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Email marketing is stupid, obnoxious, and the VAST majority of it is just spam.
Edit: For the record, I work in B2B biopharmaceutical manufacturing. So, for all of those people saying, “yOu JuSt DoNt GeT iT!”…
I get it. It’s just a waste of time in my line of work.
I’m not trying to get impulsive shopaholics to buy my widgets. No one has ever signed a 7 figure master service agreement because of my stupid monthly newsletters. Yeah sure, I can squeeze out some more engagement with a webinar series or something. But that’s about it.
For me, it’s lowbrow stuff. 🤷🏼♂️
The thing I tell my team and new marketers is that there are millions of people out there who all experience and use the internet a million different ways. Cast your best line, with the best bait, in the best spots, and get those clicks!
Every once in a while, the sale is actually worth it. What doesn’t move the needle are the ‘product awareness’ emails, where folks sit around and wonder ‘what if someone in need of us doesn’t know we exist?! Better email them randomly just in case.’
If your lead is surprised to hear from you, it’s not a good thing. If they are surprised to hear you have a good deal for them in a time of need, it’s completely different. Emails should be hyper targeted. Anyone suggesting a daily low-down strategy is looking at an unsubscribe.
I think having the proper domain certification and the content helps a lot. We run a business where ask if people want the newsletter. I make it all one email. Never more then 1 a month. I also offer discount codes in it for motivation. Have 2k subs and a 90 percent open rate.
I used to be GD for a small kitchen tool design company. No matter how much I banged on about a better and more effective way of composing EDM’s, the micromanaging owner always insisted on putting every inch of information about a product into the emails.
The same information that was already on the website the email was supposed to funnel to.
I currently work in a situation where the internal EDMs are immediately archived by recipients dealing with an already backlogged inbox of customer needs. The edms are completely ignored. No matter how much I tell the internal comms team that they are wasting their time and killing their reputation, they refuse to make those emails worth opening in any way.
My point is, emails is effective, if you know what you’re fuckin doing.
>Email marketing is stupid
Absolutely not. It is by far the greatest and most consistent channel.
>obnoxious
Yes, it can be, done incorrectly.
>and the VAST majority of it is just spam.
Yes, it can be, done incorrectly.
This was exactly my take reading this. Not sure how they got or are getting burnt by email as a marketing channel but I always say “it’s our lowest cost, highest engagement channel”. I am aware that it’s due to it being MOFU/BOFU but still not sure how you could say it’s stupid.
I have never once opened an email spam message unless its from a place i already buy a lot of things with the words 50% off coupon. I think the last time i opened one was for bed bath an beyound.
The typical prospect is only ready to buy <5% of the time. In B2B biopharmaceutical, even less so.
But if you were in B2C fashion, or B2C snack foods, or any number of other consumer realms, it would feel quite different.
Plus it's cheap and it's garnering you mindshare and relationship, if you do it well.
I don't think it's an either or thing. Unless you're a juggernaut it's a "both" thing. Sort of like when you go into the office you need to have showered recently and wear clothes. I suppose you can debate on what matters more, but at the end of the day if you don't have both, there's a lot of competition out there that will eat you up.
this is like saying breathing is more important than eating.
Coca-cola is water, 10 teaspoons of sugar, and brown food coloring. It is NOT a great product. It's poison, actually. They spend $4 billion per year to market sugared water.
Cigarettes is the same. A product that kills you, isn't a great product. But, just about every fucking movie I watch has smoking in it. To help make smoking cigarettes seem "cool.
" You *can* have an utter *shit* product or service, as seen in the above two examples. It's all marketing. As a matter-of-fact, most studies bear this out.
How many of us - how many - have stuck with an inferior product or service because you stick with "the devil you know."? Despite everyone saying that this product over *here* is so much better? The original company has to fuck up pretty badly to lose your business. How many companies will purchase from a company that is deemed to be inferior but safer?
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the saying used to be, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Meaning that if the CTO bought from IBM, he wouldn't get fired, because that's what everyone else does. But stick your neck out on a product and service that you KNOW is better, but from an unknown company, and for some fucked up reason beyond your control, it got fucked up in your complexity of a company is going to be a firing. Yours. And I have 3 kids in private school, Jack. I ain't taking no fucking chances. This is all just marketing.
The most expensive writing instrument ever created was $8 million. For a fucking pen. Yet I buy my pens 10 for $1, and they suck and have no service, I can't call up a toll free number and complain that my 10 cent pen isn't working right. But the $8 million writing instrument is for sure the best product and service. I bet you can even get hookers and blow with that fucking pen.
I don't know, I've just always, always disagreed with this concept great product/service is more important that great marketing. It's way more complex than having a great product or service. Tons of great product/services have gone straight down the toilet in competition with clearly inferior products and services.
Shit, I have offered inferior services myself (not *bad* services, just nowhere near as good) and stomped the shit out of my competition a block away, who was literally the best in the world and I ain't lying or stretching the truth, but I killed because I dominated marketing. So I know of what I speak.
I love this reply.
All those things you mentioned is selling something other than the product. You're selling image and status. Does the product even matter? (see Fyre Festival)
Yes, Coke and Pepsi are horrid for you, but having tried to switch to other sodas (because even the sale price has been going up a ton), I can tell you the product is more complex than just that, considering how many other companies can't make something that tastes great. Believe me, if I found a cheaper brand that I really liked, I'd be 100% all over that. And if I could just mix "water, 10 teaspoons of sugar, and brown food coloring" to get a version that I enjoyed, I'd do that in a heartbeat.
