The Differences Between Mediocre and Standout Marketers

0:00Alright, so we're going to talk about the key differences between mediocre and standout marketer. So a little backstory here. So I was with our mutual friend, Syed, who we called the king of WordPress. And so he's basically, for lack of a better word, he's got a WordPress holding company. And so I was at this mastermind with him, and he was talking about the concept of defining mediocre versus excellent, right? And I was like, oh, this is really good. Like it's a very dotting. And sometimes it's good to kind of go to basics here, go back to basics. And so we thought it would be helpful to define what a mediocre marketer looks like and then also what an excellent one looks like.

0:38But more so you should pay attention to the mediocre one because you can't see here in the video, but I think I have Charlie Munger over here. So Charlie Munger, he says that you always want to invert. And what I mean by that is there's actually a book called All I Want to Know is Where I Will Die and I'll Go to Avoid That, right? Something like that. And so the whole key behind this is that you just need to understand the things that will kill you or the things that will cause a lot of problems, and you just need to avoid that. And so for you as a marketer, or if you're looking to hire marketers, we're going to tell you what mediocre looks like, and you just do the opposite of that.

1:11So Neil, you want to go first? What mediocre looks like is people using ChatGPT and BARD to give you basic answers instead of something that's customized to a business. and even if ChatGPT and Bard can give you customized answers, which in many cases they can, for most marketing things, the advice is really generic and it's not customized enough. That's the first thing I'm seeing a ton of mediocre marketers doing these days because I'm involved in the interviewing process and I would ask people technical questions to see how good they are, even if they're a leader. And it's funny, you can tell a lot of the answers that people are giving are from Bard and ChatGPT.

1:46And on one of the interviews I asked the person, I'm like, out of curiosity and I won't fault you for this. I'm just curious. Did you end up getting this piece of feedback from chat GPT or Bard? And they were just like, yes. You know, it's interesting. So I had a friend, he defines these marketers as ABC marketers, meaning that whatever article you read or whatever podcast you listen to, you treat it as gospel. And it's like the next thing is like, we got to do this. You know, so-and-so is talking about it. We got to do this. Oh, chat GPT. People are talking about it right now. We got to do everything.

2:17We got to go all in on it. Right. And so my key point here is that the mediocre marketers are very reactive and they kind of behave with this ABC marketing. And I used to do this in the past myself and I've kind of, you know, tapered that down quite a bit. And so you want to work with, well, let's just focus on mediocre right now. So that's another example. Neil, go ahead. The other example is people who don't read a lot. So yes, Chad GPT and Bard and some of these websites that are, you know, media channels, like if you're looking at Instagram or YouTube and looking at the shorts and the reels, they could give you some ideas and they're not bad, especially in marketing.

2:54But the ones who are constantly reading and analyzing competition are going to be the ones who are going to be much more creative because they're going to have much more data points. They're going to see what other people are doing and it'll give them much better ideas. The same goes with analytics. If you're working with a marketer who doesn't log into analytics or if you ask them a specific question and they don't know where certain reports are in GA4, you're kind of screwed. Why? Because they're not data oriented and they're not going to know how to maximize conversions as well as someone who does.

3:24So mediocre marketers are focused on the short term and the standout marketers, the excellent marketers are focused on the long term. And what I mean by that is... What happens if a company requires them to hit short-term objectives? Because sometimes they have to for quarterly earnings. Well, I mean, so I'm talking about the general, like back in the day, internet marketers, right? Like affiliate marketers making a quick buck. Now there are rules to the exception, right? Like, but I would say most people are probably working for the fortune 500s or publicly traded companies. That is a data point.

3:54So. Yeah. And if you are working for someone that needs short-term ROI, you know, follow the 80-20 rule, spend 20%, 10%, 30 % of your time somewhere around that range on short-term marketing tactics and the rest on long-term marketing tactics. So you can have a balance as well. Yeah. And so like you want to focus on the long-term ideally, right? I mean, I'll give you another example here. So remember when I was working at that startup, God, 12 years ago or whatever, I had to bet the entire company on YouTube ads. Well, the incentive for me was I was going to get fired. And so the ebook one, not the ebook training.

4:27What is it called? The online training one, the online training. The dot com competitor, right? For design. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Anyway, the key thing here is that you want to make sure that ideally in the vast majority of cases, you are not trying to make a quick buck. You want to focus on the long-term and long-term means you're investing into content and not expecting an ROI for the first two to three years or so. Right. And by the way, in many cases, if you're working somewhere, you need to get results fairly quickly. So just keep that in mind. You do want to do the 80-20 rule here. Neil, what else you got?

4:58Mediocre marketers rely on platforms instead of building up your own audience. If you don't build up your own audience, you're beholden to the platforms. And if platforms change our algorithm or the way they work, you can be screwed. And it's happened to so many businesses, so much so that investors hate businesses that are relying on one channel. Yep. And the other thing, we kind of talked about experimentation, but mediocre marketers are, they're afraid of failure. While excellent marketers, they embrace it. And And if they, naturally, if you are a marketer that enjoys testing things and experimenting, you're down with failure.

5:30You embrace the failure and you know that's part of the learning process. Yes. So look, no marketer is going to be perfect. Try to have less mediocre skills and more amazing skills. And another mediocre skill that I'll end with, and then Eric can end it off if he wants. But one more that I'll end off with is mediocre marketers believe they know everything. Mediocre marketers believe that if they did a test and it works, it's going to work for every type of business. You can be proven wrong any time of the day. Just because something worked really well on one campaign doesn't mean it's going to work for another campaign, even if it's in the same industry.

6:05And trust me, I've tried a lot of this stuff and I've seen it firsthand. The other thing, too, is if you believe you know everything, someone's going to pass you by. Eric and I have been doing marketing for I don't know how long you have, but I'm over 20 years now, 22 years specifically or exactly. and during the 22 years, I don't think I'm the best at anything. I still think I can improve and continually get better. Dude, I'm interested in math. I guess I've been doing it for 14 years, which is crazy. Time really flies fast. But the last thing I'll leave it off with is, I might've touched upon this earlier, but mediocre marketers, they're very reactive.

6:37And so they wait for things to happen to them. And in marketing, if you want to be the best of the best, you have to be proactive. You have to take the initiative. And this means the things we talked about earlier. You have to learn new things. You have to experiment. You have to take things. You have to take the reins and move ahead because what's going to happen is if you're waiting for things to happen to you, who's ever built something really great by being reactive? You can't do that. You don't have the time to do it. It doesn't just apply to marketers. It applies to business as well. So that is it for today.

7:05Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. If you think this is not a mediocre podcast, if you do still leave a review anyway, and tell us why, and then we'll improve. Yeah. All right. Goodbye. See you later.