Hey readers! Today I am breaking down the top five myths or the top five lies that we have been told about marketing as new and beginning entrepreneurs. I really want to break them down because they are keeping us stuck. We don't got time for that! So today we are going to fix that. I'm debunking all of these myths, and let me tell you something, it's going get spicy.
Now before I jump in, I have a little disclaimer. All of these myths that I'm about to break down we have definitely heard before, and they're a little polarizing, but I don't care. Now all of these things are definitely things that you could do, but they are not things that you have to do. So keep that in mind as you are making a decision about what is best for you and for your business because the only person who knows that is you.
"You need a personal brand."
So the very first one is you need a personal brand. Y'all, that's a lie. I have a personal brand and, trust me when I tell you, I believe that they are so dope. There is nothing more interesting than being able to share with my community all of the things that I am passionate about. I get to introduce my audience to my life, and to the people who mean the most to me, I get to introduce them to the things that I care about like my hair and my nails and fashion, and I get to build community and rally around those things and really tell a story about how entrepreneurship has allowed me the space and the grace and the freedom to enjoy these things more holistically and on a deeper level. But that is my decision. If you do not want to have a personal brand or those are not stories that you feel compelled to tell, then don't tell them, right?
And don't let anyone convince you otherwise. So I want you to think about brands like Target or Publix or Walmart. None of these companies have a personal brand attached to them and what they did was when they decided to build up these companies, they built it up under the guise of it being a business. There is a very big difference between a business and a brand, and when you understand what the difference is, then you're able to make a more informed decision about which route that it is that you want to take for your business.
However, if you decide not to roll with a personal brand, it's totally okay. What you need to do is figure out how are you going to build community and how are you going to rally your audience around your business or around your product, right? Like how are you going to get them to be invested in the story of the business? Let's go back to Target, Walmart, and Publix. When you think about Walmart, the very first thing that comes to mind is cheap prices. This is the story that they have told over and over again, so their audience and their ideal clients have now bought into this story. And so when they're thinking of going to grab something really quickly, right? The very first place that they're going to think of is Walmart.
When you think about Target, you think of an addictive shopping experience, and the reason for this is because how many times have you heard that saying like, "I went to Target for one thing and I walked out and I spent $300." Right? That is what they have built their business around from the shopping experiences to the layout of the stores to everything that they do is designed to make it addictive for you.
And Publix is a very large grocery store chain here in Atlanta. They live by this example of pleasurable shopping, so they want shopping to be enjoyable. And I'm pretty sure that the reason for this is because most people, like me, hate grocery shopping, but I will tell you that it's well lit, it's clean, and all of the employees are super nice and friendly and informative. And so it does honestly make it a pleasurable shopping experience.
When you're thinking about what you want your ideal clients to feel or to know about or to associate with your business, you just have to be clear on what the unique selling proposition is going to be for your ideal clients and then build your business around that. And you can do that without leveraging your identity or your personality.
(Click to tweet.)
"You need to have multiple offers in your product suite".
Lies.
Listen, if you only want to offer one product and be well known for one thing, then do that. A good example is Brandon Blackwood, he just emerged on a scene and kind of took over with his luxury bags. And he doesn't have luggage, he doesn't have hats, belts, nothing. All he has is luxury purses that are beautiful and he's becoming very well known for those purses.
I imagine that at some point he may extend his product line, but he doesn't have to if he doesn't want to, and that is the same for you. If you do not want to offer multiple products or multiple services, you do not have to, but you do have to fill the demand of your audience. And this could mean just taking your offer and allowing it to be accessed in various ways or adding different colors or different patterns or different textures to your product if you have it, right? You do not have to create a product for an entire ascension or an entire solvability scale if that's not what you desire to do. You can just have one product and be really well known for that one thing, and that's totally fine.
Think Danielle Leslie, Course From Scratch. My girl has had one offer for like the last 10 years and she still sells it and no one is mad about it. Or even think Marie Forleo and B School, she's had this same course for freaking 20 years or so I think, and no one is mad about it, right? She's not out here creating multiple courses, she's running with the thing that is working and that is serving her clients and then they're moving on.
🚨Get notified when new blogs release 🚨
"You have to run ads or pay an influencer."
Lies. You totally could run ads, right? And you totally could pay an influencer to promote your business or to promote your product, and it would not be a bad idea, but you don't have to. If you wanted to grow your business or grow your brand awareness and your brand visibility without using a paid strategy, you could leverage organic marketing and you could leverage earned media, right?
Organic marketing strategies would be sharing on social media, sending out emails to your ideal clients, using things like SEO, creating blog posts, creating YouTube videos. While earned media options would be going on to other publications, writing blog posts for other companies, doing news features, doing podcasts, doing guest trainings, doing guest coaching, all of the things that afford you the opportunity to be accepted as a guest or as a byline in an article. So you could also leverage those strategies to grow your audience if you did not want to pay for an influencer or for Facebook ads.
"Instagram is dead. Run to LinkedIn."
And then the last marketing myth, and I think the biggest scandal of them all is going to be Instagram is dead, run to LinkedIn. Y'all, Instagram is going nowhere anytime soon. Even though the algorithm is not necessarily set up for entrepreneurs there are ways that we can leverage these platforms to expand our brand awareness and our brand visibility, so that way we are able to sell and convert our clients on platforms that we own. It doesn't necessarily mean that you switch platforms, it means that you switch your strategy or that you expand your strategy to incorporate other channels that allow you to have a more diversified marketing strategy.
The number one problem with this whole Instagram is dead thing is that for years people have relied solely on Instagram as a marketing strategy, right? And the thing is that Instagram is just a marketing channel. It's just one channel that you can use to market your business. Your entire marketing strategy should not be built on one platform and so even if you were to run to LinkedIn, you still want to make sure that you're diversifying the channels that you're using to market your business because if either of these channels goes away, now your business has no way of marketing itself and that is a setup for failure. Think about how you could leverage multiple platforms and how you could diversify your marketing, how you could repurpose your content onto different channels, so that way no matter where your audience or your ideal client finds you, you're able to serve them and to show up for them.
And this does not mean going and putting yourself on all of the channels and then never using any of them. That is absolutely 100% not what I am saying, okay? Brianca did not say that. Just want to be clear.
Final Thoughts
I really want us to lean out of allowing these myths to keep us stuck and to keep us stagnant because really we know the truth and we know that we can navigate around these myths using improved strategies, using improved resources, to really get our business and our product and our service out into the marketplace and in front of the ideal clients and the people who we are designated to serve.
See you next time, friend.
Let's Chat:
What's a marketing tip you've received that you now know is a myth? Let me know in the comments and let's discuss 🚀