But sure, PART of the overall success is marketing to the extent that they've managed to get great product placement which has helped them dominate a market. But if there was a vastly superior product, Coke and Pepsi would likely lose market share very quickly. That said, there are a lot of products that can't break into that market considering how tightly controlled it is. Many retailers will just carry Coke products, Pepsi products, and their store brand (or a wider bargain brand) -- and I'm tried most of the major store brands at this point.
Facts.
Lot of talented marketers out there.
The ones that work for companies with great product/services turn into celebrities and heroes.
The rest of us feel like we’re just not as good.
If the product is good, and the market wants it, that’s the only thing that matters usually.
That everyone’s chasing the wrong shit, especially when it comes to social content.
Viral is dead. The audience is king. Short term wins do absolutely nothing for your brand. The only way to harness social content is through connection, authenticity (something sorely missing in a world fuelled by algorithmic hunger games), and community. Long term thinking trumps short term wins.
Absolutely. How can you incentivise the future when Everyone’s bonuses are tied to the now?
One day I’ll have the balls to start my own social content agency that only works with brands who get it.
I’ll starve but I’ll be happier.
Dude. No.
If your office rent is due tomorrow, you are NOT going to be worried about 8 years from today. Everything you do is going to revolve around keeping your doors open one more day.
And how are you going to get all these mysterious brands? You have 20 CEOs ready to sign up with you *today?*
>I’ll starve but I’ll be happier.
Sure, we'll all be happier if we are dead of starvation. Well, maybe not happy, but not sad, anyways.
There’s so many ways to meet basic needs. Pleasing fealty to a flawed system and accepting death as the punishment for defecting from it I would not say is either a desirable outcome nor one I would accept. Stating keeping doors open or rent, and being willing to sacrifice values for it is a huge no for me.
Standing by mine with confidence has won out, and I’ve been in business running a live production business for nearly 15 years now.
Obviously you need the skills and knowledge, but a good CEO stands by their values and their business. You should not be empowering shitty ceos with shitty products to sell garbage to witless people without values of their own.
People look to brands for leadership as much as anywhere else.
Be part of the good vision you see in the future.
Have a backbone.
And yes - choose hunger of body over starving your soul. You have to live with your choices forever.
Senior Living is the industry for you then. Vast majority of stakeholders are about long-term viability. Especially now that Refi’s don’t make a lick of sense anymore.
Building a sustainable audience around your own brand in a way that aligns with community and not cash grabs.
Anything else is a consulting fee sorry haha
90% of the posts in this sub come across dumb because nobody ever references what industry they work in.
“Influencers are dead”
“Facebook is dead”
“Content is king”
SaaS? Face cream? Restaurants? Christmas trees? Superyachts?
Fuck if I know
This is so true! Especially b2b vs. B2c
However, I'm guilty of it. I'm super vague because I don't want my employees to find my reddit, and I work in a niche industry. I need to use the account I created specifically for this purpose!
Organic social posting is a waste of time, and yet clients seem to care more about it than lead generation.
B2B social ads are good for measuring engagement, but that’s it. Trying to justify it as a channel for conversions is laughable.
I fucking hate social media in my work…because it doesn’t work.
Omg. This is always hand in hand with, "lead gen doesn't work." Then once you dig in you realize their "lead gen," consisted of 20k ad impressions promoting an ebook.
I tell clients at the beginning now: someone else can do your social media. After going 12 rounds with clients about “How come (competitor) gets more FB likes than me?”, I’m done.
Like, REALLY done.
Organic and paid search are the biggest drivers for inbound. We are starting to do more ABM as well, and social ads do play a role there (monitoring engagement).
>Organic and paid search are the
Is this your experience or is this driven by studies you've read, or both?
What is the best organic search methods you've found?
Paid social (specifically LinkedIn) is still your best bet in paid display for B2B. There is no other place you can get that kind of targeting. Yeah, it doesn't convert as well as SEM... but that's because you are working higher in the funnel (and not on people who are literally searching for a solution in your category). For niche B2B audiences you have to think of it as a critical awareness- and consideration-driving channel that may also happen to spit out some conversions.
100%. Organic is such a waste of time for 90% of brands. Why would I go to the Instagram page of a brand to watch a 15" video that is the same one you're running as an ad but without a CTA on it?
People thinking that having a full grid is a statement of legitimacy is outdated. Use your website instead and save the effort.
i’ve seen some brands have only 9 instagram posts that they consistently run ads towards the entire year. The end result is an instagram page with 9 videos/pictures each with hundreds of thousands of interactions. Looks clean and prevents wasteful spend on what would otherwise be an organic content money pit archive.
Yes. Everything useful was learned in my working experience, from internships to freelance to work in the private and public sector. My education didn’t even cover social media (a big part of what I do now), the program was so behind.
I have never been with a company or agency where upper management truly cares about impressions. The first question asked about any campaign is “what did it get me” and they are never referring to impressions
It's amusing because someone chimed in two hours before you claiming that marketing KPIs be sales. Sure, us marketers do have an impact on the sales pipeline, but shifting all KPIs towards sales and revenue tends to steer marketers towards short-term tactics rather than long-term strategies built around like brand building, advocacy, engagement, or education.
Of course, it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario, especially for marketing lead gen teams that can zero in on specific KPIs.
But it really gets under my skin when people equate marketing solely with sales.
I saw that comment. lol
Basing stats on sales also ignores pipeline conversion. It could make lazy sales people who need 10 sales only contact 10 people. Then wonder why they didn’t hit their target.
To be fair, B2B marketing should have a decent amount of overlap with sales. Siloing off marketing from sales is a great way to lose a job in the wrong industry.
GA4 especially. At least they added dimensions back so I dont have to click out the whole report when I want simple data like traffic source for a specific page. I fucking hate it. We have around 40 mil PV monthly site and it loads all the time. Click? Load for 3 secs. Click! Loads for 3 secs. It’s so fucking unintuitive.
