12 Outdated Marketing Strategies to Avoid Like the Plague (Part II)
In Part I we talked about the first 6 outdated marketing strategies to avoid like the plague, here’s the final 6.
ACTION: Ask yourself 3 questions as you read each strategy. Have I done this? Did it work? How can I improve?
Strategy 7: Sending out a traditional ‘newsletter’
The Problem: With the success of services like Mailchimp and Aweber making it super easy for companies to send out email newsletters – inboxes got quite crowded. Now – ‘newsletters’ full of selfish content where the business simply talks about their news, their successes, their new employees etc. are boring and spammy, and certainly not going to convert email subscribers into buying customers.
Instead Try: We LOVE email marketing, but to be successful at it you need to tackle it from a different approach. Instead of talking about YOU, your newsletters should be packed full of consumable useful, interesting or entertaining content. Here is a good place to start, and if you are an atomic member check out the masterclass on making your email newsletters rock – it talks in detail about the strategies we apply to our own newsletter.
Strategy 8: Selling at business networking
The Problem: The problem here is simple – nobody likes the pushy sales person in the room. Networking is great for making new connections, but hard selling to the room isn’t going to work.
Instead Try: When we started out, networking was one of our main marketing successes – we loved it – and we did it well. But we rarely ‘sold’ in the room. Instead we asked questions, got to know people and demonstrated our expertise, and the sales came rolling in. Check out The Post Networking Checklist for Real Results with Stefan Thomas, author of ‘Business Networking for Dummies’
Strategy 9: Saving cash by starting out with a cheap brand
The Problem: We wrote a whole article on why start-ups should invest in branding from the get-go, but to quickly summarise – yes budget can be tight in the beginning – but your brand is much more than a logo – and by understanding your brand, you can catapult yourself to the level of your competition. You are already at a disadvantage in terms of experience compared to your competition – you don’t want to look it too!
Instead Try: Branding doesn’t have to be overly expensive. Big design and marketing agencies are going to be out of your budget most likely, but there are a ton of talented freelancers out there who can help you. Don’t ask your friend’s- uncle’s-dog walker, find a professional. Here’s an article on what is worth spending some money on, and what isn’t.
Strategy 10: Advertising once
The Problem: It is estimated somebody has to see an advert 3 to 21 times before acting on it. 21 times! That’s a lot. So when putting an advert in a magazine, or online, or anywhere else, you can’t expect results from one go.
Instead Try: Advertising has come on leaps and bounds – with tools like Facebook Ads and Google Ads we can get super targeted and reduce the amount of times somebody has to see an ad before acting upon it (For our Facebook ads – on average the amount can be reduced to 1.22). Remember though frequency is always better than reach. Even if you are doing offline campaigns, your campaign should be tested, tweaked and allowed to run long enough to build that frequency.
Strategy 11: Simply launching a website
The Problem: Like with blogging mentioned in Part I, expecting to get a ton of business by launching a website with no promotion, is once again – quite silly. There’s so much competition out there that launching a website really isn’t marketing at all.
Instead Try: We tell our clients to think of a website as a marketing catalyst. For a website to do it’s job, you need to pair it with an actual strategy to get that all important traffic. Check out this breakdown of traffic sources.
Strategy 12: Giving 50% effort
The Problem: You can apply this to any marketing strategy you do. Giving 50% is just not going to cut it. As the internet was in its infancy, giving 50% may have got you results. But now, the amount of competition out there is crazy, so giving 50% is not going to get you the results you want.
Instead Try: Here’s the thing – marketing works when you put in the effort, when you give 110% and then some. So don’t try to do everything and spread yourself too thin. Pick a strategy that you believe will work for you and give it your all. We often say good marketers treat marketing like an olympic sport – always pushing for excellence in ONE EVENT (You don’t see any gold medalists in weight lifting AND 100m sprint now do you) – and always striving to be better than the competition. You need to do that too!