The 11 Most Common Marketing Myths in 2020

The web is now brimming with so-called experts and spin doctors, and audiences today are bombarded with so much conflicting advice, they can hardly discern fact from fiction.

I teach small brands and up-and-coming marketers to DIY their marketing and hear my fair share of absolute doozies. As a career marketer with over 20 years of experience in both brand roles, agency-side, and running my own successful marketing startup, I’m here to dispel some of the most common fables going around in 2020.

1.  When Done Well, All You Really Need to Focus on Is Social Media

I’m going blue in the face from preaching the perils of an over-reliance on social media and so this one cuts me deep.

I had a successful social media agency owner tell me she has built her business exclusively using social media. This surprised me so I dug a little deeper. I asked if she had a website? Yes, she does. I asked if she’s ever held an event, and the response was in fact, many.

She had also been a guest on several podcasts and had been a panellist at workshops. She also regularly attends networking events and collaborates with other brands on promotions and giveaways. How is that exclusively social media?

If you are trying to build your brand only through social media in 2020, you are pushing shite uphill. You do not own your social media followers and standing out from the noise on social media has never been harder. There are much better channels to focus on, and even so, you should never rely on one channel alone.

2.  Plugging Away at Your Socials Will Eventually Come Good if You Stick With It

Nope, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Posting for the sake of posting is a losing strategy if those posts lead nowhere. Consistency is great in marketing but only if what you are creating is consistently good. If all you are doing is feeding the social media machine with content audiences scroll past, no amount of plugging will return rewards.

3. You Don’t Need a Website

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Wait, what? A business owner not having a website is akin to a chef not having knives. It’s counter-intuitive. A website doesn’t need to be professionally designed and it doesn’t need to be fancy but it needs to exist, otherwise, you are seriously hamstrung. How will people find you? How will you build a database? Please don’t say social media. There is no equivalent workaround to your own online platform.

4.  You Can’t Do Market Research Because It’s Too Expensive

Nonsense. Market research has never been more accessible. There are plenty of ways you can gain valuable insights on a shoe-string budget. Platforms like TypeForm and MailChimp make it super simple to survey your customers. You could also run polls on social media. Google surveys are affordable and there is no reason why you can’t run your own focus group.

5.  You Should Outsource Your Marketing to Professionals

Not necessarily. Some of the brands I admire most manage their own marketing in-house and employ their own creative teams. That’s what Dollar Shave Club did, same with Koala, the Australia-based mattress in a box company.

Outsourcing is expensive and finding the right agency partner can take a great deal of time and money that you don’t have. If you want to DIY your marketing, you can absolutely up-skill and tap into MarTech solutions that help you do just that.

Dollar Shave Club via YouTube

6. Marketing = Promotion

Plain wrong. No amount of promotion will help if your product or price is off the mark. When businesses say “my marketing isn’t working” they are referring to their promotional approach, but the problem may not be with how they are advertising their brands but what they’re advertising. When a marketing professional tells you that you need to re-look your pricing, please don’t tell them that it’s outside their domain.

7.  It’s Too Late to Launch a Podcast

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Not even close. Podcasts are enjoying a meteoric rise in popularity and yes it may seem that everyone is now a podcast host, but given that only 37% of the U.S. population listens to podcasts every month (up from 32% in 2019), there is still plenty of growth left in this market.

8.  You Understand Your Target Audience if You Know What Gender They Are, Where They Live and How Much They Earn

A “35-year-old mum living in Melbourne, Australia earning $65K per year” is going to vary substantially person-to-person when it comes to personality, purchase behaviours, and beliefs. You cannot lump them all in together and say you know your customers. Demographics alone are no longer a good way to segment your target audience. Psychographic and behavioural segmentation is much more insightful.

9. Traditional Marketing No Longer Works

Not so fast. Some traditional marketing still works brilliantly and should not be discounted. Out-of-home or transit media has grown considerably since going digital and is actually quite affordable in comparison to other forms of advertising. Direct mail still remains a powerful tool when done well. Same deal with networking events.

Emily Crisps Lockdown posters courtesy of Ads of the World

10.  Customer Experience (CX) Is a Marketing Function

Not entirely. It needs to be a company-wide function and not just sit with one department. Your marketing team can design the best damn customer experience journey, but it will all come undone if the customer contacts customer support and is left wanting. Likewise, if their order arrives and it falls below expectations. CX needs to be part of a brand’s DNA, and it should be part of everyone’s role, not just one team.

11. Things Will Return to Normal Post-Pandemic

Not entirely. Some behaviours will have permanently shifted, and it’s worthwhile taking note and adapting for the long haul. For instance, remote teams and Zoom meetings won’t just disappear post-COVID.

Likewise, the devastating effects on our economy have reinforced the importance of shopping hyper-local in the future. People are getting on their bikes more than ever before as a convenient way to avoid public transport, but also to get some socially distanced exercise.

This resurgence in recent months could well lead to the formation of long-term habits, especially given the considerable benefits of cycling.

There have always been marketing myths floating around but credible sources are now much harder to discern. There is a dangerous precedent emerging whereby credibility is measured by vanity metrics like the size of someone’s social media following. While marketing qualifications and credentials don’t necessarily count for everything, they still count for something. It’s important to always remember that not all advice is created equal.

This article was originally publish in Better Marketing on Medium