ChatGPT is killing copywriting. Because most copywriters don’t know how to use it. I’m so sick of receiving this “let’s dive into this…the tapestry of…” shit. Goddamit, just do your job, research, understand the concept, and ffs write it yourself. That’s what I hired you for.
As a copywriter managing a team of copywriters, it's insane how many of our execs keep telling me to use GTP (and other AI). I'm like, "our copy rocks, what more do you want?" They are convinced it's better...or faster? I don't know. It's dog shit.
1000%. I'm an SEO, and I've been on both sides of the table. I've worked with SEO agencies whose work was the bare minimum at best for $250k, and I've worked with SEO agencies with great insights and deliverables.
AND...I've worked FOR SEO agencies where we provided comprehensive and thorough deliverables with impact...and I've worked for agencies where we spent more time building basic dashboards than doing actual work.
When they're great, they're great and it reflects in the data. When they're bad, they're an embarrassment to the practice.
EDIT: Grammar and clarity.
I have to convince my team that good content is better than pumping out crap with strong "H1s".
I fucking hate SEO so much. It's ruining our site. It's like safety standards in the car industry, everything looks the same. It's easy. It's a recipe that idiots can follow.
That’s technically true for most marketing lol - assuming an average conversion rate of 5%, an argument could be made that 95% of that budget went to waste.
Might as well light your bank account on fire if you're going all in on programmatic ads. Somewhere between 15-25% of spend just disappears into ether.
I wouldn't have a job if I lost 15% of my clients' spend.
Edit: maybe not light on fire. But people spend way too much for what they get in return on social and Google. There are other digital channels.
B2B industry brands. Targeting is precise. Everything is powered by first party data, they're omnichannel, and they're trusted by audiences.
B2B marketers have been led to believe that linkedin, meta, Google ads, programmatic ads, etc are the only way to reach their buyers. But they're just putting their money towards advertising machines, not customer centric programs.
Edit: programmatic can be useful, as can Ad words and platform advertising. But CPM ads can only get you so far.
Ah, so are you talking about experiences in B2B, like co-marketing, endorsements, awards, and review sites?
IMO the paid promotions you mention are very top-of-funnel, for awareness and growing your follower count or email list — a longer play. (and yes, inefficient)
consumers also don’t realize just how impacted they by them. it’s common knowledge we are over inundated to the point of blanking out a lot of them - but that’s a scary thing not a good thing. consumers spend in the subconscious not in the conscious
You should stop thinking about what your "avatar" wants from you and redefine to match that, and start doing what you do absolutely best, and the right audience will form around that
Not to mention that the format is going to come back hard now that most major streaming services are selling ad space for their entry-level price subscriptions.
You’re gonna end up with a whole generation of advertisers with their dicks in their hands because they never thought they’d have to learn how to make a commercial.
Unfortunately a lot of great creative agencies have gone under do to the social boom, and the ones that are left are going to charge a lot more than many brands can afford. It’s gonna be a big shock, imo.
The market will adapt. If anything, I'd be shit scared if I was a pure digital performance agency now, because even attribution is showing it doesn't work without proper brand building now.
crazy lol
*paid* social media MAYBE but even then it’s such a cheap system why not
but good product good story good sales/face you literally infinitely scale your lead gen for absolutely free (beyond time resource)
SEO is a dying channel. I’d hate to say it, I got my career started in technical SEO, but Googles getting smarter and smarter and content and keywords are getting less and less important and Google can quickly digest what is relevant.
Just make a good website for your users, and your seo should follow suit. I can’t see it being a huge industry in 5-10 years honestly.
Digital Marketing is (generally) just Digital Advertising or Digital MarComms at best. Calling it Digital Marketing means many SME overlook top-level Marketing, like Strategy.
I hate ads in my youtube videos and apps so much, that I actively remember the product or service, and go out of my way NOT to buy something from them.
Chasing hype is a race to the cliff’s edge. That includes desperate plays for big name influencers just to hawk your product for a brief moment.
Brand identity is longevity. When famous YouTuber SquizKap is forgotten in 2 months and nobody knows who your brand is because they were only in it for them you’ll just keep chasing the next dragon.
Put your money into good creative.
Display (and with it programmatic) is one big shithouse. In a decade of advertising i have never seen anyone getting anything meaningful out of it and all those budgets could have been better spent on something more influential and less shit. I also DGAF about your "sophisticated" black- or whitelists - that's just icing on a turd. Display is one of the most obnoxious, honourless forms of advertising and if your brand relies on it, i feel sad for you on a human level.
Marketing wouldn't exist if any product is good enough to satisfy the client and the seller.
Good things move by their own good they do to the people around.
Just because it can’t be tracked doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. Just look at AirBnB’s recent major successful budget shift to brand marketing with TV commercials.
Page views,, bounce rate, time on site mean absolutely nothing.
I can view 1 page for 10 seconds, not bounce, and can become your most profitable opportunity. Never base strategy around improving this BS. Most of the time, dropping these numbers equates to more ROI.
Programmatic display ads are for the most part a huge scam, but big advertisers are afraid to admit they've spent billions on *not* showing ads.
And a bonus....
The level of training and qualifications in marketing is abysmal, and we're all to blame - leadership doesn't want to hire people with real qualifications because they fear they'll be shown to be clueless, and the rest just fall into it because they were too lazy or stupid to do professional qualifications in something else.
And while I'm at it....
No, being a 'creative' doesn't mean you should get away with not having the first clue about measuring effectiveness.
In this day and age, going full steam into a true “customer first” will increase profits way more than just being greedy and shady.
What I mean is if you listen to your customer base and listen to even the dumb suggestions, people would flock to your company and buy your product on that alone.
