The Lure of DIY Marketing
Many business owners, whether non-profit in structure or for-profit business enterprises, often take an unintentionally haphazard approach to marketing, and more specifically online marketing, not knowing how (or if) their efforts could actually be doing more damage than helping them….or just falling on deaf ears.
The traditional approach of first developing a multiple-level marketing plan and working outwardly from that point makes logical sense that if you’re new to business management and marketing, that you’d want to build that business and secure a regularly-recurring steady stream of new customers for that business. And you need a way to secure that financial stability.
You need more customers to survive and certainly more coming in consistently in order to show traction and grow from there. So the desire to grow a business is perfectly understandable, logical, and expected.
DIY Marketing Promises Something for Nothing
DIY or Do-It-Yourself in the context of marketing flies in the face of working from a deliberate, organized approach because it encourages users to focus on using tools first over the logic of first formulating some kind of structured approach; essentially putting the cart before the horse, with the emotional appeal seeming to be that you’re not really sure where to begin, how to begin, how to budget, what to budget, who you can or cannot trust, what to ask for, how to gauge success, or even how to identify what success is for you compared to others and what you can handle in terms of growth.
Rather than study what larger, more profitable competitors do, you jump in, hoping what you put into place will work.
This popular approach ignores putting together a S.W.O.T. analysis (where you examine potential competitors and risks and rewards so you can plan more completely), and it also ignores setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, or seeing digital marketing as a serious holistic process to build a profitable enterprise. Yet, yes, this is what most business owners do.
Here’s my infographic illustrating what a SWOT analysis is and how it works on Imgur, Behance. You should also see it below.
And to most new business owners marketing is seen as an afterthought something they’ll get to after they get started – which actually doesn’t make sense since it’s putting the proverbial cart before the horse and expecting to make more money based on nothing concrete for a business that’s not yet established.
And that’s where the breakdown starts.
In order to acquire specific results (such as reaching more specific ideal customers within a certain age bracket and income range by a specific period of time in order to increase company exposure, and then revenue) you first have to know who you want to reach, why you want to reach them (what your Unique Selling Proposition is, how you or what you offer is unique among competitors), and then how you will reach them repeatedly over a set period of time (because it can’t be “forever,” as at some point you’ll want to reassess to see if your efforts are actually bringing in results).
Listen or Watch Related Content
You can listen to an interview I gave about this topic in an episode of the “Be Intentional” podcast posted below. Followed by that is a brief overview on the topic.
DIY Marketing
The most common approach to marketing is to jump into business, whether that’s starting with an idea or actual business operation where employees are hired and a physical location (usually) leased, and then six months to six years down the road, consider marketing in order to (then) bring in more customers or clients.
Obviously, if you look at building a business in that light, it’s easy to see how placing marketing (and as a result digital marketing – which is promoting and building a business using digital tools and media) second can compromise a business.
I’ve seen many businesses, both small and larger enterprise level, start, invest capital, only to go under less than two to three years later because their foundational core, of knowing how to run their race, and what to aim for, were never thought out before they started.
This is a key reason why DIY marketing doesn’t work in most cases. If the business owner is not already an expert in traditional marketing, digital marketing, and all that goes into using those two types of promotional efforts in tandem, how is it going to work when you insist on doing everywhere on your own?
Proof of Concept
For example, when I started a mediation nonprofit organization a decade or more ago, I’d been an experienced mediator, enjoyed the work, believed in the work, could easily perform the job expectations, and knew we had a valuable service the community needed (resolving disputes without having to hire a lawyer or duke it out in court, risking bankruptcy in the process). I jumped in. What I didn’t anticipate was the push-back from local courts refusing to send overflow cases, refusing to permit any inroads or promotion of any kind, and a deep lack of understanding as to what mediation is on the part of local demographics (which ultimately is who we’d be serving).
