Marketing Misunderstandings

When I work with new business owners, I often notice how they share some common assumptions about being in business and how marketing works. I call these assumptions Marketing Misunderstandings. Here are the top five.

The “degree/school” misunderstanding

One would assume that if a school offers a program in a specific field, the demand and market to use your new knowledge and degree would in fact exist…unfortunately this is not the case.

This is why so many of us – myself included! – graduated from programs that did not prepare us for the real world.

Over time I have come to see how unrelated school programs are from the job market and business world. Schools (colleges, universities, private online programs, you name it) are themselves businesses: they market and sell their programs. This means that you cannot assume that – just because they charge you to teach you something – their program will lead to a viable profession or business.

And this is true for all fields, not just the arts.

I think a lot of us almost subconsciously assume that if they teach it it’s a valid career.

If you are going back to school to improve your career or to start a business, always do your research with people working in the field before committing to any program. Do not go by what the school says. I know for example that when it comes to coaching the information given is often wildly inaccurate.

Check that what the school offers is in fact needed, and get an idea about what it’s really like working in the field, including how much money most people make, what other education or licensing expenses you can expect, etc.

If you are reading this after going through a program and finding out after graduation that it did not in fact prepare you to make a living from all you learned, do not despair. Most of us in business learned how to make it outside of formal education. This includes people who got MBAs and were taught how to run big businesses instead of how to bootstrap a small consultancy firm.

You can learn too. Just in a different – on the ground, doing the work – kind of way.

The “one approach” marketing misunderstanding

This one Marketing Misunderstanding drives me nuts! If you work for yourself, chances are that you are constantly bombarded by variations of “there is one magical approach to marketing and I can teach it to you!” One that I often see on my social media feed? Something along these lines:

Coaches! Are you tired of being on social media? Do you want to stop the constant content creation and get results by doing what you love instead? Sign up for my new webinar: I will show you exactly how I went from being broke to making $$$ in just one month.

Then when you sign up, they share with you one tool or strategy that worked really well for them, for example having a podcast instead of being on social media, or growing their presence through PR, etc., but what you do not realize is that there is no guarantee it will work for you.

A lot of marketing approaches can work, the problem is that this type of messaging makes it sound as if there is a magical approach to make all businesses work. And that’s simply not true.

I don’t have time to get into all the details in this one blog post, but the super short version is that different approaches work for different businesses. And you cannot skip experimenting and finding your own way to success through trial and error.

A much more realistic message would be: I will teach you how to understand marketing and strategy and together we can work on finding the approach that works best for you and your business.

The “better marketing” misunderstanding

You just need better marketing!
Maybe.

But maybe what you need is a pivot in what you sell or who you sell it to. Maybe your pricing is off or you need to rethink your packages. Maybe it’s the quality of your work that is not up to par. Or maybe this is not the time for what you offer, or your business model needs to change.

I don’t mean to be super negative here, but it’s really important to understand that marketing is only one of many factors that will make your business successful. Good marketing is communication and it doesn’t make up for a service or product that does not work well or is not truly needed or wanted.

This Marketing Misunderstanding is almost universally shared as part of a larger assumption that is all up to how hard you work.

But every successful business owner I know at some point “caught the wave:” this is what I call the little bit of luck that super charges your business because you hit on the right time and place with your offer.

Do these successful business owners work hard? Yup.
Do they make strategic decision? Sure.
Do they spend time on marketing? Yes.

But they also got in the right flow.

If you keep trying to sell the same thing and continue to struggle, don’t just look for more and better marketing: consider whether you need to make some changes to other more fundamental areas of your business. Marketing should not feel like an uphill battle to convince people to give you money.

The “results now!” misunderstanding

Marketing works on different levels and at different speeds. Some of your outreach will return results right away – a great sign! – and some will work over a longer period of time.

For example, when I started Repurpose Your Purpose, some of my clients would hire me within days – even hours – of finding out about my program. Others would wait two, even three years, before hiring me 😲

At first, I thought that was a failure on my part, surely if my marketing was better, people would not wait two years to hire me! But then I watched a video from one of my favorite coaches who is way more experienced than me and quite famous in the field. And he said the same thing: often his clients would hire him after two years of finding his work. So it wasn’t just me…

The reality is that on one hand you cannot get into business and expect all results right away. On the other hand, you also cannot wait years to see if your business works.

Effective marketing will always work at different levels: pay attention to the time it takes for potential clients to hire you from the first time they hear about you, and calibrate accordingly. And if you don’t see any short term results, consider making changes.

You want to understand how time works for your own business, and build your strategy accordingly. You are looking for a mix of short term and long term results, a feeling of progress, tangible growth, and positive feedback from clients.

If applicable to what you do, I recommend checking in on clients to get a sense of how durable the results of the work you did together is. I did something like this just a few weeks ago, when I asked some past clients about feedback on my coaching notes. All came back saying how – even years later – the notes were still helpful to them.

That’s hard to measure in the short term, but a really good sign for long term success.

The “I don’t like marketing” misunderstanding

Unless you are a marketer who loves her job, chances are you say to yourself “but I don’t like marketing!”

This is nonsense. Marketing means letting people (who might benefit from what you offer) know about your services. And when appropriate it includes an invitation to working together.
That’s it.

When I work with clients who love what they do, they invariably light up when talking about it. If you believe in what you do, you can probably notice how you too often feel energy and inspiration sharing what you do.

So what is so hard about marketing?

Chances are that what you don’t like – and I don’t like either! – is having to be fake or do things that don’t feel right when it comes to marketing your business. This is probably the same reason why most people can’t stand being on LinkedIn – it’s become a scrolling feed of fakeness disguised as personal branding.

You will not be able to move forward in your marketing until you embrace how you feel and open up to doing marketing that feels authentic to you.

But there is also another side of this “I don’t like marketing” feeling: and that is you might simply be feeling some resistance to doing what you are not familiar with. This is why trying things out and experimenting is so important. I had a strong aversion to recording videos, until I gave it a try and now – depending on the day – I either feel pretty neutral about it, or I feel energized and inspired by sharing something helpful.

This is all completely normal.

When I work with a client we get curious and embrace all their feelings about marketing, knowing that it is the first step to creating a marketing (and business) strategy that works for them.

The second step requires feeling some discomfort and actual experimenting.

So, if you made it to the end of this post…does any of it sound familiar? Are you caught up in any of these misunderstandings? What are your thoughts?

And what’s your next step?