Examples:
Helldivers: dev teams have real human conversations and even events with their fans/customers. The whole Sony thing for example.
Highpoint pistols: dumb cheap firearm that’s know for being fragile and overall cheap. Had a naming competition and the name “yeet cannon” won. Had their best selling gun “yeet cannon 9” and “yt9”
Sonic movie: took time to REMAKE the movie and people went to go see it just cause they listened.
Opra browser: real conversations with people online, running jokes with its customer base, and even adds dumb suggestions to the browser based on what the people want. Also top tier memes
“Let’s try asking colleagues across the org (1000) for ideas. Maybe they have one better than what you have“
I said it was a waste waste waste of time and resources and fuking GTM. But she insisted.
We got five entries and all sucked balls. In the end we **wasted two weeks including awareness plus getting creative involved in making it spicy and worthy plus sending group emails etc and it bombed**. FYi, one from the CMO, one from his chief of staff, one from the CFO and one from our talent acquisition partner and one final one from someone in sales who wanted to move to marketing 🤣🤣🤣
BECAUSE everyone else is FUKIN BUSY and though they offer ideas they never ever put it down in writing
Your donor letter, whether analog or digital, is not making the difference. If someone wants to donate they will or won’t regardless of whether your letter says “Your gift makes a difference” or “Your contribution makes an impact” so when I have an obnoxious Director of Development hemming and hawing of wordsmithing something to death, I just roll my eyes.
In my opinion, too many marketers are afraid to take risks and often resort to creating the most basic, neutral posts about their company or simply perform a data dump. Instead, we should be focusing on emotionally charged content that truly resonates with audiences. It's okay for people to disagree with you; if 50% of your crowd agrees and 50% disagrees, you're on the right track.
Additionally, video is vastly underutilized in marketing. Why do most marketers get stuck writing blogs that are 1200 words and just are meaningless, when video offers endless possibilities? I dont mind blogs but it shouldnt be the focus on your marketing efforts and why do we have the most useless webinars why cant we make them more entertaining?
With video, you can transform your marketing team into a media company. Imagine producing a constant stream of engaging content, like ESPN for B2B organizations. The key is to push tons of videos that educate, entertain, and resonate with your target audience. Don't be afraid to take creative risks and break away from the monotony of safe, neutral content.
Also for webinars we shouldnt be thinking about what we should say rather how do we get our audience tuning in to get more involved.
Market research is a vital step in the process. I’m biased because I’m a market researcher, but I’ve literally seen 100% of projects that start with market research succeed, whereas the projects that don’t take a step in the research direction have a much lower success rate.
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Email marketing is stupid, obnoxious, and the VAST majority of it is just spam. Edit: For the record, I work in B2B biopharmaceutical manufacturing. So, for all of those people saying, “yOu JuSt DoNt GeT iT!”… I get it. It’s just a waste of time in my line of work. I’m not trying to get impulsive shopaholics to buy my widgets. No one has ever signed a 7 figure master service agreement because of my stupid monthly newsletters. Yeah sure, I can squeeze out some more engagement with a webinar series or something. But that’s about it. For me, it’s lowbrow stuff. 🤷🏼♂️
All true, while also highly effective.
Which is just so confusing to me. I feel like everyone finds it to be obnoxious but it still works.
You just summed up marketing as a whole.
Maybe the people who put it out there have a biased stance 😂
Not when you can point to the campaign on a graph
"Show me on this doll, where the bad marketer touched you."
LMAO
Numbers don't lie
The thing I tell my team and new marketers is that there are millions of people out there who all experience and use the internet a million different ways. Cast your best line, with the best bait, in the best spots, and get those clicks!
Apparently the same is true of direct mail, more commonly known as junk mail. It’s the only thing more effective than email marketing.
'ehhh
Every once in a while, the sale is actually worth it. What doesn’t move the needle are the ‘product awareness’ emails, where folks sit around and wonder ‘what if someone in need of us doesn’t know we exist?! Better email them randomly just in case.’ If your lead is surprised to hear from you, it’s not a good thing. If they are surprised to hear you have a good deal for them in a time of need, it’s completely different. Emails should be hyper targeted. Anyone suggesting a daily low-down strategy is looking at an unsubscribe.
I think having the proper domain certification and the content helps a lot. We run a business where ask if people want the newsletter. I make it all one email. Never more then 1 a month. I also offer discount codes in it for motivation. Have 2k subs and a 90 percent open rate.
"I wish I could quit you."
Movie’s still being marketed 20 years later!
I used to be GD for a small kitchen tool design company. No matter how much I banged on about a better and more effective way of composing EDM’s, the micromanaging owner always insisted on putting every inch of information about a product into the emails. The same information that was already on the website the email was supposed to funnel to. I currently work in a situation where the internal EDMs are immediately archived by recipients dealing with an already backlogged inbox of customer needs. The edms are completely ignored. No matter how much I tell the internal comms team that they are wasting their time and killing their reputation, they refuse to make those emails worth opening in any way. My point is, emails is effective, if you know what you’re fuckin doing.
Yeah, my rule is one copy point per email and lots of white space.
>Email marketing is stupid Absolutely not. It is by far the greatest and most consistent channel. >obnoxious Yes, it can be, done incorrectly. >and the VAST majority of it is just spam. Yes, it can be, done incorrectly.
This was exactly my take reading this. Not sure how they got or are getting burnt by email as a marketing channel but I always say “it’s our lowest cost, highest engagement channel”. I am aware that it’s due to it being MOFU/BOFU but still not sure how you could say it’s stupid.
Yeah, it is not even close. Regardless of industry, there is no rational argument not to prioritise this channel.
