33 Marketing Myths That Sure Fire Need To Die
What if you believed something false that was costing you money?
I made this video if you don’t feel like reading today.
But if you don’t have your headphones handy, the full transcript is below. Enjoy!
What if you believed something false that was costing you money?
I spent 10 days scouring the internet (not all day, but you get what I mean) — my laptop slowed down to a crawl because of too many open Google Chrome tabs — compiling a list of over 100 marketing myths, then I added 20 of my own based on stuff my clients struggle with.
I took that giant list, and I simmered it down to not simply the myths I feel are most common — but the myths that are the most costly. You know, the myths that stop us from playing bigger, that hold business back from having more impact and making more money.
Test yourself, and see which ones you still believe in.
Here are the top 33 marketing myths (in my most humblest opinion) that need to die.
Straight out of the gate, we’re starting with something controversial, but you can argue with me in the comments section if you want…
Marketing Myth 1: AI can 10x your marketing results
No, most AI-written content sucks and we’re quickly getting used to it and can spot it a mile away.
AI is currently wildly inconsistent, meaning you have to double-check it anyway, which means you’re spending the time anyway. Instead, use AI for brainstorming, for automation, for proofreading, for summarizing -- these are perfectly fine uses. And if you’re an artist, you’ll be able to get good results with AI images, but otherwise, AI images just you look lazy and strangely, kinda out of touch.
Marketing Myth 2: Marketing doesn’t work
No, people who believe this are just ignorant of how powerful and persuasive marketing is.
I hear people say stupid shit like “I never let marketing influence me. I’m not swayed by ads, choose myself. If I see something I like I do my own research on YouTube and blog posts…” Ok, cool bro. Yep, you’ve escaped the matrix, well done. If you’re one of these and want a scary look at how influenced we are, read the book Brand Washed by Martin Lindstrom and prepare to have your mind blown out of your ears.
Marketing Myth 3: Marketing doesn’t really work for my business
No, this is a false belief held by the cynical and impatient.
And that’s ok, I’m here to help. There’s an adage about a business owner complaining that marketing doesn’t work, and trying everything to get customers, but he almost went broke and was forced to sell his business. He found a buyer by running an ad. Marketing works, but like everything in this world, it’s your job to figure out how to make it work for you.
Marketing Myth 4: If you build it, they will come
No, you gotta tell people.
I wish it was true, but we’re all so obsessed with our individual busy lives, if you don’t tell me about your thing, I won’t know it exists. And if you don’t have content ready for me to find when I go searching for your thing, then I’ll buy from your competitor who does. In fact — smart operators start their marketing first BEFORE they even build their products or have their services available. That way as soon as they’re ready for business, they already have a hungry audience waiting.
Marketing Myth 5: If I can just make the product better…
No, you already have a good thing, making it 0.01% better WILL NOT improve sales.
This one kills me, even seasoned owners still go back and forth improving tiny percentages of their offering, without realizing the bottleneck is people not being aware of their product or service. If you’re doing this, take a look at your monthly payroll budget. How much is spent improving what is already good, vs what’s dedicated to building your marketing machine to tell people about it?
Marketing Myth 6: Marketing is just advertising
No, see, anyone can run an ad.
But without a clear understanding of what separates you from your competitors, your cost to acquire a customer will continue to grow until it gets to the point where you’re no longer profitable. Identity is what separates enduring premium brands from all those that have come and gone. If you think marketing is just advertising, I’ll bet a box of craft beer that you believe this myth, you’re burning through your ads budget wonder what the hell you’re doing wrong.
Marketing Myth 7: Digital marketing = social media marketing
No, social media marketing is just one tool in the toolbox.
If you believe this myth, then you’ll be playing a game competing with the biggest influencers in the world, and will likely fail, because you won't be able to convert the small amount of attention you’ll get -- into dollars in the bank. But if you realise the role social plays in a smart marketing strategy, then you can acquire customers at a profitable rate, consistently, even with a small audience. Social media is just one tool in the toolbox, but because it’s so damn addictive, it gets all the attention of business owners who don’t know better.
Marketing Myth 8: Spend more = make more
No, that’s binary thinking that depletes marketing budgets.
Effective marketing finds the right channels for your audience, and laser targets your message to them -- basically the opposite of just throwing cash at ads. Small businesses can be incredibly successful with a smart, targeted approach.
Let me give you an example: Many businesses run ads constantly all year, through the busy seasons and the predictably quiet seasons. This is unnecessary 1) it causes buyer-awareness blindness, and 2) running ads year-round means small budgets limiting what’s possible. Instead, build a base of organic traffic with quality content to get INbound LeadFlow. Then, before the predictable quiet season begins, you take your most successful content from the past year and amplify it with an ad campaign and a unique offer timed to launch just prior to when the leads usually dry up. This fills the valleys in your sales pipeline, without wasting a single dollar.
