PART 2
The Conversion-Crushing Emergence Of
The Perfect Storm (of Mediocre Marketing)
HERE'S THE SITUATION, RIGHT NOW.
Chapter 1: The Real Reason Your eCommerce Brand Is Struggling to Scale This Year
Most brands are struggling to scale and grow profitably with paid traffic, influencer marketing, email marketing, and more. You're not alone. Not by a long shot. And it's not your fault. You don't know what you don't know. And you only did what you were being told to do.
With rising ads costs, diminishing window of visibility into data, and distrust in the market at an all-time high, we're in the midst of THE largest market correction in digital history. It's already sunk thousands of companies and is due to sink hundreds of thousands more who have built their marketing and advertising systems on a foundation of sand.
To fully understand the REAL reason you've struggled with scaling your eCommerce brand, we've gotta hop in a time machine for a moment. Don't worry. It's not a DeLorean.
Once you hear this, it's all going to make sense.
And once you see what I'm about to share with you, you'll never be able to unsee it.
Back in 2014, when people were obsessed with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Pharrell's weird park ranger hat, and Disney's Frozen, scaling brands efficiently with paid traffic was a near-guarantee. Especially on Facebook.
It was like playing at the Blackjack tables in Vegas...
...when you're dealing as the house.
Armed with a Shopify account and some basic content, almost any eCommerce brand could turn a profit on Facebook ads. And almost anyone who wanted to bank a large book of business from eCommerce brands could make millions, too.
And boy, did they.
Industry titans, those we call the OGs of Marketing, made millions selling eCommerce information products and then scored millions more selling courses and programs on how to replicate their success, leading scores of people in search of better lives and more freedom to get blind-drunk on the idea of making fast money and spending their days writing lead magnets, selecting easy-money products to dropship, building funnels and eCommerce stores, and sipping fresh-squeezed margaritas on a beach in Mexico with a baddie in tow.
By 2017, some of their students went on to become information moguls themselves, carving out guru status in spaces like Facebook ads, agencies, and eCommerce marketing with edutainment, shock jock personas, and sensationalist messaging.
With the rise of paid traffic, terms like ROAS, cost-per-purchase, and "top of funnel" became mainstream.
And those consultants, marketers, and coaches birthed consultants, marketers, and coaches of their own, like a family tree.
But soon that tree started looking less like the cherry blossom variety and more like the spooky ones you see when you think of Halloween or American Horror Story. In kind, the quality of guru (and in kind, the quality of the insights) became worse and worse, more gnarled, more twisted, more distorted.
With every new "generation", more shortcuts were being taken in content. More tactics were being peddled. People recruited lower and lower-level labor to fulfill in their masterminds, infoproducts, and services. And the business part of being a business owner began to fall to the wayside as marketing and sales became the primary focus. And the primary hook to grab more students, to boot.
And as that was happening in larger and larger numbers, with new waves emerging at a faster and faster rate, something else was brewing just below the surface – something that collided into a series of unfortunate events and created A Perfect Storm for Failure that I don't think anyone ever really saw coming.
The Emergence and Rise of Mediocre Marketing
Those coaches I mentioned? Many of their students, after failing to get results for the unsuspecting clients who hired them, realized there's more money to be made in teaching someone else how to do a thing than they were actually making by doing the thing.
How'd that happen?
There's a subculture that arose whose tentacles are still embedded deep within much of the internet marketing and coaching industry today.
It's a subculture dominated by win-at-all-costs, hustle-and-grind, get-it-out-of-the-mud, whatever-it-takes, be-a-savage breed of entrepreneurship that was built on a methodology of creating and scaling companies that focused almost exclusively on aggressive sales, questionable manipulation-driven marketing, and short-term gains at the expense of respectable business practices and leadership, strong operations, fulfillment, dedicated service, and an eye towards longevity.
See, I've seen this subculture before, in a past life – prior to my career in advertising, CMO work, and scaling companies.
On Wall Street. As an investment banker of an award-winning team at the #1-ranked firm in the world. You don't have to have worked there to have a sense for what that looked like; Hollywood's painted that picture for you (though to be fair, it wasn't that nuts).
And you need only refer back to the news headlines of 2008 and 2009 to recall how that went down. #financialcollapse #toobigtofail
First, let me be crystal clear on this: Mediocre Marketing is not a term I use to refer to marketing that's simply ineffective, doesn't move the needle or rivals what my little niece could come up with. It's far more than that.
Mediocre Marketing is essentially a business ethos that, in public, is designed to serve you as a founder and your brand, but behind closed doors– in the gilded halls of six and seven-figure masterminds and in internal team meetings– is obsessively focused on getting as many sales as possible, for as much profit as possible, as quickly as possible, for as little cost as possible.
