By all means, listen to marketing gurus but never do what they tell you to. Why, I hear you ask?
Well, imagine for a moment that you are a marketing genius yourself and that you’ve just figured out a great new way to promote stuff. What will your strategy be going forward?
A) You teach it to other marketers, everyone starts using it and it becomes ineffective. B) You keep it close to your chest, squeeze it for all it’s worth and just as everyone else begins to catch on you package it as a knowledge product and try to sell it or leverage it to sell your other products.
I hope you’ve picked option B, if you wish to stay in the market for any length of time.
So it is a safe bet that any marketing advice we get from the podium or promotional videos is already outdated and inefficient. Does this mean that we shouldn’t even listen to marketing gurus? Not at all.
Marketing strategy, like battle strategy, does not lend itself to formulaic approach. You must never do things the same way, even if it worked in the past. Instead, you must use that knowledge as a base from which your imagination can create something new and unprecedented. Or you should hire marketing consultants from companies like The Marketing Heaven and pay them for results.
That’s my approach in my Achievement Consulting practice – I get paid what my clients think I’m worth, and that’s usually derived from the results they achieve.