Marketing Tactics That Will Actually Make You Poor

It’s so frustrating.

You heard some advice that really seemed to make so much sense, so you go for it. All in, 100%.

But then you grind and grind and nothing happens. You stay up late and hustle for every single response. It’s like you’re spinning your wheels, not getting anywhere.

What’s the problem? Does the idea even work?

Good news: marketing still works, and really well. Don’t give up. But there are a lot of popular tactics that won’t move the needle.

So why not ditch the useless ideas and start upping your game (and results) with what’s actually working? But to do this, you need to recognize these tactics that make you poor.

Here’s the first one…

Investing In That New Thing Because Everybody’s Doing It

Take AI, for example. Accenture Interactive says 80% of B2B marketers feel AI will revolutionize marketing.

Yet Andrew Stephen, writing for Forbes points out:

AI is in its infancy.

Look how easy it is to get Siri or Alexa confused – just ask the wrong question. Data quality is a huge issue. Garbage in, garbage out. If you feed poor marketing data to AI, you fail to get results.

Another big issue? Nobody agrees on the terminology yet.

Greedy sharks are throwing out fancy tech words and making big promises… But if you don’t carefully find out what they’re talking about, you’ll get sucked in. All your money gone. Nothing in return.

Slap together an audience selection tool, choose a few triggers, time a few messages and voila! A brand new “AI” thing with a big price tag. “Of course you should buy it,” they say. “Everybody’s getting into AI.”

Newsflash: it’s not really AI. And marketers have been using this simple, relatively inexpensive process (audience selection, triggers, message timing) for years.

Yes, you should innovate, disrupt and adopt new things, but… how much more profitable to ask yourself first: Where’s my business really at? What growth stage am I in?

If you’re a small business or just starting out, you definitely don’t need an advanced-stage marketing tactic with a high-dollar price tag on it. No matter how successful people say it is.

What to do instead?

Go back to the basics. Look at the marketing that’s always worked and still does: Pick up your phone and call people. Send emails. Leverage direct mail. There’s a far more predictable success rate here.

People know this, but why do so many still avoid what works?

It’s because you’re told to…

Just Do The Marketing That’s Comfortable

Maybe you hate selling face to face. Or on the phone. That’s why those supposedly enlightened gurus say, “Do what you love.” True, it helps to be excited about your work. And you should always sell yourself on what you’re doing.

But if you take these “follow your passion” phrases literally, you’re on a road that leads to…dead broke. So many of these traditional-marketing haters decide that digital is the only way to go, so they…

Hide behind the keyboard and pray to get rich quick.

And some metrics are so misleading. One Twitter influence metric can rank you in the top 2% of your industry, even if you have almost no clicks through to your website.

Other people crank out video after video on Facebook Live or Periscope. And while this works for some…

Hearts and thumbs up will not pay your bills.

What about paid advertising? Will you get the results you want with Facebook audience targeting? Let’s say you want to target everyone on Facebook with a yearly income of $50,000+ who also like boating.

But if you’re not targeting that same audience with mail and email, what are you missing?

Guaranteed, there are quite a number of middle-class boat enthusiasts who don’t really use Facebook that much. And an even larger number who might use Facebook, but they won’t get into your sales funnel this way.

Speaking of funnels, ever heard of click funnels? You can spend a truckload on these – but how much money will they really make you?

Granted, some people make a living with these things. Yet how many businesses are finding out the hard way that they aren’t what they thought.

What to do instead?

Even digital marketing experts agree: don’t sell directly on social media. The only purpose of social should be to get people onto your website and your email list. Where you can… sell them directly.

Ask yourself: What is going to get me to my audience the quickest? How do I get in front of people who will spend money? What’s the quickest way there?

Inevitably, this leads you back to the basics… calling people, collecting and sending emails, using direct mail.

Here’s another road to the poor house…

Free Training

Just because somebody says is free doesn’t make it free.

What if somebody called you up today and gave you 3 full days of free training? And what happens, if after 3 days, you realize: well, that was kinda cool, but I knew most of it already. Common sense stuff.

Or they show you only one piece, just one of the many ingredients you actually need to succeed.

And in case you hadn’t figured this out… free training is there to sell you something. And of course the presenter makes it look SO easy. But the reality is, what you learned can sometimes take you months or even years to get set up and working profitably.

Truth is, those 3 days didn’t REALLY help you. You could have been using your time to actually get customers. So how expensive were those 3 days…really?

Well, how much do you WANT your time per hour to be worth? And once you’re actually worth that much per hour, you’re going to get paid that much. Without fail.

What to do instead?

Be very intentional with what you learn. When you write out your goals, ask yourself: what exactly do I need to learn to reach these goals?

And then force yourself to learn ONLY those things. Don’t get distracted.

What All This Means For You

Small and medium-sized businesses are getting fleeced by so many schemes and scams. All while good old-fashioned phone calls, direct mail and email marketing will help your business grow.

Think of what stage you’re at in your business. If you’re mowing lawns (or anywhere near just getting started with your business – you know who you are), you don’t need click funnels or AI.

Maybe you just need to use door hangers. Or a sign on your car. Or pound the phone. Even Mark Zuckerberg got Facebook started by sending a bunch of emails to his college buddies.

Sure, there are all those cool, shiny, fantastic marketing tools out there. But they may not be for you. At least not yet.

But if you stay focused and stay away from all these distractions, you can actually take your business to the next level. The level where there’s no more frustration, stress and worry about what works. Where there’s freedom to play with new ideas and options.

Where growing your business is fun again.