Marketing truisms
10 thoughts and opinions on marketing
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 225
1. Marketing isn’t magic.
If you’re waiting for a magic solution, you’ll be waiting a long time.
Marketing is a grind—a system of testing, measuring, and iterating.
The "overnight successes" you see? They’re built on months (or years) of unseen effort, grind, and work.
Stop looking for shortcuts and hacks and instead, start building and refining proven processes that work, that produce results. The only magic in marketing is in consistency meeting strategy.
2. Your opinion doesn’t matter.
Your customer’s does. So, stop debating colors and pricing and start reading and listening to real world data.
That shade of blue you love for the background of your latest ad campaign? Irrelevant. That’s the only question you need to answer is what converts better?
You need to fall in love with real world metrics, not with your preferences.
Whether you like it or not, the market votes with its wallet—your job is to bring in more voters and to make those votes count, not argue with them.
3. "Viral" isn’t a strategy.
Going viral depends circumstances, on content, and and on communal appeal and whether something is worth sharing.
Instead of chasing viral post status, invest time and effort in building a sales process that works and stop complaining about your "engagement."
Virality is lightning—you can’t control it, you do what you can to encourage it and you and if you’re lucky, it strikes.
Sustainable growth comes from building and refining predictable systems: email lists, SEO, and offers people actually want. Stop praying for viral content and start engineering for reliable results.
4. Nobody cares about your product.
Your customers and clients care about their problems, not about you or your product. Fix your messaging to reflect this or keep shouting into the void.
Your product’s features are dull and boring. Seriously, no one cares.
The transformation your product or service creates? That’s compelling. That’s the thing prospects and customers want.
Target the tension - amplify their current pain, then position your solution as the pressure release valve.
Instead of selling features, sell the transformation from the agony of 'before' to the ecstasy of 'after'. The gap between those two states is where all compelling marketing lives. Features tell, benefits sell.
5. A/B testing isn’t optional.
If you’re not testing, you’re guessing—and guessing is expensive.
Every untested assumption is money left on the table. Test your headlines, your CTAs, and even your send times. Small wins compound. The brands that outpace you? They’re not smarter—they’re simply more disciplined at testing and refining the process.
6. SEO isn’t dead.
If your SEO isn’t working it’s because you’re doing something wrong.
Google still drives 53% of all web traffic. If SEO isn’t working for you, you’re either targeting the wrong keywords or you’re creating content no one wants.
Answer real questions better than anyone else, and watch traffic follow.
7. Email isn’t "old-school."
Your lazy copy is. According to MailModo, email delivers $42 for every $1 spent SOURCE, with Statista estimating the market due to expand by up to 13% from 2020 levels through until 2027 SOURCE.
If your emails flop, it’s not because the channel is off, it’s because your messaging lacks relevance, or because your list segmentation is off (you’re sending the right sort of messages to the recipients least willing or able to act on them), or because your hooks lack strength, or because your me-first messaging falls short of the mark.
The sooner you begin treat recipient’s inboxes as the prime messaging real estate that they are (rather than as a spam dumpster), the sooner your email messaging will start giving you positive results.
8. If your marketing feels sleazy, it is.
Authenticity isn’t a fancy tactic—it’s the price of admission.
Consumers can smell spam, an off offer, and desperation from miles away.
No amount of spin or flash will fix a bad product. Ever.
Trust and belief are not traits that simply fall out of the sky, they’re built over time by delivering solid, dependable value over and over again. Be helpful, not hype-heavy.
9. More content does not produce better results.
If you want better results, create better content. This means stop posting any old nonsense and start refining. One epic piece will outperform 100 mediocre ones. Double down on what works—repurpose popular posts, go deeper on your research, and promote your material far and wide. Quality compounds; noise fades.
10. Your brand what your customers say it is.
Your logo and tagline are meaningless unless customers associate each of them with tangible value. Spend less time on brand guidelines and more on delivering memorable experiences. The only branding that matters is word of mouth.
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As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
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Next time on Shaking the Tree: Improve your writing
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.