It's a philosophy that goes beyond just run-of-the-mill business. It calls for sacrificing fulfillment, service, and results in their search to cut corners, save time, and fulfill just enough to avoid getting sued but not enough to get you results.
You can find evidence of it when a business owner in an impact-driven niche is bragging about their own revenue numbers while conveniently remaining silent on the collective impact they've actually made on their students and clients, when they're silencing client complaints or conflicts with nondisclosures, using guilt-based, fear-based marketing, and paying keen attention and focus on quantity of sales, customers, and clients while committing to the bare minimum across the board and ignoring the quality of fulfillment almost entirely in attempts to keep their profit margins as high as possible.
The Industry encourages people to grab as much money as possible, as fast as possible, for the least effort possible.
Regardless of who they're attempting to serve and what they're attempting to sell, those who subscribe to this school of thought are ultimately forced to play a volume game. They need to get as many people through to their product as possible, as fast as possible, and as cheap as possible.
To sell to as many people as possible as fast as possible, they must keep their prices attractive. That means they must keep their overhead as low as possible. And to keep that low they must run their companies as lean as possible, hiring as few people as possible, for as little money as possible.
This sounds like... well, the normal course of business and the search for profitability, right?
But here's where The Industry takes things in a problematic direction. To spend as little as possible, they're willing to take shortcuts that fall severely short of healthy business practices that ultimately create massive problems for eCommerce founders like you.
They turn to low-wage workers with entry-level expertise and give them impressive-sounding titles like "Director of Client Success", "Director of Marketing", and "Operations Manager". I once met a coach with a $13 million company whose COO had recently been her child's nanny.
Per their mentors' advice, they hire as few people as they believe is humanly possible which in the info space, looks like one low-level "expert" being tasked with serving hundreds of people at once or hiring a Fiverr freelancer to cobble together an e-book using generic fluff-filled PLR they paid $15 for before selling to consumers "for free".
In the eCommerce space, it looks like being told you can build an eight-figure empire with a few VAs from overseas who lack critical thinking skills, and a course with SOPs that only reveal about 5% of the business puzzle.
And in the agency space, it looks like one beginner to intermediate media buyer assigned to 10 to 30 brands at once, armed with nothing but an SOP, a clueless account manager, and vibes.
So what happens to the quality of fulfillment and output? It plummets.
Because none of these folks are really giving it the talent or time that's needed, which leads to higher churn all-around as founders like you and companies like yours hop from agency to agency, coach to coach, infoproduct to infoproduct, and marketer to marketer.
So in order to maintain their revenue levels and avoid crashing and burning, they're forced to focus on acquiring more and more new customers, students, and clients to replace all the disappointed ones who have left with little to nothing to show for it.
In order to win this volume game, they must therefore convince as many people as possible that they too can run an agency, or be a marketer, or launch an eCommerce store. In the space, this is called "biz opp".
To attract those who already are in trenches of eCom as founders, they then must convince as many eCommerce founders as possible that the key to their successful growth is just around the next corner, the next shiny new thing (you probably recognize that these days as AI).
And the next corner. And the next.
And succumbing to the cultural pressure in these spaces to keep these revenue numbers as high as possible (gotta get that plaque or that belt, right?), they're forced to spend their time almost exclusively on getting the sale.
Not fulfilling the marketing promise that landed them that sale. That's hastily left to the low-wage, entry-level labor that may or may not possess the critical thinking skills needed to successfully serve.
They're pressured to fulfill only enough to make their students and clients feel like they learned something for their buck, but not enough to achieve maximum efffectiveness or develop agencies, marketers, consultants, or coaches that are truly effective, can replicate strong outcomes across a number of use cases and models, and are consistently good at what they do.
And for those who are selling trainings, courses, masterminds rooted in Mediocre Marketing principles and practices?
Those students who learned and adopted this philosophy to marketing and business give up on providing the service entirely and launch coaching and consulting programs instead to teach someone else how to do the thing (market, advertise, build an eCommerce store, you name it). Because they can make more money, easier money, teaching someone than actually doing the thing they're setting out to teach.
Except they themselves didn't really learn how to do the thing very well, either.
These are the folks largely running your marketing and advertising. Making marketing decisions in your businesses. Giving you advice on your boards.
See, it's not that the strategies and tactics were always trash, or that the methods are constantly off-base. That's only true some of the time. But what's true nearly 100% of the time is that they only learned how to make it work for a few use cases (despite being told it'd work for everyone), in a very specific climate, and rarely stopped to understand why it worked for Brand A, whether it would work for Brand B, or how to modify the process in order to consistently replicate success for Brands C, D, E, and Z.