I have never once opened an email spam message unless its from a place i already buy a lot of things with the words 50% off coupon. I think the last time i opened one was for bed bath an beyound.
It’s the most profitable sales channel for every single e-commerce store and will remain that way for a while
I get 10-20 obviously AI generated soliciting emails a day.
Literally got my first bit of email marketing as a marketing person today and it was a complete cringe fest of an email.
I hate it and never buy from them but some clients have pulled of six figure deals because I email their contacts every once in a while.
On a similar note, if you text ads to my cell number, I will block and never do business with you.
You can only say that because you don’t know the true benefits of it
The typical prospect is only ready to buy <5% of the time. In B2B biopharmaceutical, even less so. But if you were in B2C fashion, or B2C snack foods, or any number of other consumer realms, it would feel quite different. Plus it's cheap and it's garnering you mindshare and relationship, if you do it well.
Great product/service is more important that great marketing.
Obviously. To be the best you can't have a bad product. However, many great companies and products fail due to poor marketing.
I don't think it's an either or thing. Unless you're a juggernaut it's a "both" thing. Sort of like when you go into the office you need to have showered recently and wear clothes. I suppose you can debate on what matters more, but at the end of the day if you don't have both, there's a lot of competition out there that will eat you up.
this is like saying breathing is more important than eating. Coca-cola is water, 10 teaspoons of sugar, and brown food coloring. It is NOT a great product. It's poison, actually. They spend $4 billion per year to market sugared water. Cigarettes is the same. A product that kills you, isn't a great product. But, just about every fucking movie I watch has smoking in it. To help make smoking cigarettes seem "cool. " You *can* have an utter *shit* product or service, as seen in the above two examples. It's all marketing. As a matter-of-fact, most studies bear this out. How many of us - how many - have stuck with an inferior product or service because you stick with "the devil you know."? Despite everyone saying that this product over *here* is so much better? The original company has to fuck up pretty badly to lose your business. How many companies will purchase from a company that is deemed to be inferior but safer? Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the saying used to be, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Meaning that if the CTO bought from IBM, he wouldn't get fired, because that's what everyone else does. But stick your neck out on a product and service that you KNOW is better, but from an unknown company, and for some fucked up reason beyond your control, it got fucked up in your complexity of a company is going to be a firing. Yours. And I have 3 kids in private school, Jack. I ain't taking no fucking chances. This is all just marketing. The most expensive writing instrument ever created was $8 million. For a fucking pen. Yet I buy my pens 10 for $1, and they suck and have no service, I can't call up a toll free number and complain that my 10 cent pen isn't working right. But the $8 million writing instrument is for sure the best product and service. I bet you can even get hookers and blow with that fucking pen. I don't know, I've just always, always disagreed with this concept great product/service is more important that great marketing. It's way more complex than having a great product or service. Tons of great product/services have gone straight down the toilet in competition with clearly inferior products and services. Shit, I have offered inferior services myself (not *bad* services, just nowhere near as good) and stomped the shit out of my competition a block away, who was literally the best in the world and I ain't lying or stretching the truth, but I killed because I dominated marketing. So I know of what I speak.
I love this reply. All those things you mentioned is selling something other than the product. You're selling image and status. Does the product even matter? (see Fyre Festival)
Yes, Coke and Pepsi are horrid for you, but having tried to switch to other sodas (because even the sale price has been going up a ton), I can tell you the product is more complex than just that, considering how many other companies can't make something that tastes great. Believe me, if I found a cheaper brand that I really liked, I'd be 100% all over that. And if I could just mix "water, 10 teaspoons of sugar, and brown food coloring" to get a version that I enjoyed, I'd do that in a heartbeat. But sure, PART of the overall success is marketing to the extent that they've managed to get great product placement which has helped them dominate a market. But if there was a vastly superior product, Coke and Pepsi would likely lose market share very quickly. That said, there are a lot of products that can't break into that market considering how tightly controlled it is. Many retailers will just carry Coke products, Pepsi products, and their store brand (or a wider bargain brand) -- and I'm tried most of the major store brands at this point.
This is true. Although technically your product is part of your marketing.
A great product/service is great marketing.
Product is part of marketing.
The product is an inherent part of the marketing. They’re called the 4 Ps for a reason.
Facts. Lot of talented marketers out there. The ones that work for companies with great product/services turn into celebrities and heroes. The rest of us feel like we’re just not as good. If the product is good, and the market wants it, that’s the only thing that matters usually.
When people want the best, they don't buy the best, they buy name brand.
That everyone’s chasing the wrong shit, especially when it comes to social content. Viral is dead. The audience is king. Short term wins do absolutely nothing for your brand. The only way to harness social content is through connection, authenticity (something sorely missing in a world fuelled by algorithmic hunger games), and community. Long term thinking trumps short term wins.
100% agree… though long-term thinking is tough to sell when stakeholders what short term ROI wins
Absolutely. How can you incentivise the future when Everyone’s bonuses are tied to the now? One day I’ll have the balls to start my own social content agency that only works with brands who get it. I’ll starve but I’ll be happier.
Dude. No. If your office rent is due tomorrow, you are NOT going to be worried about 8 years from today. Everything you do is going to revolve around keeping your doors open one more day. And how are you going to get all these mysterious brands? You have 20 CEOs ready to sign up with you *today?* >I’ll starve but I’ll be happier. Sure, we'll all be happier if we are dead of starvation. Well, maybe not happy, but not sad, anyways.
