A Marketing Scrooge Part 3

Welcome to part three of my festive tale of marketing tips, thinly veiled rant and tenuous link to the Christmas classic A Christmas Carol! This one is all about the ghost of Christmas yet to come: never stop learning and never assume someone else knows it all.

This has to be one of my biggest pet hates – for myself as well as for my clients. You get inundated with emails or Facebook ads where people are promising that they are the expert in something, that they can solve your problem quickly… at a cost of course. There are a couple of things about this that drives me [Christmas] crackers:

1.      That these people are preying on other people’s lack of knowledge and thereby taking advantage of this ignorance

2.      That anyone has the audacity to use the word ‘expert’

Let’s look at that first point – if you’ve read my other two blogs you’ll know that I’m really passionate about people having at least basic grasp of their own marketing strategy, their own customers and where they want to go with their business. It doesn’t mean you have to do it all – there are people that are experienced in these areas. But don’t hand everything over to an outside expert and assume they know better – never ignore your gut feelings and your own understanding of your business. If you do employ someone you are doing just that, employing them – and whilst they can guide and advise you, the decision is ultimately yours.

If you are one of these experts – fair play to you, but you and I both know that if you are what you say then you’ll be willing to back up your claims with research, figures and proof. Not just make wild claims or unreachable promises that charm people into paying for your services.

The second point is wrapped up with the first – I don’t personally believe that there are many who can rightfully claim the mantel of expert, or worse still, ‘guru’. Who has the time to dedicate to just one subject to get to that level?

I believe we can claim experience, I believe we can claim a range of targeted and successful examples, I believe that we can claim that we know more than our peers. However, even that is transient. The world changes, things move on and so a level of expertise one month will not be enough the next. That is why you should never expect to be amazing at everything, to know it all… but that is why you should aim to at least understand a little of everything so that when you bring outside people in you know what you’re looking for, what you expect and what you need them to do.

I know we’re all busy and that we barely have time to do the things we need to do but you should never stop learning and developing your knowledge – learn from academic resources, learn through peers or employees, learn through experience and mistakes.

And that ladies and gentleman is my ghost of Christmas yet to come – a future where you never stop learning and developing so you never rely wholly on outside experts but instead employ a team that works with you to enact your vision for your business. Learn so that you are never taught a lesson the hard way.

And on that note, I’m done with my rant so to wrap up, no more Bah Humbug to understanding your own marketing and Merry Christmas Everyone!