Nor did they pick up how to either adjust when the climate changes OR how to architect an environment that could succeed in any climate.
In short, the nuance is lost. And as a result, so is the likelihood of success.
"Asking how leads to information, asking why leads to wisdom. Yet marketers are all too often busy asking 'how'. How do I improve conversion? How do I drive more visits? How do I meet my numbers? We are all so busy asking 'how' we have no time to ask 'why'. Indeed, we are so busy trying, we have no time to reflect...action without contemplation is dangerous."
- Flint McGlaughlin, The Marketer as Philosopher
For different brands in the same niche have very different scaling architecture, or models upon which one can (or in most cases, cannot) scale:
Brand A may have a very weak retention program, no email list, and few social media followers but a strong affiliate marketing system.
Brand B may have excellent margins and cashflow, and a strong email marketing program and high social media engagement but no acquisition strategy.
Brand Z may have a cult following on the underground streetwear scene and sell in boutique shops but have no digital presence at all and a bloated OPEX as a percentage of revenue.
There are hundreds of thousands of different models representing a ton of different combinations of factors that would crumble under a one-size-fits-all strategy, tactic, or approach to marketing and advertising.
Including when it comes to scaling using paid social. And the nuances are real; differences in teams, marketing budgets, brand, and assets often require recalibrations in strategy, approach, and even coach or provider.
This is why when your guru recommends a provider they've used and like, it doesn't often work out well for your business.
Neither the guru, service provider, nor brand realizes the approach, strategy, tactic, or program can only successfully serve one or two models. not only because that was never revealed to them when they got the game, but also because they never took the time to learn why the thing worked to begin with. So they could never extrapolate the learning, tweak the process, and replicate success for other models consistently.
Your guru's business checked all the boxes in that model they promised to share with you, the one they got results from. Yours didn't. But they considered none of that before taking your money.
And you didn't know to consider any of that before you tried implementing their strategy, approach, course, or whatever it was they gave you.
See, no one took the time to really learn the ins and outs, the why of the process, enough to understand what boxes even need checking off, in order for the thing to work, first.
And so the cycle goes, where armies of people put out offers to teach leagues of other people how to haphazardly do a thing that they have had relatively little success in actually doing for most of the people who come their way –even if they did see a little (or a lot) of success doing it for themselves or even a handful of others.
And all the while, the people who have been indoctrinated into variations of this toxic school of marketing continue building value ladders of higher and higher ticket products and services to extract more and more money out of their audiences, which forces those audiences to go into the market and extract more money out of others who want to learn how to get more revenue, too... just to be able to pay for whatever's the next rung on their favorite guru's value ladder. The mastermind, inner circle, fancy pants retreat on a jet in the sky, what have you.
Kind of like one normalized pyramid scheme that most didn't understand the rules for and absolutely no one knowingly consented to joining.
Behold: the spooky Halloween tree. Issa mess.
See, for most of us, Mediocre Marketing just feels wrong. On the surface, it looks like:
Renting or buying private jets, mansions, and Lambos for the likes and the "lifestyle" content
Posting manipulated screenshots or data lacking context, posting client data that should be confidential and invoices they’ve allegedly been paid
In some communities, flashing jewelry / chains, designer drip, expensive shoes and watches, even massive stacks of cash (often prop money they use on film sets in Hollywood)
Regurgitating copy that lacks professionalism, decency, or an understanding of how human beings think and feel (immediately blaming failure on the founder, pressuring them to take unreasonable actions like liquidating a 401k or going into massive debt, etc)
Baiting people into webinars, talks, seminars, masterclasses, lead magnets, and the like that are packed with fluff and offer little to no real insight
Insisting their way is the only and BEST way for you to win, regardless of the nature of your business, regardless of the products you sell or your audience, with no prior knowledge whatsoever of the unique ins and outs of your business or your model.
There are even entire threads online dedicated to exactly what this method of marketing has looked like for founders everywhere.
But most Mediocre Marketing practices aren't on the surface at all. They're a lot less obvious and lot more troublesome, which make them a lot more dangerous.
Because they’re all rooted in a sales-over-everything-else, profits-by-any-means-necessary mentality that's now quietly stifling your own business' growth and success.
Not because sales aren't important, but because there's SO much more to successful growth and scaling.
What’s less obvious to founders is that the worst impact from Mediocre Marketing?
