Marketing Thursday - It won’t work for you

Just because something worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. In fact, it probably means that it won’t work.

Think about why “hot” marketing tactics work. They work because they haven’t been seen before. The amount of time it takes to write a book about hot marketing tactics is probably about the amount of time it takes for that tactic to become mainstream and thus just more noise. The more things that are thrown at consumers the less time it will take for good ideas to become noise.

Example: “I can use MySpace to attract thousands of users for my new website.”

If you were the first person to do this congratulations; if you’re going to try it now - forget about it. MySpace has so much spam that I’ll never read anything from anyone trying to send out a message about their business.

Example 2: “I’ll put my site on Digg and get thousands of visitors to my site.”

Not anymore, unless you have enough people to help you kick off the digg. There are so many sites being put on Digg that the majority of sites are viewed as noise, even if they are much better than the stuff that actually makes it on the home page.

What should you do?

1. Come up with the next trend - the toughest option
2. Use timeless tactics not trends - such as interacting with your community of users
3. Use timeless tactics in modern ways - Blogging is trendy, but to me it’s not a trend it’s just a new way to do things you should have already been doing.
4. Stop relying on what other people say. I love to read marketing books, but if that’s all you rely on your already one step behind.
5. Don’t be afraid to fail - some of your ideas won’t work but that’s okay as long as you keep trying.
6. You tell me, add your advice in the comments and I’ll add it to this post