Marketing Myth 9: Marketing creates demand.
No, marketing's job is to find people who want your thing.
Your job is to make sure people want your thing BEFORE you bother making it. And if your gut feeling is that you’re in this situation, you need to take action. Go back to the drawing board and figure out where the product-to-market mismatch is.
Talk to your customers. Ask them what they like about doing business with you. Ask them what they don’t like about your products. Ask your customers where they hang out in real life and digitally, and then start showing up in those places. Keep making adjustments until your thing starts selling without you really having to try too hard. Once that’s happening, then you can focus your full attention back on marketing and you watch, it will feel like you’re playing on easy mode.
Marketing Myth 10: Vanity metrics matter
No, what matters is how many sales are being made and how much money is left over at the end of the day.
Metrics are simply indicators as to how far along the attention is making it through from stranger, to paying customer. But marketers and employees worry about vanity metrics because that’s how they can kinda gauge their efforts and justify their jobs. But to the business owner, it’s profit that matters. You can get 1000 likes and make zero dollars — and you can also get just 2 likes but have someone reach out to you and close a 10K deal.
Marketing Myth 11: Attribution is very important
No, digital ads companies made up this metric called “attribution” to help ads managers justify their spending.
However, this metric means nothing to the business owner, because that’s just not how awareness works. We know it takes at least 7 touchpoints with a brand or product before purchases are even considered, let alone made. So by only using attribution as your guiding light, you’ll go broke, and be alone and sad.
Yes, attribution is very useful when building lookalike audiences so you can find more people just like the ones who are buying — but attribution is not at all useful when determining the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. Data monkeys will disagree and you can argue with me in the comments section, I’m happy to be proven wrong — but you as the business owner need to be smarter than that.
Marketing Myth 12: Ads are a silver bullet
No, ads simply are simply a message-amplifying machine that runs on cash.
If your business isn’t taking traffic and converting it into profitable sales without the use of ads, running ads will just drain your bank account. People say “If I just had more leads we’d be fine” but RARELY is that true. Most businesses have average marketing that fails to give epiphanies, have leaky sales pipelines that let hot prospects go cold, and use counter-productive follow-up procedures that either fail to engage completely or actually scare away genuine prospects. Fix these things first, work until the statement “If I just had more leads” is genuinely true — then you’ll have the best chance of succeeding with ads.
Marketing Myth 13: Good marketing can fix a bad product
No, you can’t polish a turd.
It will always be a turd. I’ve made this mistake too in the past, thinking that I can just ‘market’ my way out of a sinking situation. But the reality is that your product must be wanted or needed WITHOUT marketing. Have something good from the beginning, and your marketing will be a spotlight to let the world know what you’ve got.
Marketing Myth 14: Anyone who feels like becoming a marketer can do it
No, just because someone consumes marketing doesn’t mean they can strategise, create and execute marketing that generates results.
This is the reason why the world is full of shitty ads and boring content. HOWEVER, if you’re a business owner, and feel you don’t understand enough about marketing, you could be tempted to abdicate marketing responsibilities to your team; don’t do this. Your most difficult and most impactful job is to figure out how to attract and convert. Until you can afford a CMO, YOU are wearing that hat. So skill up. And do it the fastest way you possibly can.
Marketing Myth 15: That marketing is only for lead generation
No, people's names at the top of the funnel are just that, names.
Without marketing that hits key parts of the buying cycle, you’ll end up with a business that relies heavily on the sales team. This is risky and puts the business in a fragile position. See, the best salespeople demand the best salary and bonuses, and that eats away at your bottom line. Not to mention keeping hungry salespeople like that happy because they’re likely to be poached, and it starts all over again looking for more excellent salespeople. But if you realize marketing isn’t just lead gen, and build your marketing properly, you won't be at the mercy of salespeople. Excellent marketing results in customers lining up with their wallets already open demanding that you take their money.
Marketing Myth 16: That marketing should work instantly
No, if you already have an established brand, with marketing assets and a customer base — sure, you can do amazing things quite fast indeed.
But otherwise, you need time to do your work. Think farming, not hunting. A marketing strategy worth its weight is all about planting seeds, watering, tending, and harvesting entire crops of happy customers. Yes, ad campaigns can work instantly — but ONLY if you’ve done the hard work in advance.
Marketing Myth 17: Anything that’s done to "get your name out there."
No, believing this only justifies vague, pointless spending.
Every marketing action and decision should have a specific purpose and a measurable goal. Otherwise, it’s called pretending to play business. People who do stuff to “get the name out there” are delusional about how marketing works, and how money is made.