It happens on the backend, after the sale:
Hiring extremely low-cost workers for pennies on the dollar to service your accounts in order to squeeze as much profit out of the deal as is possible,
Establishing a middle man or two between the media buyer and the client in order to be able to ‘spin’ the narrative when the one actually servicing the account doesn’t and can’t deliver,
Putting as many accounts to a single media buyer, email marketer, copywriter, content marketer, etc as humanly possible (often upwards of 10 to 30), severely limiting the amount of time they actually have to tend to your account and your business,
Establishing SOPs (standard operating procedures) that are rife with gaps and calling them systems, when in reality they’re limited to very basic tasks, and forcing entry-level, low-wage labor to stick to them... leaving out all of the nuance, critical thinking, and effort that is SO critical to getting real results in this industry,
Failing to set aside the time that's needed to dive into the data, and evaluate the nuance to give smarter recommendations or adequately serve to get the result,
Insisting on owning your ad account so that when (not if) you want to terminate and leave, you’ll never get access to all the data and testing you paid for and will have to start from scratch (this is actually a very common retention play used by mediocre marketers to keep you paying them longer than you should),
Taking several weeks or even several months to fulfill on what you've paid for,
Disappearing and leaving the coaching and consulting to low-wage workers and moderators who only have about two or three more rungs of knowledge than you do (after all: to a 4th grader, a 7th grader is a god),
Creating courses that, in an attempt to speak to as many people as possible, end up helping little to no one because they aren’t detailed enough or nuanced enough to guide you to the right approach for YOU and YOUR business (since to do so would exponentially increase the time it would take them to bring it to market and see revenue),
Training sales teams to seek the sale without actually evaluating or analyzing the eCommerce brand on any material level beyond followers, product, and budget to determine whether they’re actually ready for their method of paid traffic, influencer marketing, email marketing, PR, CMO work, etc, and
Not taking the time to evaluate data across the business that would make their own work more cost-efficient and effective, either due to lack of bandwidth, lack of skill, or both.
Mediocre Marketing ignores the realities of the innate, holistic nature of a business and demands that marketing and advertising operate in several silos, rarely ever considering the various models of the business' operations and whether or how they should change. This often creates a disjointed mess that can never adequately fulfill on the marketing promises and expectations.
The list of negative effects go on and on... but the worst part?
THEY'VE MASS-MARKETED AND NORMALIZED MANY OF THESE MEDIOCRE PHILOSOPHIES AND APPROACHES TO MARKETING, SELLING AND RUNNING A BUSINESS. SO MUCH SO, IN FACT, THAT YOUR OWN E-COMMERCE AUDIENCES HAVE BECOME JUST AS CYNICAL AND JADED ABOUT YOUR MARKETING AS YOU ARE ABOUT MARKETERS.
These practices lie at the core of why there are so many issues with growth and scaling in eCommerce.
It’s why companies like yours can spend five and six figures on agencies and marketers and not see any real results that move the needle.
It's why many consumers are so hesitant to buy, so desensitized to advertising featuring Mediocre Marketing tactics and approaches, and don't believe your marketing messages.
It’s why companies who turned on the spout on their marketing and saw a flood of sales destroy their brands' reputations and implode from orders because they took months to fulfill and ship their products.
It’s why brands who do see success on one channel, like paid traffic, have to halt campaigns because the rest of their business (like fulfillment) can’t keep up.
It’s why when things don’t work, they use language that blames you or blames everything and everyone else but them, but when they stumble upon something that works and see any modicum of success, they take the credit.
It’s why marketing courses seem to regurgitate the same information, yet rarely help actually move the needle in your business.
It’s why the strategies (and excuses) your teams and marketers tell you sound good but often don’t actually pan out or hold water.
It’s why you can’t ever seem to be able to work with the media buyer on your account directly without having to go through one or two other agency contacts.
It’s why it often feels like you’re getting the same substandard service no matter what agency you go to or what marketer you hire.
It’s why webinars, masterclasses, and other lead magnets are rarely actually valuable (and are only designed to sell you into something else)
It’s why nearly everyone’s eCommerce websites, emails, texts, ads, and social media look so much the same and are usually not nearly as effective as they could or should be.
It's why so many companies are taught to focus more on paid traffic than anything else, without realizing that there's so much more that impacts their ability to scale.
And thus, The Perfect Storm is born.
'Because at the same time, something else is happening. Brand marketers are peering, bewildered, over the fence.
The meteoric rise of the Clubhouse platform in 2020 created a phenomenon that few have talked about. For the first time, it brought together direct-response marketers born of the Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson eras into the same rooms as brand marketers working at companies like Fenty Beauty, Uber and Skims, many of whom had no idea this side of digital marketing even existed.
Hilarity did not ensue.
For in these Clubhouse rooms buzzing with discussions about marketing and sales, marketers running significantly larger accounts for significantly larger brands are, for the first time, seeing a world that, well, grosses them out. Aggressive, manipulative selling, tactics they'd deem unprofessional and unethical, misinformation that pushes psychological sales buttons, fulfillment as an afterthought, shortsighted business practices, and what's more...
