The Marketing Advice You Should Actually Ignore
Marketing has more rules than Monopoly with the in-laws, and about as much basis in reality. Let’s fix that.
“Post every single day”
Cool story. Says who?
Posting daily with nothing to say just trains people to scroll past you faster. Nobody has ever bought a single thing because you were “consistent” with a stock photo and an inspirational quote.
Do this instead: Post when you’ve actually got something worth saying. Three good posts beat seven forgettable ones. Every time. Your audience isn’t counting your posts. They’re deciding if the one in front of them is worth stopping their thumb for.
“You need to be on every platform”
TikTok. Instagram. LinkedIn. Facebook. A newsletter. Apparently, a podcast now too. All at once. All “showing up consistently.”
That’s not a marketing strategy. That’s a second unpaid job you never applied for, bolted onto the business you’re actually meant to be running.
Do this instead: Pick the one platform your actual customers are already on. Get properly good at that one. Brilliant on one platform beats mediocre on five, and you get your evenings back. Revolutionary, I know.
“Go viral or you’ve basically failed”
A viral post is mostly luck, not strategy. Half of them bring in a wave of people who were never going to buy anything anyway. While some quiet, unglamorous post you barely thought about ends up building your entire client base.
You can’t plan for luck, no matter how confidently a 22-year-old on your feed tells you otherwise.
Do this instead: Aim for “the right ten people saw this and one of them messaged me.” Not “everyone on the internet saw this and nobody bought anything.”
“List your points of difference”
Every marketing guide tells you to do this exercise. So, business owners write down: great customer service, quality products, affordable prices, personalised experience.
Here’s the problem. Every single competitor wrote down the exact same four things. That’s not a point of difference. That’s just the industry standard, restated with more confidence than it deserves.
Do this instead: Ban yourself from writing anything a competitor could also honestly claim. “We turn up on time” isn’t glamorous, but if your competitors don’t, it’s actually true and actually yours. Specific and provable beats nice-sounding and generic, every time.
“Sound professional”
This one’s quietly killed more small business marketing than any algorithm update ever has. People iron all the personality out of their writing until it’s beige and committee-approved, because it “sounds more legitimate”. Really, it ends up sounding exactly like every other business in their category.
Do this instead: Write it the way you’d actually explain your business to a mate over coffee. Yes, even the cheeky bits. Especially the cheeky bits. Nobody ever built a loyal following by writing like a terms and conditions page.
The actual rule
If a marketing “rule” only ever leaves you thinking you should be posting more, be on more platforms, or be going viral by now, and your business hasn’t actually changed because of it, that’s not you falling behind. That’s a bad rule. Bin it.
Marketing isn’t a checklist. It’s saying a true thing, to the right person, clearly, often enough that they remember you. That’s it. That’s the whole game. Everything else is optional, and most of it was invented by someone selling a course.
Curious what your actual brand personality is, once you strip out all the rules you’ve been following? Take the two-minute test for free →
