The reason why marketing articles could be harmful

Coming up with this title on a marketing and social media blog is kind of anticlimactic, right? What’s the idea? Do I want to shame blogs that talk about marketing, advertising or social media? Wouldn’t this mean that I’m just a huge hypocrite?

Well … if you look at it this way, then you could say that I am. But because I like to get out of the box, I want to shake up that theory that you’ve read or learned from that marketing book some specialist recommended at a free conference.

I admit, I enjoy reading various marketing articles and I sometimes get inspired from certain practitioners (note that i called them “practitioners” and not specialists, experts, ninjas or heavyweight fighters) showing different tactics and/or ideas from personal experience.

That does not mean that I would read crap like “10 reasons to be on Facebook today” or “Why is Twitter dead?”. I pay a close attention to two things when I read an article: who wrote the article and the platform it’s presented on.

But let’s get the introduction out of the way and go straight to the heart of the matter; that’s why you clicked the link, right?

I thought about the following problems that you might encounter when reading marketing articles:

Your world is not the same world as that of the person who wrote the article

Just like people are different (and often annoying) the world of the person writing the article is different from your own world. Imagine that the author of that article works in a market that is different from your market. The chances for your situation to resemble his situation are way too small. Why? Because the market is different (Yes, the market from Cluj-Napoca is different from the one in Timișoara and the London market is different from the Berlin market). Because clients are different. Time is different (it’s not the same today as it was yesterday, and tomorrow cannot be compared to today).

Market, customer, time- 3 situations that change from one moment to the next, from one context to another and from one situation to another.

Each business has a different DNA

You don’t have to have an MBA or purchase whatever courses in order to understand this- each business has a different DNA. And for every business there’s another marketing strategy to be implemented, a specific timetable that you have to follow and a specific purpose to be attained (no, not the “more money” one).

And even though there are companies that work in the same industry, with the same type of services or products and even the same management structure, things are still different.

Why? Because the people working in a company are not the same people that work in the other company (and here I mean the employees).

Clients- a word worshiped by many marketers

Customers are people (see paragraph 1) and let’s not forget that people have their good and their bad side. And when you’ll read an article about marketing and you’ll see how the author managed to reach hundreds of customers through just 3 steps (these steps to success make me laugh!) or how he managed to gain 100,000 subscribers in one afternoon while he was taking a selfie on Instagram, please don’t fall for it and don’t forget that the type of customer the author has not does not 100% resemble your type of client.

Of course, I’m not saying you shouldn’t practice or try. But don’t get your hopes up or you might end up disappointed if you don’t get the results that you’ve read about in the article.

Finally, let’s not forget that most articles are also written to be good for SEO.

I’m going to stop here at these 3 reasons why I think that the majority of marketing articles could be harmful for you.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, I want the following points to reach you (that’s if you haven’t read the whole article and you just scrolled here below):

1. Your world is not the same world as that of the person who wrote the article. Time, customers and the market change from one moment to another.
2. Every business has a different DNA. Just like people, we are different from one another and that means that what’s good for you might not be good for me.
3. Clients are different and have a different behavior. Describe your client and deliver your product/services directly to him.
4. Don’t take every word as the absolute truth when reading these marketing articles. Take only what’s good for you, put into practice, but don’t get your hopes up for things to happen exactly as you’ve read about.
5. These articles are written to inspire people.The smart guy will think before putting in practice and the not so smart one will take everything word by word.

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