They're seeing people lap it all up. To their amazement and dismay, the sales are rolling in and brand marketers are so appalled and astonished that some even begin digital crusades to call out these Mediocre Marketers. To show people there's a better option.
A valiant effort.
But what results is pretty hilarious.
Watching how much revenue these big-stage and mid-stage marketers are pulling in–who they consider to be bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of skill and acumen– compels some of them to start going out on their own alongside their corporate 9-to-5 with the hopes of capturing some of the market share by selling services of their own as CMOs, service providers, and consultants.
You'd think this would be a good thing for business owners, especially eCommerce founders like you.
Except 99% of these people have less than zero experience in actually growing and scaling a small or even nano-sized business.
Remember, the budgets they're accustomed to running with are gigantic in comparison to yours.
That means they can test more, faster.
They can waste more, faster, without the business feeling the hit.
They can play the long game in ways that yield larger returns but can't work for small brands due to their unique capitalization.
They can withstand longer repurchase windows, greater channel and market volatility and SO much more.
They can churn out fantastic brand-driven creative concepts all day but conversion-driven attempts for brands few have heard of often fall flat.
So the strategies they employ to win are strategies that would utterly tank smaller brands.
Not only that, but the technology at their disposal is unmatched and is eons beyond what is available to smaller companies. The tech stack and software at their disposal, which can collectively cost as much as $600K per month alone, uncovers insights and growth opportunities small brands can only dream of and does a great deal of the work.
Further, as just one person in a sea of hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands, these marketers have really only seen one tiny part of the process in driving conversions and hitting growth numbers. That is, if they had been responsible for growth at all in their careers.
Most of what they actually do on a day-to-day basis, what they've been trained to do, doesn't readily apply to growing a small company with an annual marketing budget that's just a fraction of what they're normally used to working with in a month.
In short: using their approaches, it often takes them $5 million to get to the same result it would typically take a competent growth marketer who specialized in working with emerging / challenger brands just $250,000 to achieve (usually less).
Which is why many of them are ineffective at serving emerging and challenger brands well, unless they come with a warrior chest of venture capital money.
This is not opinion. This is fact. They aren't "less than". They're simply well-versed in a very different game.
While most don't subscribe to Mediocre Marketing by any stretch, the vast majority also lack the know-how to move the needle for much smaller companies with 50 or less employees, let alone those with less than 5.
Get a drink or two in 'em and hand 'em a cigar in a country club somewhere and they'll sheepishly admit that they don't envy marketers working at small brands with such limited resources.
"Growing a challenger brand? Man, that $@#% is HARD. There is absolutely nothing harder in marketing than putting up real numbers for a brand whose budgets are sub $10 million. Your options are limited, your data is limited, your talent is limited. I don't know how you guys do it."
- A freelance marketer, formerly at Coca-Cola, who recently asked for his corporate job back.
Before You Get Mad: Let's Get One Thing Super Clear.
The people who do subscribe to Mediocre Marketing are not bad people. The vast majority of them are not bad actors running scams in the market. In fact, I pose that that word is often overused, out of an inability for people to put a finger on what's really been happening.
These are folks who are simply the product of an invasive species of thought and a set of unfortunate circumstances, using the leading and predominant method to marketing and sales that has been taught, modeled and repackaged, over and over again.
Most of the time, this is happening simply out of ignorance.
If you've used some of these tactics and strategies, I don't think you're a terrible, evil, greedy person. We've all merely done what we were told to do at some point in our businesses. You should simply see the fact that you've been roped into employing this stuff too as evidence that what's happening in the industry runs extremely deep and that nearly all of us have, at some point, been unknowingly drinking from the same cesspool of dirty swampwater.
Now you're empowered to point to the culprit behind what's been happening and affirm that nagging feeling you've had that there's got to be a better way.
Kudos to you.
Okay, Two Things. I Need to Clear This Up, Too.
The few in the market who have alluded to this phenomenon casually chalk some of this up to "bro marketing" or "dude-bro marketing". Bro marketing is only loosely related to what I'm referring to, here, when I'm talking about Mediocre Marketing. Plus, it's a misnomer. For starters, that term would lead you to believe the culprits are a certain type and gender of person who uses a certain type of slang and comes off in a certain type of aggressive, pushy, 'roid-addled way.
This couldn't be further from the truth. If it was just one type of person who ascribed to this school of thought, Mediocre Marketing wouldn't be so pervasive. But it is in fact so pervasive that most don't even realize they're doing it.
New derivations of this type of marketer, coach, and consultant have since spun off of the originals and emerged in full force that are just as toxic to your happiness and success as an entrepreneur but take on subtly different forms based on the psychology of the audiences they're aiming to attract.
