It is happening to you, and that is not okay. Be very careful with whom you’re seeking advice from when it comes to the subject of Marketing.
We tend to seek advice from people when we have problems. This is normal. Highly likely the first thing that comes to our mine is to ask for our friends’ opinions. We trust them to share thoughts in our best interest. Further, we believe that our closest friends are the real pals who could offer their advice each time we hit a roadblock in life.
But is relying on your friends for guidance on specific area of knowledge such as marketing really a great idea? Yeah, such an act feels like a natural and sensible course of action to make, yet it may not be the best move after all if you think about it again. In fact, it could backfire you and your brand from the beginning.
I have a few reasons why you shouldn’t value your friends’ advice when it comes to Marketing:
They do not understand what makes a brand great. It’s almost impossible for them to advise you on this. It’s beyond them. And they may not realise that great brand develops great products, and great products bring money in. Not only these, they’re not that sure too on how to create a good brand to begin with. Just ask them what is a good brand consists of? If they can answer you well, then do consider talking to them about your Marketing problems.
They don’t invest their time learning the in and out of Marketing. Marketing alone is a very broad topic. In fact there are a number of subsets that glued everything together under the Marketing umbrella. Only those who are passionate, possess similar interest and own certain level of understanding are the ones who would spend time digging for information either via reading or observations for the sake of learning it. Are your friends doing the same?
They don’t know how to connect the Marketing dots. Every dot has its purpose. And these purposes need to be connected with one another to ensure the entire Marketing strategy makes a lot of sense. Successful Marketing strategy is originated from a plan that makes sense.
Their ideas are something you want to hear. And this is bad news. Really. This would mean that they’d do anything not to make you upset. That’s include ideas, suggestions and recommendations that may sound great to you but suck in reality. You need to understand the gap between what the consumer wants versus what are the things you need to do or change to match the demand. Else, your brand will suffer.
They don’t benchmark. They do not know that the easiest way to start a new brand and make it successful is by benchmarking. Do they know the word benchmark in the first place? Benchmarking is a strategy used by marketers to emulate the success of another brand that is similar to yours. You may not copy the entire thing, simply understand the underlying concept behind their success story. Once you understand the pattern, everything else will be easier. I bet your friend doesn’t know this.
They are lousy observers. I doubt they observe things, let alone another human being. Great marketers are great observers of human behaviours. Besides reading, observing people surrounding us will validate our believe on the theories read.
They hardly do sales. Almost all of them hate selling, that’s for sure. Marketers are great salespeople and they love to have a victory when a sale is made. They’re good in crafting how to make that ‘kill’ via strategies and even better when they’re on the ground doing it. Your friends don’t have these capabilities, do they?
Here’s the thing. Friends are inspirational when it comes to emotional or moral support, but not when your brand and the future of your business are at stake. Have a little bit of confidence in yourself, have balls to make decisions based on your gut feelings and past experiences, and open up to ideas that comes from the subject matter experts.
Talk to someone who really knows about Marketing and you’ll be surprised on the new perspective gained. Seriously.
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