Everybody hates your marketing
All of it.
This is a newsletter I write to reflect… and counter startup myths and hacks peddled by “influencers” who prey on early founders.
This week I’m digging into marketing - what I’ve learned is real vs. “what feels good” or is peddled on social media.
We’re lying to ourselves
My favorite Twitter subculture is the “crotchety marketers” - old-school advertising industry people like Bob Hoffman, Rory Sutherland, and Mark Ritson. They’re hilarious, ruthless, and right.
Reading them helps you realize just how much of “marketing best practices” are total bunk.
The #1 thing they’ve taught me: Everybody hates your marketing. Your advertising, your brand, your product demo, your cold outreach. All of it.
And yet we spend most of our time trying to get people to “engage with our brands”. Designing our outreach as if we’re not interrupting. Talking about our products, not our prospects’ problems.
At the same time we’re annoyed by the thousands of identical LinkedIn InMails we get, we see no problem sending those same InMails ourselves.
It’s different because people like us, right? They want to engage with our brand! We’re different.
This is bullshit. And it leads to bland, bad, self-centered, ineffective, cringe-worthy marketing.
Drink it in: Everybody hates your marketing.
It’s the truth. And when you embrace the truth, you can create pretty good marketing.
Rethinking SaaS marketing
I think about three types of marketing that survive when you assume everybody hates your marketing. (Let me know what I’m missing!)
Outbound: See if people have the problem you solve
Search: If people are searching for the problem you solve, they find you
Media: Get your target demographic to know you - so when they need their problem solved, they come to you & you have to do less outbound
Outbound (& ads)
For any software company that wants to grow, you have to start with cold outreach. But if my LinkedIn & email inboxes are any indication, we’re doing outbound wrong:
“Hey Rob, I looked at your profile and I’d love to schedule some time with you to learn about your business priorities.”
“Hey Rob, just following up on my message.”
“Hey Rob, I’ll assume you’re not interested in scheduling some time to discuss business optimization strategies as you haven’t responded.”
Screw off.
If you’re doing outbound and assume everyone hates being interrupted and hates marketers (but KNOW that you have a good product) - you’ll instead organize your outbound to figure out:
Is solving what we solve your #1 priority right now?
If YES, I can help you make sense of the solution landscape and why some companies are choosing us
If NO, should it be? No? Here’s something helpful for when it is your #1 priority
(PS - if you’re a founder having trouble with your outbound, let me know & I’ll review your scripts if I have time. In advance of reading, my #1 piece of feedback is BE MORE SPECIFIC.)
Search
SEO is powerful. But it’s also a really effective way to burn time and money.
How do you approach SEO as a skeptical marketer?
You focus on bottom-of-funnel content: What do your potential customers search for when they’re about to make a purchase?
If you’re there with useful content, you might get people to schedule a demo.
Once that’s working, move up-funnel at your own risk.
Media
How do I get people who aren’t going to buy today to remember me when they need me?
Podcasts, video series, newsletters, blogs, etc. In other words, media properties.
But a lot of B2B companies do these wrong. They build bland, corporate, boring, media products that nobody - not even their best customers - care about.
Look at your target buyer, remembering that they HATE your marketing, and ask:
What can I make that they’d actually spend their spare time consuming? That they’d enjoy? That they might even share with their friends?
In fact, just look at ONE of your customers. What could you make that she would love?
—
Everybody hates your marketing.
If you ignore this, you will feel good while making self-important marketing that drives mediocre results.
If you embrace this, you will have great results and laugh at Twitter marketing “wisdom.”
Your choice.
-Rob
PS, three great reads on this topic:
Accept it, people hate ads - yes all of them by Mark Ritson (hilarious)
The Road to Reality by Bob Hoffman