The most recent wave, for example? I've coined it The Rapperpreneur. A new derivation of the same schools of thought have emerged and taken hold primarily in the South and East Coast of the US. Rapperpreneurship deliberately mirrors the look and feel of urban entertainment culture and brand (like Love and Hip Hop and Real Housewives of Atlanta) to hook audiences while marketing products and services using messaging thinly veiled in a shroud of emotional rhetoric designed to push emotional buttons of Black Excellence, generational wealth, and financial freedom from oppression, while propping up negative stereotypes with behavior rooted in what modern-day psychologists coin " unhealed generational trauma", in both their marketing and in their fulfillment.
All in the name of being "for the culture."
And they're building momentum by invading celebrity spaces everywhere, from The Breakfast Club, to the talk show circuit to the rap game, latching onto celebrities like Rick Ross, Steve Harvey, Daymond John, Diddy, DJ Envy, and riding the wave of the reawakening of Black entrepreneurship. in attempts to capitalize off of good, hardworking people by doling out the same shortsighted, shortcutting tactics they once gathered from their mainstream counterparts.
Iced out chains, Bentleys and G-Wagons instead of Lambos. Stacks of cash in their content instead of screenshots. Different clothing, same wolf. Different slang, same pushy tactics. Different brand, same approach to fulfillment that's rife with oversights and shortcuts.
Different look, same trauma. More often than not, same end results, too.
And they're not alone. Not by a long shot.
There are other birds of the same feather all across the nation, where softspoken yet bubbly, relatable women are taking the Fempreneur space by storm, in ways that emotionally resonate most with their predominately female audiences. Toxic positivity splashed in pink and purple and wrapped up in a pretty lace bow gives those who were turned off by "Clickfunnels Culture" an alternative to look up to.
But save for a few exceptions, the end results are largely the same. Same tactics in different gift wrapping. Same shortcuts taken, same shortsightedness. And same fail rates as a result. At this point, it's just about everywhere, with just about everyone– no matter the persona, the brand voice, or how often or how little they use the word "bro".
Lemme tell you a story...
Many years ago, an Australian "business coach" targeting women was selling a $100K offer promising a full, done-for-you branded lead generation and sales system. She threw in a generic consult, sent a three-page deck with 8 generic bullet points, then paid a "web designer and branding expert" and "copywriter" (I'm assuming from Fiverr) maybe $600 to conjure up the corniest copy on the planet and build this beauty:
I won't name names, but I'll just say that delivering something this terrible as part of a $100,000 contract and commitment must require a ton of "bravery", indeed.
Needless to say: we parted ways. Expeditiously. I never did get all my money back, but I still keep these mockups for when I need a good, hearty laugh. It remains the gift that keeps on giving.
Jokes aside, it's wild out here in these streets. In all the streets. I know firsthand, secondhand, and thirdhand. And I'll get into why this happens in a moment.
So don't be fooled: there are people of all colors, creeds, genders, credentials, personalities, and walks of life who have adopted the Mediocre Marketing school of thought when it comes to their marketing, coaching, and consulting, not just inside their companies, but inside yours, too. For most, it's all they know. Mediocre Marketing has become the standard.
All these years, they've been pulling the same tactics into your companies. In their coaching, their consulting, in the way they've been telling you how to scale, and especially in the way they've been running your marketing and advertising themselves, with the teams they hire and manage.
It's become so pervasive that most of the "best practices" you've heard of over the past 10 to 15 years are, in reality, based on the fundamentals of this school of thought, this philosophy of revenue generation and business building.
Mediocre Marketing won out.
But as a result, companies across industries have lost. Especially in eCommerce. And especially now.
But I bet you're wondering, "If all these things are so wrong, then why have marketers, coaches, and consultants been doing this for so long that it's considered standard practice?"
Because once upon a time, they were REALLY effective. Not because they were good practices. But because so much junk was effective back then.
...when there was less competition in the market, when consumers and business owners alike were less desensitized and more responsive to advertising, when there were fewer bad actors.
Costs were lower across the board just a few years ago, CPMs included. Getting returns on mediocre marketing and advertising was a lot easier and a lot more common.
So everyone sort of plugged their noses, swallowed back the sour bile of discontent, and did what they felt they had to do. Because this was what was taught. This was simply what's done.
Marketers, coaches, consultants, and other thought leaders continued to subscribe to this toxic approach to marketing and business since they were seeing 30x ROI and six to eight-figure launches, and
Business owners, including those in eCommerce, grudgingly sat by and took it, seeing little alternative in the market, because they were seeing strong revenues and decent profitability, too.
BUT OVER THE PAST FOUR OR FIVE YEARS, THIS SCHOOL OF THOUGHT HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY INEFFECTIVE.
