It’s no wonder businesses fail when marketing activities are treated like an afterthought, with the smoking gun being their own inward self obsession.
Why is it that the average small business website casually and routinely delivers garbage messaging? 😑
Why are websites filled with self-praise, bragging, long-winded stories about how long they’ve been around for or how many awards they’ve won?
“But Darren, my company donated 1000 ice creams to drunken middle-aged peasants on the hottest day of the year in Weston-Super-Mare. Everyone loved us!” 🫠
Read. My. Words. NO ONE CARES.
It’s All “Me, Me, Meee!” 😒🥰
Ever been trapped in a conversation with someone at a party who talks only about themselves?
Maybe they’ll do the unthinkable and put you at DEFCON 1 on the I Don’t Give a Toss social interaction barometer by showing you photos of their ugly kids.
That’s what most business websites do – focus on their own greatness, instead of what the potential customer needs.
Typically Observed Website Issues 🫗
- ❎ Too much self-focus (“I, we, us”)
- ❎ Poor content structure
- ❎ Lack of value demonstration
- ❎ No system for qualifying leads
- ❎ No regular, effective content creation
- ❎ Unoriginality
Marketing Gets Stupider and Uglier 🥴
I’m cataloguing local businesses for the purpose of analysing their online presence.
The discovery? A form of “marketing incest” – businesses copying each other’s bad ideas – which as you’ve guessed consists of talking about themselves.
This behaviour is costing them in a way that cannot even be measured because it doesn’t appear on the balance sheet. Invisible holes in a bucket.
The “Colouring-in Department” 🤦
There’s a fantastic podcast called The Inquisitor. In one episode the host said he’d heard (much to his dismay) of company salespeople referring to their marketing colleagues as the “colouring-in department”.
Ugh.
Yes, the snootiness towards marketing is deserved in many cases. It’s also a sad and incorrect place to begin thinking about it.
Marketing can be defined simply as…
The Right Message, At the Right Time, For the Right Person 🫂
…and good marketing and sales is good communication.
Sales exists within the larger container of marketing itself but the act of selling is where the rubber hits the road.
However, if you’re not appealing to the right people, who is there to sell to?
“Come Up With Some Bullshit” 💩
A prospect I almost worked with makes an appearance every few years. He enthusiastically asks to meet claiming he wants to “get things going again” but falls down at the same hurdle every time.
According to him, marketing is meaningless drivel intended for the sole purpose of virtue signalling and bragging, and because of this we shouldn’t spend more than five minutes on it.
He asked me if I could “come up with some bullshit” for the website he wanted me to build.
Eh? 🤔
Not how to identify and speak to the problems people have. Not how to position the business differently to competitors. Not how to use enquiry processes and sales systems to make everything more hands off, reliable and predictable.
Nope. Just build a website… then fill it with bullshit. Naturally, I declined.
People Buy for Their Reasons, Not Yours. 🎲
Let’s get a few things straight: selling isn’t about pushing, pressuring, persuading, badgering, browbeating or sucking up like a slimy little sycophant.
Nor is it about sitting back, playing it cool, creating a website that’s about as compelling as a pizza menu and expecting potential customers to beat a path to your door clutching a suitcase full of cash.
It’s about good communication to facilitate the right decision without compromise for either party.
Many of us forget the key principles, but it’s more likely no one knows what the principles are. What do we get instead?
Self-aggrandising nonsense such as:
- ❎ Company awards
- ❎ Growth and expansion plans
- ❎ Time served
- ❎ Boring press releases
- ❎ New hires
- ❎ Etc
That is completely, utterly, looking down the wrong end of the telescope.
The prospect is the hero. Not you. In this movie, they’re Luke Skywalker. You’re Obi-Wan.
Turning It Around 🧩
- ✅ Lead with the problem you solve
- ✅ Use content structures
- ✅ Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)
- ✅ Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA)
- ✅ Demonstrate an understanding of your prospects’ worlds
- ✅ Let it be known who you are and are not looking to sell to
- ✅ Produce regular content to show relevance, competence, ability and wisdom
- ✅ Be different
“The Thing” is Not Really The Thing…
There’s a monumental challenge facing 99% of businesses. The challenge is in letting go of their belief that their business is all about The Thing.
The Thing is the actual work they do. Services rendered. Products sold. ⚙️
Dentists believe it’s all about teeth, doctors believe it’s all about health, and mechanics believe it’s all about car engines. The list goes on.
Because of this, marketing barely registers, which means sales boils down to just winging it.
Your website copy and content could be transformed (along with your business) by learning from some of the famous sales copywriting giants like Dan Kennedy
The disparity between doing The Thing and marketing The Thing is like comparing the size of planet Earth next to the Sun. A mere pea in the shadow of a watermelon.
The key is making the leap from being a doer of The Thing to a marketer of The Thing.
Once that leap is made, businesses can stop congratulating themselves just for existing and begin focussing on prospects the right way.
