(Un)Limiting Beliefs

John Jantsch (00:00): Complexity in marketing is just disguised incompetence. I believe that marketers make marketing too complicated and that chasing trends is a recipe for failure that no one cares about our products or services. They care about their problems getting those problems solved.

(00:20): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest again today. As you can see on the screen, if you’re watching the videos, just me solo podcast. So let’s call this one What I believe that’s the name of this episode. I was listening to a presentation on strategy and authority the other day, and really no surprise, that old chestnut of finding your why was mentioned as part of strategy and authority building. They talked about something that I think is a needed twist in this conversation. As a side note, I’ve never really understood the insane popularity of Simon Sinek’s Find Your Why Notion.

(01:01): I mean, other people had said that, hadn’t they? I mean, why is that particular video so popular? But I digress, and frankly, it’s mostly jealousy. So let’s move on. Alright, so finding your why that conversation mostly centers around purpose and beliefs. Sharing with the world that you believe, I don’t know, cats and dogs both deserve love or that the use or not use of the wildly divisive Oxford comma hurts no one. Or maybe even that you believe something universal. We should all love our neighbors. I mean, none of that is a bad thing, but I think those are things that might attract your ideal client, but I think they’re kind of nice to have when somebody’s considering buying from you. I mean, obviously the opposite. I hate kittens. That’s not a, that’s actually going to drive things away. But again, I think that those are, a lot of people focus there and that’s great.

(02:02): Having core beliefs inside of a business I think are great. But I think that there’s incredible brand value in sharing what you believe, especially, or in additionally when you share the distinct and perhaps not so common point of view about what your business does, how it’s different. I mean, it’s the unique value and say it in ways that are beliefs that are really kind of attacking an enemy almost so that some percentage of the market’s out there going, yeah, I not only believe that, but I hate it when people do X. So I think this is how you can start to differentiate your business in ways that addresses the problems that your ideal clients are trying to solve. So with that in mind, I’m going to give you an example, but I also hope to start some fights. I hope that I hear from listeners on this who either agree or wildly disagree with these ideas because I think that there is value in both of those.

(03:06): I’m not saying that I intentionally believe we should all create fights or that we should all create division or polarize markets, but I do think that if there’s not a tinge of, Hey, I believe that, or Hey, I don’t believe that there’s not a tinge of emotion in what you say to people about what you do and why you do it, then we’re probably missing the mark. Hey, digital marketers, this one’s for you. I’ve got 30 seconds to tell you about Wix Studio, the web platform for agencies and enterprises. So here are a few things that you can do in 30 seconds or less when you manage projects on Wix Studio. Work in sync with your team all on one canvas, reuse templates, widgets, and sections across sites. Create a client kit for seamless handovers and leverage best in class SEO defaults across all your Wix sites.

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(05:07): That’s oracle.com/duct tape oracle.com/duct tape. So here I go. We sell marketing strategy. People hire us to create a marketing strategy to implement that plan in many cases and to help them build a brand, help them grow that brand, help them create more customer loyalty and retention. But I would like to believe that everything we do comes with the following point of view. I believe that marketers make marketing too complicated and that chasing trends is a recipe for failure that no one cares about our products or services. They care about their problems and getting those problems solved. Creativity without strategy is art. Sorry, graphic designers. But without strategy. It’s not marketing content without purpose is just noise. And boy, are we seeing a lot of noise these days. AI is making it very easy to create content without purpose. Marketing. Automation without personalization is spam. I’m guilty of this.

(06:14): I understand that it’s wrong. It’s just hard. So a lot of what we try to focus on is not just using these tools. How can we use them to personalize long-term? Relationships matter so much more than quick wins. So you stay in business for any amount of time and you will come to really appreciate that. One. Engagement without conversion is vanity. You see so many people just trying to build up their Facebook profile. I’ve got so many likes, so many followers. So there’s a place for all of that. But without conversion or without at least the thought of why we’re doing this for conversion, it’s simply vanity. Customer experience to me is the only true differentiator. So what I mean by that is so many people are out there trying to find their difference, their unique thing. We’re the purple people or we deliver faster than anyone else, whatever their kind of thing, that can be a competitive advantage.

(07:13): But what we sometimes forget is how the customer experiences. That differentiator is what actually makes it valuable. What actually makes it a true differentiator? If you’re not measuring, you’re guessing, sorry, another one that’s hard. But if we’re not measuring the effectiveness of all of our marketing activity, we are just guessing. Sometimes we guess, right? But sometimes we guess horribly wrong and don’t realize it wastes tons and tons of money. Tons and tons of time. And last one, ending on a data note. Data without insights is useless. How many marketing firms just throw out a report monthly report because they said they would to their clients? And without any kind of insight into why any of this matters, does any of this lead to or to us meeting our business objectives? Pretty useless. And then finally, I’m going to end on a harsh one. Complexity in marketing is just disguised incompetence.

(08:10): I think in a lot of cases there are marketers out there that want marketing to seem odd, SEO to be this really strange science that nobody can understand, and some of that really has to do with the fact that they can get away with murder when they do it’s disguised incompetence. So those are some of our whys. Those are some of what goes into those beliefs inform pretty much everything we do. At least I hope they do. It’s not perfect, but it’s the goal. It’s how we fulfill our unique point of view that marketing is simple when marketing is a system. So I’m going to leave you with the words of the well-known brand strategist, Dolly Parton. Here’s our job. Find out who you are and go be it. So I hope that I stirred the pot a little bit here. I hope to hear from you, John, at duct tape marketing.com. Obviously, if you’re somebody who owns a business out there and you’re thinking, Hey, that all made sense to me, maybe I should talk to them about how we can get our marketing system, reach out, john@ducttapemarketing.com. All right, take care out there. Hopefully we’ll see you one day soon. Out there on the road.

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