Friends, today’s post is longer than usual from me.
It’s an extremely important subject that is costing/losing small business owners a fortune. To get the full benefit from what I’m about to share, the estimated read time is 4-minutes. I know you’re busy, so if you don’t have time, skip to the paragraph below titled TLDR: You and your business.
Let’s go.
The success of your marketing relies on you identifying, then stopping, and marketing that isn’t producing the results you need. Then, replacing what doesn’t work, with effective marketing that produces maximum results.
A major reason why small business owner’s find their marketing efforts don’t work, is that the vast majority of marketing tips, tactics and strategies out there (around 95% in my experience) are ineffective or damagingly ineffective. They either don’t help your business grow, or they cause your business to shrink. Go back 20-years, that number was around 20%.
As someone who has devoted 30-years of my life to serving small business owners, I kills me to see so many small business owners unknowingly adopting toxic marketing advice. That’s what this article is all about.
Here’s what you need to know.
Here’s why this is happening & how to avoid it
This problem is growing because bad advice used to be very rare in comparison to today. The smoke and mirrors required for fake experts to create the illusion of success or wisdom used to come at a high financial cost.
Today, all they need is a YouTube account or social media account, knowledge on how to feed/play the algorithms, and the motivation to work extremely hard until they pull it off.
Around 15-years ago, working behind a smoke and mirrors illusion was a lot harder. Here’s an example I remember from the 1990’s in London, which shows the kind of financial barrier to entry for fake experts.
For example.
There was a gallery that was sold to a charismatic guru in his mid twenties. It contained a lot of expensive items and he used the gallery as a base from which to sell coaching to artists, on how to make a fortune selling their artwork. He threw lavish parties in the gallery and looked to be financially successful for someone so young. And apparently he was very convincing. His place remained open for around 2-years.
The smoke and mirrors?
The cool young artisan marketing guru had:
- Never successfully marketed art
- Never successfully sold art
He was gifted the company by his very wealthy parents, along with the building and the stock. He also had all his running costs paid for the 2-years he ‘traded’ there.
The goal was for his parents to position their son as a successful business guru. They finally pulled the plug when their son started getting complaints, which led to legal proceedings against him and the whole illusion unraveled.
Now to the most important part.
TLDR: You and your business
It’s the exact opposite in 2025. The barrier has been removed. Anyone can do it. Which is why YouTube and social media are packed with thousands of charismatic, confident pretenders, offering dangerously incorrect marketing advice.
Let’s stop this happening to you.
Here are the most common red flags to watch out for, before you pay for, or take free marketing advice, from anyone. Yes, even if (especially if) they have hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers or followers.
- Their advice is already commonplace. Any widely used marketing activity will provide you with absolutely no competitive advantage.
- They didn’t seem to exist until 5 or 10-years ago. They came from nowhere, despite claiming years of success. Check people out.
- They offer easy to create/fake vanity metrics to ‘prove’ their ability. Traffic increases, clicks, leads and enquiries, etc. All these can be faked using software.
- They’re under 35 and lack the lived experience required, to know the long-term impact of their advice. Such as how their advice would work in different economies.
- Their subscriber numbers or follower numbers are huge and it happened in a suspiciously short time. Bots can be purchased to subscribe to, or follow accounts. This is usually done in batches and added carefully over a period of time, in order to avoid being identified as fake. Once a significant number of bots have subscribed or are following them, real people start joining because those numbers suggest the pretender has value.
One thing which hasn’t changed over the years, is that if we take the time to think it through, it’s not too hard to spot some of the less polished fakes. So, before parting with your money for membership of mastermind groups (insider groups, premium groups/clubs) marketing software or webinars etc., think carefully.
Give yourself time to make the best decision you can. This is especially the case if you’re being rushed to act quickly to avoid missing out or to get some kind of early bird discount.
They know that the faster you decide, the more likely you’ll be to pay them.
Photo by James Adams on Unsplash