You can stop worrying about what's "new" in marketing

If you’re building a house, you aren’t going to care if your carpenter has the latest brand of hammer, right??

No, of course not. You’re gonna care that your stairs don’t collapse.?

Right now, because of the innovation mayhem in the marketing industry, businesses have become inundated with new tools left and right. This has slowly indoctrinated entrepreneurs and executives into a default belief that being on the “next big trend” is more important than understanding the principles that drive their marketing’s success. They’ve become more worried about the tools than they are about the quality of the carpenter—and as a result, for most businesses, the stairs are creaking.

There’s one type of question I get more than any other from business owners and marketers. It all boils down to the same basic question: What should I do?

This question comes in many forms—like, “What ad platform should I be using?” or, “Should I still be focused on blogging?” or, “Do you think I should start an Instagram profile?”

My answer is always the same: it doesn’t matter as long as you know what to say.

This answer annoys almost everybody.

But I don’t care. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the marketing modality affects much less than the message being shared.

Let me explain further. Marketing operations can, in some respects, be boiled down to two things: what you do and what you say. The platforms and the fancy new softwares and the cutting-edge training programs are the tools—and they are secondary to the message they are carrying. Anybody can be a software expert and do things like building a CRM or a sales funnel. But the people who can figure out what to say in that CRM’s email broadcasts or on that sales funnel’s page are the people in charge of the company. These people are much rarer than those who can just do things. Doing is a commodity—something a beginner might specialize in—but saying is an art.

Why?

Because your message—what you say—is deeper than something that can be explained in a course. There's no formula for it. It’s a message that you can feel. A message that resonates with people. It’s a message that, when someone in your audience hears, sees, or reads it, their ears immediately perk up. They start paying closer attention because you’ve shared something that they simultaneously agree with and about which they feel curious to learn more. That’s the seed of great marketing.?

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This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Snake Oil. If you're interested in hearing more, I invite you to place a pre-order here.