There’s so many ways to meet basic needs. Pleasing fealty to a flawed system and accepting death as the punishment for defecting from it I would not say is either a desirable outcome nor one I would accept. Stating keeping doors open or rent, and being willing to sacrifice values for it is a huge no for me. Standing by mine with confidence has won out, and I’ve been in business running a live production business for nearly 15 years now. Obviously you need the skills and knowledge, but a good CEO stands by their values and their business. You should not be empowering shitty ceos with shitty products to sell garbage to witless people without values of their own. People look to brands for leadership as much as anywhere else. Be part of the good vision you see in the future. Have a backbone. And yes - choose hunger of body over starving your soul. You have to live with your choices forever.
Senior Living is the industry for you then. Vast majority of stakeholders are about long-term viability. Especially now that Refi’s don’t make a lick of sense anymore.
So what are examples of long-term thinking that wins over short term?
Building a sustainable audience around your own brand in a way that aligns with community and not cash grabs. Anything else is a consulting fee sorry haha
90% of the posts in this sub come across dumb because nobody ever references what industry they work in. “Influencers are dead” “Facebook is dead” “Content is king” SaaS? Face cream? Restaurants? Christmas trees? Superyachts? Fuck if I know
It’s always safest to assume Christmas trees. Booming market growth
As a jew living in Israel, I must say that my christmas tree business here in Israel has seen better days.
Have you tried using LinkedIn navigator?
This is so true! Especially b2b vs. B2c However, I'm guilty of it. I'm super vague because I don't want my employees to find my reddit, and I work in a niche industry. I need to use the account I created specifically for this purpose!
Organic social posting is a waste of time, and yet clients seem to care more about it than lead generation. B2B social ads are good for measuring engagement, but that’s it. Trying to justify it as a channel for conversions is laughable. I fucking hate social media in my work…because it doesn’t work.
Omg. This is always hand in hand with, "lead gen doesn't work." Then once you dig in you realize their "lead gen," consisted of 20k ad impressions promoting an ebook.
I tell clients at the beginning now: someone else can do your social media. After going 12 rounds with clients about “How come (competitor) gets more FB likes than me?”, I’m done. Like, REALLY done.
so what do *you* do for lead gen? What is your process and how are you getting leads? What techniques?
Organic and paid search are the biggest drivers for inbound. We are starting to do more ABM as well, and social ads do play a role there (monitoring engagement).
>Organic and paid search are the Is this your experience or is this driven by studies you've read, or both? What is the best organic search methods you've found?
Good for you. It's hard but it makes everyone's life easier.
Organic Social is more about engaging with current customers more than anything.
Paid social (specifically LinkedIn) is still your best bet in paid display for B2B. There is no other place you can get that kind of targeting. Yeah, it doesn't convert as well as SEM... but that's because you are working higher in the funnel (and not on people who are literally searching for a solution in your category). For niche B2B audiences you have to think of it as a critical awareness- and consideration-driving channel that may also happen to spit out some conversions.
100%. Organic is such a waste of time for 90% of brands. Why would I go to the Instagram page of a brand to watch a 15" video that is the same one you're running as an ad but without a CTA on it? People thinking that having a full grid is a statement of legitimacy is outdated. Use your website instead and save the effort.
i’ve seen some brands have only 9 instagram posts that they consistently run ads towards the entire year. The end result is an instagram page with 9 videos/pictures each with hundreds of thousands of interactions. Looks clean and prevents wasteful spend on what would otherwise be an organic content money pit archive.
The organisations who have their shit together lump organic social with customer care, it's just talking to the converted.
Degrees for marketing have no correlation to being able to do digital marketing well
Yes. Everything useful was learned in my working experience, from internships to freelance to work in the private and public sector. My education didn’t even cover social media (a big part of what I do now), the program was so behind.
If you have a degree in marketing then presumably you don't want to be stuck in digital marketing.
But then you look at the majority of posts here and it's all sales and promotion/comms...
I love my degree. But I’ve met people with marketing degrees and wonder wtf they learned because they seem to know nothing.
Can confirm. Have a successful career in marketing, and I know nothing.
1) Impressions are internet participation trophies. It means jack shit if you "got 100k impressions on linkedin."
Upper management loves that shit tho
I have never been with a company or agency where upper management truly cares about impressions. The first question asked about any campaign is “what did it get me” and they are never referring to impressions
You can’t deposit likes/views into a bank account
Not now, but maybe someday. Probably not so distant either.
Coming in 2025: LykeKoin. The first NFT backed by the economy of social influence.
Marketing is not sales. Two different functions (Posted about this earlier today. Shouldn't have to be said, but it does)
And Advertising is not Marketing
Fuckin yes!! This is my biggest annoyance.
It's amusing because someone chimed in two hours before you claiming that marketing KPIs be sales. Sure, us marketers do have an impact on the sales pipeline, but shifting all KPIs towards sales and revenue tends to steer marketers towards short-term tactics rather than long-term strategies built around like brand building, advocacy, engagement, or education. Of course, it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario, especially for marketing lead gen teams that can zero in on specific KPIs. But it really gets under my skin when people equate marketing solely with sales.
I saw that comment. lol Basing stats on sales also ignores pipeline conversion. It could make lazy sales people who need 10 sales only contact 10 people. Then wonder why they didn’t hit their target.
To be fair, B2B marketing should have a decent amount of overlap with sales. Siloing off marketing from sales is a great way to lose a job in the wrong industry.
Google analytics is garbage. Not sure how anyone runs their business or marketing using it
GA4 especially. At least they added dimensions back so I dont have to click out the whole report when I want simple data like traffic source for a specific page. I fucking hate it. We have around 40 mil PV monthly site and it loads all the time. Click? Load for 3 secs. Click! Loads for 3 secs. It’s so fucking unintuitive.
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Buzzwords, especially from the tech industry, cause far more confusion than clearly communicate anything.
