I’ve been part of many conversations recently that are questioning and, quite frankly, complaining about Meta’s recent decision to trial charging businesses for adding links into lots of their Facebook posts.
I personally can’t understand the decision, but my feedback to businesses hasn’t been to see this as a blockage that ends marketing as we know it. Throughout my 25 years of working in marketing, I’ve seen new ideas come and go and I’ve worked with businesses countless times to navigate around these inevitable changes.
I think what’s happening with Meta is a great example of what marketing is all about. It’s not about using the tools that you think everyone else uses. It’s about taking control of your own decisions to reach your core objectives. And there is no one way to do that.
The Issue With Marketing Tactics
One of the reasons why I always tell businesses to build their own websites is that it gives them a place online where they’re in control. If you rely on social media, review sites and forums, then you’re relying on entities outside of your control. Anything can happen, and inevitably will happen, just as recent events have shown.
More businesses approach me to ask me whether I can do social media and email marketing than to ask me how I can help them reach their goals. They’ll ask me what other marketing tools they could be using, without telling me what they actually want to achieve.
This tells me that there is a widespread misunderstanding of marketing and what it can do.
There is no single route to success in marketing. If there was, we’d all be millionaires. It’s about pinpointing what you want to achieve and then building a strategy to achieve it. If you’re letting marketing tactics guide your marketing, you’re already losing focus before you’ve even started.
How a Marketing Strategy Helps
Strategies help businesses understand their market, their customers, their competitors and their own business. All this together helps them to identify the best opportunities for growth and helps to plot the best course of action to achieve that growth.
That means no marketing strategy says “let’s use Facebook.” It will say these are our customers, this is what our competitors are doing and this is how we need to approach them. And when barriers come up, such as Meta charging for simple links, then we don’t change the strategy, we just look at how Facebook fits into the mix of activities and we decide whether it’s worth continuing with it, and how it could now be used.
It’s a far less worrying decision than it may first appear because you have stronger foundations and a broader mix of tactics.
The Fundamental Principles
In 25 years, I’ve seen enormous changes in the way businesses communicate with their customers. Some of the tools we rely on today didn’t even exist when I started my career, while others that were once incredibly popular have largely disappeared.
But the fundamental principles of marketing haven’t changed.
Proper marketing has never been about focusing on a selection of tactics. It’s always been about understanding customers, identifying opportunities, communicating the value of the offering and finding the most effective ways to achieve business objectives.
The marketing channels on offer and the tools we have to use are always going to evolve. But that’s not what makes or breaks marketing. The strategy behind it is the strong foundation.
Who’s Making Your Marketing Decisions?
Ultimately, it comes down to who is actually in control of your marketing. Because it certainly shouldn’t be Meta or any other third party system out there. A marketing strategy should sit alongside your business plan and be focused on helping you achieve what you want to achieve.
Marketing should be something you have control over, not something that is dictated by tools or trends.
At Lindsay Woodward Marketing, we help businesses develop professional marketing strategies that give them the knowledge, direction and confidence to make informed decisions about their marketing. We help them regain that control, so when changes inevitably happen, they know how to move forward.
If you’d like to take greater control of your marketing and make sure you’re investing in the right opportunities, please get in touch to find out how we can help.