To preface this, I want to say that not all advice you get second-hand is terrible; it’s just anecdotal. And that is (for the factors we’ll go into below) much, much more likely to be advice that won’t work for your business than objective analysis of your business and its position in the market. Today, we’re going to explain why you shouldn’t base your own marketing strategy on the advice that “It worked for my friend’s business.”
Comparing Apples to Oranges
Issue the first: how close is this “friend’s business” to yours? Are the two close cousins or completely different? Consider the following factors before following marketing that worked for another business:
- Industry: If their business is a restaurant and yours is an insurance office, your industry’s expectations and needs change the types of marketing that work.
- Size & Maturity: A startup and an established brand of 20 years have different resources to work with in terms of staff, brand awareness, and customer bases.
- Location: Especially for brick-and-mortar and service-based businesses, where you are can make big changes in the marketing that will work and how much it will cost.
- Customers: Different customers mean different demographics. This affects everything from which social media they use to their disposable income.
Not Having the Groundwork Done
Another issue with sharing only one piece of marketing advice is that it doesn’t tell you what this friend has done before. One often overlooked part of marketing strategy is making sure you’ve got the basics done before the hard marketing and selling. This is everything from making sure your website is ready to getting all your staff on the same page to managing your online presence and reputation. If you don’t have that done, marketing can become an expensive mistake.
Lacking Experience and Time
When it comes to any part of your business, you’ve got three resources. Experience, which you use to do the work, the time it takes you, and the money you can throw at the problem. When it comes to DIY marketing, you can do it cheaper (unless you blunder with advertising), but it comes with a steep learning curve and a large commitment of time. That friend might already have these skills or be willing to spend the time to learn them, but are you willing to commit that much of your limited time just to marketing?
Not Having a (Marketing) Plan
The advice you heard? It’s probably the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how that marketing was successful. This isn’t just about making sure that you’ve laid the groundwork: it’s about what the marketing is supposed to accomplish and what comes after this achievement. Often, we see “spaghetti marketing,” where people throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. If this advice is just the latest in a long line of failed impulse marketing decisions, it’s going to be as successful. You need a marketing plan to set this marketing advice into to make it work.
I’m not telling you to not follow that advice you got, but you should do your due diligence before you start. This includes figuring out if you want to—or even can—do this marketing yourself. If you’re not sure, it’s worth consulting with a marketing agency like Vision to see if you should outsource the marketing, from planning to execution, to the experts. Contact us today to learn more, and check out the rest of our Vision blogs, our enVisioning Success podcast, and our downloadable Marketing Strategies Playbook.
