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Not All Marketing Strategies Are Good for You—Even the Best Practices

One of my mentors had a term for marketers that would blindly follow the latest trend; she would say they were “chasing the shiny.”

It’s not just marketers—it’s all of us. We want to know what the latest, greatest thing is. We want to be on the ground floor when something takes off…and worry about playing catch-up when it seems that everyone else is profiting from something.

We want to stay abreast of best practices.

Best practices are considered “best” because they worked for some very successful organizations. But that does not mean that they work for every organization. Just because something is shiny and new does not mean it is of value to you.

Here’s a great example from a conversation I had years ago. My client was a small government consulting firm—what we would call a lobbying firm. They called me to ask if I knew how to write social media posts and get them started with social media marketing.

What had happened was this: They needed to grow, and they had had little success with traditional advertisements and “edutorials” in local business magazines. But they had heard that social media was what all the savvy marketers were doing these days, so…

Now, of course, I could write good social media posts. I could even help them with their LinkedIn company page and Facebook page, and help them manage engagement there. But there was something about the conversation that felt like they were grasping at straws. Neither of us really knew if social media would work for them.

So I began asking a few questions.

“So, who is your target market? And who are the people making the decision to hire a government consulting firm like yours?” I asked.

“Well, we need to talk to the CEOs at medium-sized companies in the state. Heavily regulated industries, like auto manufacturers, financial folks, even winemakers.”

“So we’re talking older, more established folks?”

“Yeah. It’s gonna be a guy in his sixties, probably. Been in their industry for some years.”

“OK…do you know that those guys are on social media? I mean, are they using Facebook? LinkedIn?”

(There’s a tense laugh.) “I dunno. I think they might just be there to see pictures of the grandkids.”

“I see. So let me ask this: A lot of the communication on Facebook or LinkedIn is public unless you know how to change your settings. Do you think the CEOs of these companies would be OK with folks knowing that they’ve liked or followed a government consulting firm? Or see what you are saying back and forth?”

“Oh hell no. They wouldn’t want the public to know they’ve engaged with us. It’s nothing shady, but the optics can be bad.”

The conversation was longer than this, but you get the drift. Here’s the point: Trying to build a social media presence was an awful idea for this particular client, given their target persona and the type of business they were in. I felt it was my duty to talk them out of the idea, even though it was talking myself out of a recurring gig.

(I should also say that social media is appropriate for some businesses. And for most businesses, it just depends on platform. LinkedIn might be a wise investment, for example, and TikTok not. Or vice versa.)

So ask yourself: What are you doing right now simply because it’s considered a “best practice”? What channels are you in because everyone else is, too? What tactics are you using? What software are you using?

And when was the last time you stopped to consider if those things were really right for you?

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