Here’s a scary thought.

The advice guiding your marketing decisions could be causing those efforts to fail. And the worst part is, you probably don’t even realize it.

This dangerous marketing advice is so widely stated that it’s accepted by most without question.

Put yourself in the customers’ shoes

It seems like good advice. And, indeed, changing your perspective can be a good thing. There’s only one problem.

Your readers’ perspectives may differ from your own.

Suppose, for instance, Apple hired marketers who are price-conscious consumers themselves. Would switching to value-focused messaging resonate with company’s loyal customer base?

Probably not. They gladly pay the premium prices because they are motivated by what the brand represents.

Yet marketers make this mistake all the time. Changing a color scheme or wording choice based on personal preference may not seem like a big deal. But even small changes can have a big impact.

If you act on your personal preferences rather than your target audience’s, then you’re likely to make the wrong decisions. Instead of putting yourself in their shoes, get into their heads.

For better #marketing results, get into your target audiences' heads, not their shoes. Click To Tweet

Don’t use jargon

I’m sure you’ve heard time and again to cut jargon or replace it with simpler words and phrases. This advice is meant to make your marketing more conversational. And in some cases it does.

However, jargon is conversational to specific audiences.

Car enthusiasts love talking about torque, horsepower, drivetrains and dozens of other specialized terms. This jargon makes what they are reading more compelling to them.

IT professionals are another example of an audience that uses their own vocabulary. In fact, the technical terms they use are so commonplace to them, that they often speak that way to people outside of their industry.

In these cases, taking the jargon out weakens your marketing. It sends your target audience the message that you don’t them or the topic. It could even be insulting if you dumb it down too much.

So how do you decide what jargon to cut and what to keep?

Follow the advice in the first section. Get into your prospects’ heads instead of their shoes. Don’t worry whether a term has meaning to you. Find out if it means something to your audience. Keep the terms that do and get rid of the ones that don’t.

Test everything

The idealist in me loves this advice. Why leave anything up to guesswork when you can get definitive proof of what works and what doesn’t? There are a couple of reasons.

1. It’s not feasible for most marketers.

Accurate testing requires time and volume. You need to let them run long enough to account for market fluctuations and reach a large enough sample size for statistical significance.

Optimizely has a calculator you can use to determine the sample size you need.

Simply plug in the expected conversion rate of your control, the minimum difference in conversion rate you are seeking and the acceptable statistical significance. The tool will automatically show the calculations every time you adjust one of the variables.

2. Not all hypotheses are worth the investment.

Knowing that you can only run a certain number of tests each year, you want to focus on the big stuff.

We’ve all seen articles about big wins by swapping a single word or changing the color of a button. But these types of tweaks won’t usually provide the same impact as a test involving the offer or psychological appeal.

Plus, if you’ve played with the sample size calculator, you know that as your change in conversion increases, the sample size needed decreases. That means testing the big things also gives you insights faster.

Content is king

As a content creator, I’d love to say that this is true. But as much as I’d like to toot the value of my profession, content is not king. Context is.

In the early days of content marketing, you could get ahead simply by feeding the machine. Quantity mattered more than quality. Those days are long gone.

Content without context is just noise. And there’s a lot of noise you need to rise above. Every minute:

• Facebook users share nearly 2.5 million pieces of content
• Twitter users tweet nearly 300,000 times
• Instagram users post nearly 220,000 new photos
• YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video content
• Apple users download nearly 50,000 apps
• Email users send over 200 million messages

Source

Content without context is just noise. #blogging #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

If your content doesn’t give me the information I need, at the time I need it, then it’s worthless to me.

Conversely, if your content gives me exactly what I need at that moment in time, then I’m likely to pay attention, even if it’s not Pulitzer-worthy prose.

Always consider the context first.

Start with your target audience. Learn about their pain points and motivations. Think about what they already know and identify knowledge gaps. Consider where they are in your sales funnel and what it will take to get them to the next stage. Then craft your message specifically for them.

You need to be doing _____________

Some marketing techniques and formats are so ubiquitous that they’ve become de facto requirements.

Every company needs a Facebook page, right? And if you have an online product, you have to run PPC ads. Or do you?

Groove, an online helpdesk software company, got rid of their Facebook page a while back, and they continue to grow steadily. At the time of this writing, their monthly revenue is over $341,000. And Dropbox learned the hard way that Adwords were not a good strategy for them. It didn’t prevent them from gaining millions of users.

These are just two examples of why you shouldn’t blindly accept any marketing advice. No two products or services are alike. What works for one won’t necessarily work for another. That goes for other blanket statements as well, such as _______ works better than ______ or long (or short) copy is best.

It takes guts to fly in the face of best practices, and you don’t want to give up on anything prematurely, but you’ll never get ahead if you’re always following the pack.

Conclusion

You may have noticed that I mentioned understanding your target audience throughout this post. That’s one of the most important takeaways.

The better you know your audience, the easier it will be to use their language, hit on their hot buttons, and make smart marketing decisions.

The second thing I want you to come away with is how the intent differs from the actual advice I’m telling you to ignore. It’s more important to understand why people advise these things than what they say.

Go ahead and take a look at any marketing you currently have in the works with a fresh perspective to make sure you’re not sabotaging yourself with any flawed thinking.

 

Feature image by gemsling.