Making Money off the People who Want to Make Money

By Spencer Yarnell Head of Spreading the Herd Word

I’ll admit. I’m new to this business. I’m new to the business of marketing and helping my company achieve it’s goals.

Millions of marketers have just begun salivating.

I say this because if you thought self-help books were prominent already just wait until you wade into marketing.  Marketers love to share their knowledge on how to market your product.. At a price of course. Everywhere I look someone’s got a magic solution, an easy fix, five minutes a day to a better pay per click campaign! Etc.

Here’s the thing, I’m sure there’s a lot of legitimacy to a lot of these books and I’m sure a lot of these books and products have helped a lot of people but a marketing approach has probably got to be specific to the product you sell, and because of that, a lot of these books don’t really help all that much. Now this sounds painfully obvious but let me relate my experience with this. IBEX sells payroll. Now I read a social media marketing book that lays out a strategy for engaging customers using adwords. I follow the strategy but I still can’t get favourable results.. Blah. It might be my own fault but generally one has to look at one’s methods rather than yourself.

I think this happens because payroll is a different beast. People need to trust their payroll provider, and how much do you trust random ads on the internet? Not much if you’re like me.

So I guess what I’m saying is these self-help marketing books may have useful ideas, but don’t trust the claims of revolutionizing your business. Every book revolutionized a certain kind of business but there’s no guarantee it was the same kind as yours. But don’t let that stop you from reading, it never hurt anyone to do that.

Goatbuzzter out.

PS. Especially be wary of marketers who speak in grandiose rather obvious terms to try and help but but never get down to specifics. Its hard to work off of abstract thoughts. (If you don’t know what I mean by this go see Seth Godin’s blog. That guy has enough ‘wisdom’ that’s really just grandiose common sense for everyone. And no, I’m not going to do him the favour by linking him.)