We got some work, but it wasn’t sufficient to build a solid base upon. Had I worked with or consulted a market research firm beforehand, I probably would’ve realized pretty quickly that a nonprofit mediation could never work in the general vicinity of where we lived or anywhere nearby.
It simply required more population density, more courts, more larger businesses, and a local population already familiar with what mediation is for it to work.
Being a digital marketing specialist, I already created a beautiful custom website with impactful local SEO, had content written to distribute online, had written “white paper” research articles and ebook downloads, videos, even referrals from a well-known TV judge, but it all fell flat because locals had no idea what mediation is, how it works, and most were used to going to court to resolve disputes regardless of expense.
Even from the perspective of a marketing “old hand,” it wasn’t working; because I’d failed to start with what we call “proof of concept.” I didn’t know (for certain) whether or not what I wanted to launch could work and certainly couldn’t prove that it would. Also, I knew how I’d promote the business “boots on the ground” and online, but not on a deeper level within the court system, where most referrals would have to originate from. There were no local area competitors, which at face value could look great (“Hey! No competition!”), but at a deeper level reveals lack of interest on the part of those with much deeper pockets (often revealing a dearth of opportunity). That red flag should have caused me concern, not invited me to enter an untested market. I had the tools, experience, but let enthusiasm get the better part of me.
Non Profits and DIY Marketing
Years later, I’d volunteer to help non-profit organizations whose mission I felt were both noble, practical, and deserving of help. Almost every time I’d offer to help them as a business mentor, either for reduced fees or on a consulting basis, I’d find that the founder(s) of the NPO would have no idea what their branding should be, what their SEO should be (or even what SEO is), what any written content should be, and more seriously (because this would be their wheelhouse) who their ideal target customer base would be.
Since I’d already been down that rocky road myself professionally (and with others as well both before and after), not knowing who you’d want to reach, with what message, and what success for that project would look like for you – not knowing that crucial information informed me to be wary. I’d be trying to help people who, however well-intentioned, were likely to fail, and fail hard.
Adding Digital to the Mix
Now if you add to that bouillabaisse the need to either have someone on staff who is a digital marketing expert who can implement a consistent marketing campaign so work can be done regularly – and the fact that this need almost never is met by a new company – you have quite the hill to climb in terms of ever reaching the top. They have issues achieving specific metrics because, let’s face it, they don’t know what the metrics should be, may or may not have in place what is needed to reach any metric or goal in the first place, so wouldn’t know if they hit it dead-on or not at all. (And this is one of the reasons why you see so many new business owners and service providers with websites but with no SEO, or very basic empty template websites who aren’t generating new lead generation as a result, because it’s another case of “you don’t know, what you don’t know about in the first place.”)
When you jump in to something you’re not fully informed on, still have questions about, haven’t spent time studying or working in, and haven’t invested in, it’s unlikely you’ll get out what’s desired.
Adding technical tools and processes to building a business means hiring someone to implement what’s needed or not attaining those goals.
I remember someone on a forum once asking when DIY should be put into use when it came to building a business.
My response was very simple: when what you are doing doesn’t matter to you and there’s nothing riding on it. In other words, when you can afford to lose it all, go ahead and jump in and see if you can figure it out in mid-leap. DIY websites?
Fine if you don’t care about getting leads, how you appear to others, whether or not you outpace competitors online, and can afford to make mistakes while you learn (knowing that could take several years or more).
Marketing in general? Fine as long as you don’t have employees counting on you to help them support their families or don’t care, fine as long as you don’t have your own family members counting on your support, as long as your house and future aren’t riding on it and there’s no needed income at stake.
Conclusion
In summary, the bottom line is that DIY is ideal for fixing minor things around the house where the actual value of said outcomes is minor, and not so much when those efforts don’t work; probably not ideal when trying to secure a bigger, bolder, brighter future for yourself and family.
Postscript:
Enjoy an infographic image I created to illustrate key points on Imgur, Behance.