when you come across advice and stories. Are you maybe consuming too much? Are you maybe getting confused/affected by different people's opinions too much?

Yes and Yes. lol

 

[Andy Black]

Yes and Yes. lol

What's your solution?

 

[WJK]

I felt an intense fire of WTF recently thinking back, and figured it may be valuable to share it here.

I am half-way through Gabriel Weinberg's book "Traction".

Holy mother of god, I feel conned by marketing gurus.

Storytime:

When I was running my (small) video editing company, I was trying to do 10 different marketing channels at once of which 9 were literally.. producing 0 dollars, and the one marketing channel that was working was generating thousands in MRR.

My state of mind at the time was to do things that my "competitors are not doing.." and so I treated the other 9 marketing channels as if they were equal or even MORE important than the marketing channel that was working.

Why?

Because I felt "It's too basic".

Brunson says you need a funnel.

X says you need a webinar.

Gary Vee says if you're not running facebook ads and Instagram ads, you're missing out on the biggest business opportunity of a lifetime.. And you shouldn't ONLY double down on one platform, you should be on ALL of them or else you're gonna lose!

B...S...

So you know what I did? I spend 10% of my brainpower building my damn PRODUCT (my knight in shining armor)

I spent 10% on outreach (the channel that was working), 10% on tiktok, 10% on Instagram, 10% on youtube, 10% on facebook, 10% on paid ads, 10% on funnels, 10% on webinars, etc etc..

Needless to say, my product sucked.

These gurus act as if the marketing channel they like the most is some kind of silver bullet, like every business is not different..

My biggest lesson from this?

Imagine if I had tripled down and spent 50% of my brainpower on that one traffic channel that was actually freaking WORKING..

and spent the other 50% on making my product AMAZING.

Do you think while you're a mile wide and an inch deep in a traffic channel/product, you DON'T have a competitor who decided to triple the F down on that one channel? In short, you'll get freaking destroyed by them.

Or a competitor that spends half their time on making their product amazing instead of my 10% brainpower?

The upside to this experience is I know how I'll be operating in the future...

Focus on what works and why it works. Then weigh the idea of deleting the rest -- after you figure out why they didn't work. And then test both of those "why" conclusions. Are there any overlaps or commonalities?

When I make major changes, I make those changes one tick at a time. Small adjustments work better for me than sweeping changes. I make that adjustment and then figure out how that move either worked better or made my situation worse.

 

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[Financial_Femme]

Play to your strengths and what works, @AndyBlack made some rather great suggestions.