And guess who’s making all the money off these suckers? Magazines, newspapers, local sporting clubs, merch companies, local directories, boosted social posts, random networking events, trade shows, the list goes on and on. Now, all of the above can be useful in the right time and place, but hear me out though, just because you don’t have a strategy on how to leverage the attention you get from these activities, doesn’t mean that the business providing them won't happily still sell them to you and take your money.
Marketing Myth 18: All publicity is good publicity
No, that’s fucking stupid.
If all publicity was good publicity, the phrase “PR nightmare” wouldn’t exist. And it doesn’t have to be a full-blown PR disaster either — negative messaging from bad publicity can instantly turn a prospect off you for life, and if the publicity reach is big enough, then you have a hell of a lot of people who will always associate you with negativity. [cough.. Jarred from Subway]
Marketing Myth 19: Branding is just a logo and a pretty font
No, branding is what people think and feel when your name is mentioned.
Branding speaks volumes of information in a short amount of time. Branding justifies your price. Branding takes time to build and must be maintained. Making a logo and selecting a font is playing checkers. Branding is playing chess.
Marketing Myth 20: PR is just overpriced marketing
No, PR is something you’ll see the best in the game investing heavily in, why…?
Because they understand that PR is 4D chess. That’s why the lion's share of their resources are dedicated to it. PR is what you invest in when you have plans that span years, not months.
Marketing Myth 21: More content = better results
No, optimising for more content almost always results in average-quality content.
And average-quality content will make you look… average. But — a rabbit hole of quality content that takes people on a journey that gives them epiphanies can make people open their wallets and demand you take their money in just a few days. The simplest way to avoid coming off average because of your average content — is to not batch-create your content. If you make content as you need it, you’ll be able to take advantage of the feedback loop and will naturally quickly level up your quality. Yes, it can be a pain and hard to be consistent, but what do you want? To be average, and charge average prices, and have average business problems? Or to be excellent, charge what you’re worth, and take your seat at the big table?
Marketing Myth 22: Marketing needs to be highly polished (ie: Professional)
No, in fact the more polished your stuff looks, the more likely people will swipe away and disregard, because it comes across like an ad or some corporate-style fluff.
We’ve all been fed stupid corporate-style marketing for years, and our brain is trained to understand that it’s probably going to be boring, uninspired, and maybe not trustworthy. So stock images? No. A mission statement on your home page? No. Logo front and centre? No. Even raw unedited content can create incredible trust. People are ok with flaws. People want to feel connected. And people don’t care if your photos aren’t perfect or if you made a tyypo in your social post.
Marketing Myth 23: You need a website
No, you don’t, not at all.
There are plenty of alternatives. When and if the time comes when you have a defined need for a website -- and it’s part of a well-thought-out strategy -- then and only then do you build one. Why? Because for the most part, websites are just expensive business cards. And the biggest problem with websites? They need traffic! Without traffic, a website is simply like a beautiful mansion on a hill with no guests to enjoy it, just you, the owner, sitting in the 3rd-floor guest room, staring out the window, wondering when someone will visit.
I joke about it, but it’s really sad, the number of people who come to me for marketing help because they need more customers, but have blown all their budget on a beautiful website that sits there and does nothing. So please, unless you KNOW you need a website, just hold off — and use that budget more wisely.
Marketing Myth 24: You need a big audience
No, you don’t.
See, I’ve been doing this for a while, and I get to see behind the curtain of all kinds of different businesses. There are audiences of half a million people who can barely monetize even 100K a year, and on the flip side there are people with a tiny 500-person email list making over 300K a year. What would you rather — pitch to a room of just 10 ideal prospects or to a room of 100 randos? In fact, it’s not uncommon to see people abandon large YouTube channels and social followings (and Facebook lookalike audiences) and start again from zero because they realized their audience was full of the wrong people. Don’t let the vanity metric of audience size make a sucker out of you.
Marketing Myth 25: You need to go viral
No, just like you don’t need to win the lottery to become wealthy, you don’t need to go viral on social media to build an amazing business.
The problem with chasing that one post that’s gonna blow up and take you to the moon is that it takes skill, talent, and practice to get good enough. And that takes a lot of time! And, despite how hard you work and how much you want to go viral — it might never happen! So instead, just focus on creating marketing that speaks to your ideal customer. And, if they feel there’s value in what you’re doing then they’ll follow down the rabbit hole, start understanding their problem, realize you could be the solution, and want to explore doing business with you. And anyway, by doing it this way, if you do go viral, you’ll have a money-scooping machine already in place to clean up.
Marketing Myth 26: You must do video
No, you don’t need to do video if you don’t want to.