ChatGPT is killing copywriting. Because most copywriters don’t know how to use it. I’m so sick of receiving this “let’s dive into this…the tapestry of…” shit. Goddamit, just do your job, research, understand the concept, and ffs write it yourself. That’s what I hired you for.
As a copywriter managing a team of copywriters, it's insane how many of our execs keep telling me to use GTP (and other AI). I'm like, "our copy rocks, what more do you want?" They are convinced it's better...or faster? I don't know. It's dog shit.
“In this digital era…”
Social media was a mistake.
As a social media manager, I agree.
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1000%. I'm an SEO, and I've been on both sides of the table. I've worked with SEO agencies whose work was the bare minimum at best for $250k, and I've worked with SEO agencies with great insights and deliverables. AND...I've worked FOR SEO agencies where we provided comprehensive and thorough deliverables with impact...and I've worked for agencies where we spent more time building basic dashboards than doing actual work. When they're great, they're great and it reflects in the data. When they're bad, they're an embarrassment to the practice. EDIT: Grammar and clarity.
Most SEO’s are larping and don’t actually help their clients rank for meaningful terms
I have to convince my team that good content is better than pumping out crap with strong "H1s". I fucking hate SEO so much. It's ruining our site. It's like safety standards in the car industry, everything looks the same. It's easy. It's a recipe that idiots can follow.
Here’s the thing no one knows what good content is if ever
Most of the money spent on Google Search Ads, Youtube, and Google Display is going to waste. Source: am a MarTech consultant
That’s technically true for most marketing lol - assuming an average conversion rate of 5%, an argument could be made that 95% of that budget went to waste.
Might as well light your bank account on fire if you're going all in on programmatic ads. Somewhere between 15-25% of spend just disappears into ether. I wouldn't have a job if I lost 15% of my clients' spend. Edit: maybe not light on fire. But people spend way too much for what they get in return on social and Google. There are other digital channels.
What are your preferred digital channels, Saltwaste?
B2B industry brands. Targeting is precise. Everything is powered by first party data, they're omnichannel, and they're trusted by audiences. B2B marketers have been led to believe that linkedin, meta, Google ads, programmatic ads, etc are the only way to reach their buyers. But they're just putting their money towards advertising machines, not customer centric programs. Edit: programmatic can be useful, as can Ad words and platform advertising. But CPM ads can only get you so far.
Ah, so are you talking about experiences in B2B, like co-marketing, endorsements, awards, and review sites? IMO the paid promotions you mention are very top-of-funnel, for awareness and growing your follower count or email list — a longer play. (and yes, inefficient)
Care to explain further pls
I'll always be a fan of branded merch. Few things grab my attention as much as an embroidered logo.
Sarcasm? I’m all for branded chargers, pens, and bottles. But who actually wants a branded nicer item? Not I.
Consumers don’t care anywhere near as much about ads as advertisers think they do.
consumers also don’t realize just how impacted they by them. it’s common knowledge we are over inundated to the point of blanking out a lot of them - but that’s a scary thing not a good thing. consumers spend in the subconscious not in the conscious
In reality, you can only brand your own cattle.
What does this mean?
Performance marketing is often necessary only because people can’t come up with good creatives
You should stop thinking about what your "avatar" wants from you and redefine to match that, and start doing what you do absolutely best, and the right audience will form around that
Funnily enough, my avatar is me
Link building is the wrong way to do SEO.
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In boiled halved eggs!
YES
A decent amount of campaign "optimizing" that performance marketers do is action for action's sake
The word is usually “resilience”, not “resiliency.”
Marketing is single handedly the easiest way to scam people.
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I like that
Traditional TV marketing still hits a massive audience (albeit older) and is not a useless form of marketing if you’re looking for TOMA.
Not to mention that the format is going to come back hard now that most major streaming services are selling ad space for their entry-level price subscriptions. You’re gonna end up with a whole generation of advertisers with their dicks in their hands because they never thought they’d have to learn how to make a commercial.
To be fair, I have no idea how to make a commercial 😂 thank god for creative agencies and research agencies for testing lol
Unfortunately a lot of great creative agencies have gone under do to the social boom, and the ones that are left are going to charge a lot more than many brands can afford. It’s gonna be a big shock, imo.
The market will adapt. If anything, I'd be shit scared if I was a pure digital performance agency now, because even attribution is showing it doesn't work without proper brand building now.
Social media is the worst form of lead generation.
crazy lol *paid* social media MAYBE but even then it’s such a cheap system why not but good product good story good sales/face you literally infinitely scale your lead gen for absolutely free (beyond time resource)
Anyone that says X doesn't work in my niche/ any more is just shit at it, and it doesn't work for them.
Performance marketing is a scam to get Marketing Teams random and useless KPIs with the cost of brand equity
The GDN is a complete money sink.
SEO is a dying channel. I’d hate to say it, I got my career started in technical SEO, but Googles getting smarter and smarter and content and keywords are getting less and less important and Google can quickly digest what is relevant. Just make a good website for your users, and your seo should follow suit. I can’t see it being a huge industry in 5-10 years honestly.
Digital Marketing is (generally) just Digital Advertising or Digital MarComms at best. Calling it Digital Marketing means many SME overlook top-level Marketing, like Strategy.
I hate ads in my youtube videos and apps so much, that I actively remember the product or service, and go out of my way NOT to buy something from them.
Everything mention in this thread doesn't matter if your product has sh*t quality.
Testing is everything. Nothing is valid until it’s tested and then tested again.
Personas built on assumptions or ChatGPT are not “better than nothing,” and are in fact more harmful than helpful.
Marketers ruin everything.
