The problem with marketing

The problem with marketing is that most of the bad advice works short term and not long term, and most of the stuff that works only works long term and not short term.

People who hate marketing generally fall into two camps.

1-People who have decided to “dip their toe” into something like ads or mailing list, but not for long enough for them to actually work, and then they complain that those things don’t work, even though they only did them for like 3 months, or only send an email once a year, and don’t even optimize it when they do.

2-People who tried some garbage, saw it work for a minute, and then watched it flame out, and are now so bitter that they think nothing works, or that something that works won’t work long term.

If they are still doing marketing, it’s at such a small level that they could never survive.

Maybe they rely on newsletter swaps, which only work when stacked with a bunch of other promotions, or they post on social media, which only works…well pretty much never unless you have a stacked profile, but usually they do nothing.

They sure like to tell you what doesn’t work though, and what could never work, just because it doesn’t work for them.

I’ve written two books on this subject, and pretty much dedicated all my free time for five years on the study of building a creative career, and successful people do the things that work for long enough for them to work and while they might try out new strategies, they are aware, for the most part, they will flame out.

Most every successful creative I know has a mailing list (even if it’s a small organic one of a blog that hosts subscribers they can reach during a release), 1-3 social media accounts which have a robust follower base, and run ads at least at some point during the year.

How they function otherwise is different between them. Some have podcasts, or Youtube, or a blog. Some focus on releasing products ALL THE TIME, like all the time, so much of the time that it feels like they couldn’t ever sleep.

Those people take the energy I use for podcasts and doing other things and focus it all on making and launching their products, and that becomes their consistent content.

Some do big launches and some focus on advertising with their launches and keep it small.

But what is consistent across ALL of them is:

1-mailing list (or blog with a subscriber list they can reach during a launch)
2-1-3 robust social media accounts
3-advertising (this might be Facebook, or Google, or in newspapers, or on radio, or even at conventions)
4-launching GREAT (not mediocre or good) products often and consistently that their audience WANTS.

Most of them have either a Youtube channel, a blog, or a podcast, but not all of them. In fact, not nearly enough of them for me to say it’s required unless you want it.

All of them do the four things listed above, and constantly talk about how they wish they had done them all sooner.

You can complain about it, or argue, or say it’s not worthwhile to do one of those things, but I have spent my professional life looking for trends in marketplaces, and those four things are consistent EVERYWHERE I look. Are there exceptions, yes, but the massively successful ones all look pretty much the same, though not exactly the same.

Literally, everywhere, so when you say one of those things doesn’t work, I know what you mean is “this doesn’t work for me and instead of looking inward at myself, I am blaming the mechanism”.

I have seen people succeed without doing one of the things on that list, but the most successful ones do all four. Besides, even if you could “get away” with just three, why would you not want to give yourself the BEST chance of success?