There are plenty of people whose marketing consists of only words. Or images. Or both. The reason why they succeed is because they’ve found a format they like and because of that they’re able to be consistent… And because of their consistency, they can get regular feedback. And because of that feedback loop their quality keeps improving, their influence grows, and their business bottom line reflects it. If you don’t want to do video, find a social media you like and double down. Or start a SubStack. Or do both.
Marketing Myth 27: You need to email daily
No, you don’t, in fact, if you’re not good at email marketing, then emailing every day will probably work against you.
Sending your list an email just once a week is totally fine and will give you a platform to educate your audience and keep them up to date, ready for when you want to make an offer. Hell, even only emailing once a month will still do the job of keeping your list alive. However, if you decide you want to send daily email, either a) hire a professional or b) become a student of email marketing yourself.
Marketing Myth 28: You need to be attractive to be on camera
No, most people are average-looking, and regardless of our looks — we all like to feel connected.
We yearn for connectivity. Now, if you’re selling clothes, sure, it makes sense to hire some models. But if you’re sharing a weekly update from inside your showroom or your office, or you’re teaching something — no one cares that your hair isn’t perfect or your jawline isn’t chiselled. Literally, no one cares. We all want to connect with real people, and we want to hear real stories. Your appearance is your insecurity, so own it, and deal with it. I’m not saying that you must be on video, not at all. I’m just saying that the excuse to not be on video because you’re apparently “not attractive enough” is bullshit.
Marketing Myth 29: Video production needs to look professional
No, we’re all now used to the majority of content being filmed in selfie mode on a phone.
The content of what you’re saying is far more important than cinematic lighting, snappy intros and choreographed transitions. High-end corporate professional-looking stuff turns people off. Usually, the only ones who like that stuff are the people who were paid to create it. This video is filmed on an iPhone. And I travel full time so my lighting consists of whatever window I can find, and sometimes I’ll use a small LED light, and bounce it off a wall. The most important thing is what you’re saying. The second most important thing is your microphone because people will put up with crappy video, but not crappy audio.
Marketing Myth 30: You need to be everywhere, on every platform
No, you don’t, and I’m gonna push back on this “be everywhere” narrative.
Yes, being everywhere is of course good, but this is a terrible myth that holds people back from getting up, started, getting traction, and making money. And here’s why. Because if you try to be everywhere on every platform before you have steam-train momentum, you almost certainly will become overwhelmed and this is a death trap for being consistent. And being consistent is a prerequisite to winning in business. So instead, just pick a channel or platform you like, and start having fun with it. Later once you get the hang of it and you’re consistent — then you can decide to expand to another platform… or not. You’re way more likely to get customers by going deep in one channel than going shallow in many.
Marketing Myth 31: Blogs don’t work anymore
No, of course, people still read words.
It’s how we research our holidays and vacations. It’s how we evaluate what headphones to purchase. It’s how we mould our political views. It’s how we learn the intricacies of gardening the perfect tomato and fill in the history gaps that school didn’t teach us. It’s how we vet our advisors. However, it’s the blogs that are keyword-stuffed that don’t get read anymore. Because we hate reading that junk. Do a Google search and you’ll find blogs still ranking on 1st-page results organically. Yes, you can still build one on your own website, but that’s the long road, there is a shortcut, and it’s called Substack. That’s where I share my stuff :)
Marketing Myth 32: You have to become an influencer
No, you don’t.
If you’re a business person, do yourself a favour and study the economics behind how influencers make their money. You’ll be shocked, and immediately realise it’s a perilous path, and absolutely not required. Look, if you’re the kind of person who wants to be famous, go for it. But I couldn’t think of anything worse. Influencer life is relentless, and you don’t need to become one for your marketing to work. Instead, focus your marketing around your prospects and your products, that’s plenty enough to get people interested, and to want to know more.
And if the time comes when you want to leverage a certain element of your marketing or a promotion for a season, go ahead and hire an influencer to help you. It’s the exception for an influencer to be a successful business person. But smart business people use influencers as part of their marketing strategy all the time.
Marketing Myth 33: You need to be on social media
No, you don’t.
This myth holds people back who would love to be in business, have the stomach for the risk, but simply (and perhaps intelligently) loathe social media. So no, you don’t need to be on social media. But — you have to be somewhere; people need to be able to receive messages from you, and they need to be able to explore your offering — and then take action. Don’t like social? Try email. Don’t like email? Try YouTube. Don’t like YouTube? Start a newsletter. Don’t like writing? Try Google search ads and point them to a few carefully crafted pages on your website, or your web store, or your Substack.
So… there’s my top 33 marketing myths…
Which ones did you find interesting?
Which ones do you disagree with?
Which ones do you think I missed?
I’d love to know your thoughts, your comments make my day.
My biz is all about helping people get clients without doing stupid shit. If you want to see what’s possible for your business use the free How Many Clients Calculator.
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