Slowly but surely, the machine has ground to a near halt, for nearly everyone who has been employing Mediocre Marketing and taking shortcuts in the process, particularly around business architecture and data. That means not only the marketers, coaches, consultants, and thought leaders, but also their students, mentees, and clients whose marketing and advertising they run.
Ahem. That's you.
The inability to grow and scale profitably, predictably, and seamlessly in eCommerce has been exacerbated and accelerated by:
Rising ad costs and CPMs have since approached 4 to 7x what they used to be only years ago,
Import/export, shipping, and manufacturing costs have climbed, peeling off profit and putting a dent in your bottom line, and
The window of visibility into data diminished significantly after iOS14.5, leaving very little data to feed back into advertising platforms and damaging the ability for ads algorithms to optimize campaigns and accurately find the right audience segments to successfully sell your products to.
Which, paired with those rising CPMs, created a world in which the average ROAS plummeted for many businesses, especially in eCommerce which operates under an extremely cashflow-centric model. And for most, they've yet to recover.
You see, these events ultimately revealed (and loosened) a gaggle of paperclips, bandaids, and duct tape that Mediocre Marketing practices had put in place and were barely holding eCommerce businesses together.
All this McGyver-ing operated based on the strategies and tactics used by and taught by Mediocre Marketers, most of whom didn’t know any better and had merely been taking orders and advice from their various mentors, coaches, consultants and gurus who subscribed to this growth philosophy.
And when the shortcut-riddled, low-cost, high-margin model of Mediocre Marketing stopped churning out profitable outcomes, the internet marketing and coaching industries didn't slow down. They didn't re-evaluate. They didn't re-train their teams. They didn't pause and rethink their approach.
They couldn't afford to.
Their own CPMs on their own ads peddling eCommerce programs were skyrocketing and their own marketing was giving them less bang for their buck, to boot, with audiences increasingly jaded and skeptical, and churn already high since eCommerce brands were hopping from one agency, mastermind, and program to the next frantically looking for real results.
But the strangest part about all this?
They didn't pivot for their clients' and students' marketing, either.
No one stopped to wonder WHY their clients' audiences had become so cynical about their ads and buying products from eCommerce stores. It's entirely plausible that very few were paying enough attention to even notice.
But the reality is that these same coaches that had employed lazy, half-baked practices when it came to giving you the real game on growth and scaling, the same marketers who hooked you in to paying them four, five and six figures a month running marketing and advertising for your brands...
...were ALSO inadvertently wearing your audiences down with inadequate marketing on your brand's behalf: ads that felt like ads, tactics that were super sales-y and supported a blatant lack of attention to data, and poor customer service models that left consumers frustrated, for instance.
They were also encouraging eCommerce brands to put marketing above all else. To focus primarily on marketing and sales (leaving product development, operations and fulfillment on the back burner), uphold front-end, short-term gains over long-term retention, and totally failed to mention that growth strategies using surface-level data and strategies, featuring rushed-through, gap-riddled marketing in silos, were no longer gonna cut it.
So what happened?
Over time, eCommerce consumers also became disillusioned with ads, influencers, emails, and anything else containing tactics that triggered their memories of past negative experiences buying products from brands they'd been disappointed by.
Pair this with a looming recession, inflation, "shrinkflation", and economic uncertainty that are collectively tightening consumer pockets across the board and you now have:
A Perfect Storm.
YET MEDIOCRE MARKETING SOLDIERED ON. AND MARKETERS DOUBLED DOWN.
MOAR TACTICS! Break out the podcast VSLs! The QVC-esque livestreams!
MOAR AGGRESSION! Shame and blame! You won't take out loans to buy my program? You don't want it enough! Here's a countdown clock!
MOAR SHORTCUTS! Screw the long-game! This off-putting approach is guaranteed to get you results in 3 days!
MOAR COST-CUTTING! Replace your whole team with VAs and AI who lack critical thinking skills!
MOAR SALES! (for our own courses, retreats, and masterminds, that is. Take these short-game approaches to get more cash to give to us!)
And when that was no longer effective because trust had already been lost and gimmicks were already old hat?
They either moved on into other industries altogether (hello, FX, crypto, real estate, and AI offers) or they tried to hire the big-gun media buyers, CMOs and paid traffic consultants like me, hoping we could wave a wand and turn their companies around.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I politely declined. I'm a whiz kid, not a wizard.
My only interest and focus is on bringing clarity and success to eCommerce founders and their in-house decisionmakers. Not the coaches, marketers, and gurus who have burned, disillusioned, and traumatized them and are responsible for propping up an entire house of cards.
