Is Your Marketing All About You?

There are a lot of things that marketers do wrong, even successful ones.

One thing that I have noticed is that some marketers will do something for a while, and then change to a completely different strategy. They'll argue that things have changed and what worked before no longer works.

In some cases, that's completely true. Some methods lose their effectiveness when too many people are using them or due to circumstances outside the marketers' control. A popular site for advertising may change their rules or placement or whatnot, and what worked previously may stop being effective.

However, in other cases, it's an excuse.

You see, some people have a marketing strategy that goes something like this...


And it may work for a while. People will buy into it. People will post in their threads that they are indeed awesome. That their advice is awesome. That their products are awesome.

They may stay on that high for a while. Weeks, months, years even.

But, sooner or later, their legion of followers starts to fade away. Maybe they turn on the marketer. Or maybe they retain their fondness for the marketer but just feel it's their own fault they couldn't make things work. Maybe they get into other things. Maybe they finally got that coveted burger flipping job at the local fast food establishment and they end up making more in one day then they made in a month with their Internet marketing.

At any rate, the self-proclaimed awesome marketer has faded away.

Then, you almost forget about them.

But then, surprise, surprise, they make a triumphant return!

They reinvent themselves.

They're even more awesomer now.

And, you get more of this...


And people buy into it. And talk about how more awesomer the marketer is. And how more awesomer their new products are.

And so on.

If called on the change, the marketer will make excuses as to why the new persona. It will be that they evolved. Or they saw a better way. Or they didn't really change but just altered their marketing to be more honest. Or whatever.

The bottom line is that their old persona just wasn't doing it anymore. Did people get bored with it? Were new people less responsive to it?

Well, maybe, but that isn't the problem.

The problem is that the marketing strategy was all about the marketer him or herself.

It wasn't about how the products would make the customer's life better.

It wasn't about how the product would save the customer time.

It wasn't about how the product would save the customer money.

The strategy was never about the customer at all!

It was all about the marketer.

You see, sometimes these people look at the big successful names. They look at people like Richard Branson, or Steve Jobs, or any number of others. And they think that having a big ego and big public persona is what is going to make them successful.

They think it's about the person, not the product.

So, they create a marketing strategy based around themselves, their persona, real or fictitious. Their products are just something to sell. Often, the products are mediocre and the only hope of selling them is with a larger than life persona that convinces people the products are better than they really are.

Or maybe the products are good, but they're not great.

In any event, the products don't live up to the persona and, eventually, the persona stops being effective at pushing those products.

But, if you look at people like Richard Branson or Steve Jobs or any number of others, they often had amazing products or services behind them. And, while these products or services may have had these larger than life characters promoting them, the actual marketing strategy was about what these products or services would do for the customer.

The personalities would reel them in, but the products or services would keep the customers coming back.

That's often not the case with marketers who make it all about them, and not about their customers.

It's the product or service that keeps people coming back, not the marketer that reeled them in.

Marketers that aren't customer-focused, that are more interested in what they can sell to you than how you can benefit from their product or service, are the marketers that are going to have to keep reinventing themselves.

Their time would be better spent on making a great product or service than on how they can reinvent themselves next.

While you can achieve some short term success with a marketing strategy that is all about you, if you want long term success, you need to make it all about the customer and give them a product or service that truly benefits them--not just a new clever sales pitch from a colorful personality.