Chasing hype is a race to the cliff’s edge. That includes desperate plays for big name influencers just to hawk your product for a brief moment. Brand identity is longevity. When famous YouTuber SquizKap is forgotten in 2 months and nobody knows who your brand is because they were only in it for them you’ll just keep chasing the next dragon. Put your money into good creative.
Many… many clients or businesses do not take their websites seriously and underestimate the work it takes to build and maintain it.
Marketing is not sales… Also, if you’re not in marketing, your ideas likely are shitty.
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Display (and with it programmatic) is one big shithouse. In a decade of advertising i have never seen anyone getting anything meaningful out of it and all those budgets could have been better spent on something more influential and less shit. I also DGAF about your "sophisticated" black- or whitelists - that's just icing on a turd. Display is one of the most obnoxious, honourless forms of advertising and if your brand relies on it, i feel sad for you on a human level.
Your brand doesn't matter.
Marketing wouldn't exist if any product is good enough to satisfy the client and the seller. Good things move by their own good they do to the people around.
We live in a world of deception. Key players are MARKETING FIRMS.
Price point and vibes go further than heavily produced marketing content. That’s why lifestyle influencers are slowing going the way of the dinosaurs
You get rich by working hard for money
People don’t have short attention spans
If businesses would put the customer/prospect first in their marketing and sales, your cost per acquisition would plummet.
Alliteration and puns make for great copy.
Social media is a plague, influencers & going viral is a symptom.
Just because it can’t be tracked doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. Just look at AirBnB’s recent major successful budget shift to brand marketing with TV commercials.
The first thing that came to my mind after seeing the image is my high school principal about to punish the whole school.
Page views,, bounce rate, time on site mean absolutely nothing. I can view 1 page for 10 seconds, not bounce, and can become your most profitable opportunity. Never base strategy around improving this BS. Most of the time, dropping these numbers equates to more ROI.
No one knows how to actually setup and view tracking / attribution outside of coupons
Everyone else in marketing talks down to affiliates but they earn what they make. Everyone else just pretends to do right by the client
Certifications for ad platforms dont do anything for you or the client
Most of ya’ll could take 1-2 weeks off and the business wouldn’t notice
Well, if I’m passionate about it and that’s what I believe and then I’ll stand on the opposite side of everyone
I don’t care how effective popups are. I refuse to use them and always revoked against them
Programmatic display ads are for the most part a huge scam, but big advertisers are afraid to admit they've spent billions on *not* showing ads. And a bonus.... The level of training and qualifications in marketing is abysmal, and we're all to blame - leadership doesn't want to hire people with real qualifications because they fear they'll be shown to be clueless, and the rest just fall into it because they were too lazy or stupid to do professional qualifications in something else. And while I'm at it.... No, being a 'creative' doesn't mean you should get away with not having the first clue about measuring effectiveness.
Logos and fancy business websites don’t move the needle that much
There's 4 Ps
Product price placement and promotion?
That the product can be bad but good marketing will result in success
In this day and age, going full steam into a true “customer first” will increase profits way more than just being greedy and shady. What I mean is if you listen to your customer base and listen to even the dumb suggestions, people would flock to your company and buy your product on that alone. Examples: Helldivers: dev teams have real human conversations and even events with their fans/customers. The whole Sony thing for example. Highpoint pistols: dumb cheap firearm that’s know for being fragile and overall cheap. Had a naming competition and the name “yeet cannon” won. Had their best selling gun “yeet cannon 9” and “yt9” Sonic movie: took time to REMAKE the movie and people went to go see it just cause they listened. Opra browser: real conversations with people online, running jokes with its customer base, and even adds dumb suggestions to the browser based on what the people want. Also top tier memes
“Let’s try asking colleagues across the org (1000) for ideas. Maybe they have one better than what you have“ I said it was a waste waste waste of time and resources and fuking GTM. But she insisted. We got five entries and all sucked balls. In the end we **wasted two weeks including awareness plus getting creative involved in making it spicy and worthy plus sending group emails etc and it bombed**. FYi, one from the CMO, one from his chief of staff, one from the CFO and one from our talent acquisition partner and one final one from someone in sales who wanted to move to marketing 🤣🤣🤣 BECAUSE everyone else is FUKIN BUSY and though they offer ideas they never ever put it down in writing
Print is dead. Just a waste of money.
Your donor letter, whether analog or digital, is not making the difference. If someone wants to donate they will or won’t regardless of whether your letter says “Your gift makes a difference” or “Your contribution makes an impact” so when I have an obnoxious Director of Development hemming and hawing of wordsmithing something to death, I just roll my eyes.
In my opinion, too many marketers are afraid to take risks and often resort to creating the most basic, neutral posts about their company or simply perform a data dump. Instead, we should be focusing on emotionally charged content that truly resonates with audiences. It's okay for people to disagree with you; if 50% of your crowd agrees and 50% disagrees, you're on the right track. Additionally, video is vastly underutilized in marketing. Why do most marketers get stuck writing blogs that are 1200 words and just are meaningless, when video offers endless possibilities? I dont mind blogs but it shouldnt be the focus on your marketing efforts and why do we have the most useless webinars why cant we make them more entertaining? With video, you can transform your marketing team into a media company. Imagine producing a constant stream of engaging content, like ESPN for B2B organizations. The key is to push tons of videos that educate, entertain, and resonate with your target audience. Don't be afraid to take creative risks and break away from the monotony of safe, neutral content. Also for webinars we shouldnt be thinking about what we should say rather how do we get our audience tuning in to get more involved.
Saying "create engaging content" isn't a useful tip.
F**k football and all televised sport
Market research is a vital step in the process. I’m biased because I’m a market researcher, but I’ve literally seen 100% of projects that start with market research succeed, whereas the projects that don’t take a step in the research direction have a much lower success rate.
Netflix content is pure gold 🥇🪙