But even if we had said yes, shifted our client thesis, and accepted them into the agency:
MARKETING ALONE DOESN'T MOVE THE NEEDLE. TURNING ON THE FAUCET OF SOCIAL MEDIA, PAID ADS, EMAIL, PR, AND SMS MARKETING ALONE ARE JUST SMALL (BUT IMPORTANT) BANDAIDS ON FESTERING WOUNDS.
It isn't the answer for them. And here's the kicker.
It isn't the answer for your eCommerce brand, either.
Why?
Because you'll always find yourself wandering around lost and confused, throwing spaghetti at the wall and finding nothing sticks, if you haven't first identified and filled in the fundamental gaps across the breadth and depth of the business that are quietly leaking revenue and profit.
You'll forever be hopping from strategy to strategy in any marketing you attempt without first working to properly support the unique realities of your business and its model, operationally and across these channels.
THE VERY FOUNDATION OF THE MOST COMMONLY-TOLERATED METHOD OF GROWTH AND SCALING IN E-COMMERCE IS ROTTEN TO THE CORE. THE SYSTEM HAS BEEN (ACCIDENTALLY) ARCHITECTED FOR YOU TO FAIL.
The time for hacks, shortcuts that chase quick sales and sacrifice larger returns, mass market manipulation, embracing approaches with implementation gaps that leave millions on the table, disinterest in deep data, short-sighted strategies and practices in marketing and business, and so-called marketing strategies that aren't really strategies at all has come to an end.
It's well past time to reconsider and reevaluate the way you've been thinking about every element of the way you've tried scaling your marketing and advertising, managing your company, and growing your operations.
Because it all affects your ability to scale, on top of what's going on in your ad account and marketing channels.
If that sounds like too much for you and the idea of reevaluating your approach has you heading for the exit, I totally get it. The good news is that there are plenty of people who subscribe to Mediocre Marketing and are still selling eCommerce courses, paid traffic programs, and growth coaching that teach much easier, much faster, much simpler tactics and half-strategies. I mean, they're severely shortsighted and don't actually work anymore for most brands – as I'm about to show you– buuuut you won't have to deal with the tedium of shifting your perspective on growth and scaling as a founder or recalibrating your marketing and advertising programs in any real, holistic way. In the grand scheme of things, you don't have to change much in your business at all...but you probably won't get very far, either.
Sooo, I guess that's a...win-win?
Even if your current returns on your marketing are positive and stable or even trending up, the climate is changing so quickly that you won't remain insulated from economic, market, channel, or platform volatility for very long. More volatility is on its way. Data privacy policies are only getting more stringent. Economics are shifting and squeezing more and more from your margins. Products are only getting more expensive to manufacture.
Unbeknownst to you, your marketing teams and decisionmakers are stumbling in the dark, realizing the same tactics they once used on you are no longer actually working for you and there's a pretty good chance that eventually, they're going to tumble and rip down the stairs like Eddie Murphy's Aunt Bunny, taking your business down with them.
The current paradigm of scaling eCommerce companies using old methodology is crumbling fast–whether you see it or not.
Now let's get into exactly why and how Mediocre Marketing and everything else you've been taught about scaling and growth is impacting your brand's ability to thrive.
Up Next: Part 3 | The Math's Not Mathing
IN A NUTSHELL:
The Industry evolved with the help of a philosophy to scaling companies that I've coined Mediocre Marketing, and their shortsighted profits-at-all-cost, shortcut-centric, business ethos has become an invasive species when it comes to running companies, from operations and fulfillment to marketing and advertising... desensitizing, underwhelming and wearing out eCommerce consumers and eCommerce founders alike, everywhere.
Mediocre Marketing goes deeper than surface-level marketing faux pas, seeping into the way business is done after the sale, reflecting how marketers and agencies are doing business and serving your accounts, and influencing how founders are being taught to run, optimize, grow and manage their own companies.
This school of thought is pervasive and systemic. It exists in all pockets of the internet marketing community and is not limited to a specific gender, race, background, or walk of life. This isn't just "bro marketing" and its practices are not limited to landing pages, emails, ad creative, or other elements of your marketing or advertising.
In fact, Mediocre Marketing hits eCommerce brands the hardest in the realm of data and analytics, teams, and management within and across marketing and operational silos of the business. This is why it so quietly and forcefully impacts performance.
It's not your fault that you're struggling to reach your eCommerce growth and scaling goals. The deck has been inadvertently stacked against you as the entire eCommerce industry enters The Perfect Storm of circumstances that stifle growth and profitability.
Psssst, these publications have sought out my insights and expertise.
COPYRIGHT © TRULYSCALABLE.COM | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | DISCLAIMER | TERMS & CONDITIONS | PRIVACY POLICY