- Marketer Milk
- Posts
- 🍯 3 mistakes marketers make (part 1)
🍯 3 mistakes marketers make (part 1)
Hey 👋
(This is a 3-part series that will go over what major mistakes I made as a marketer for the past decade. A new lesson will be explained each week, starting with the first one this week.)
When I was 18, I decided I wanted to start a clothing line.
I Googled how to buy a domain, how to build an ecommerce website, watched Photoshop tutorials on YouTube so I could design graphics for my t-shirts (I know not the right tool), and made connections with local screen printers to get the shirts made.
It was a minimum order of 100 t-shirts and I spent an entire months paycheck from my job working at an auto body car shop to pay for them. A month later, the goodies were made and I had boxes full of t-shirts in my college dorm room.
I made a post on all my personal social media accounts announcing the launch of my new brand — Flux (how original).
You know how many shirts I sold?
Zero. Nada. None. Not even friends or family bought my stuff. Absolutely brutal. And worst of all, I had 100 shirts I didn’t know what to do with. I decided to take the L and focus on school. This entrepreneurship thing was not it.
Then, one day, while scrolling on this new platform Facebook had just acquired called Instagram, I came across a brand called Gymshark.
“What’s different from their shirts and mine? I used the same materials! Why are they getting so many sales?”
These questions made me realize something for the first time — marketing.
Over the next year, I found myself getting immersed in growing Instagram accounts. I’d barely pay attention in class and just post, write captions, research hashtags, and engage with other accounts on the platform. I also discovered a platform called Instagress (discontinued) that helped me automate much of this later on. In 9 months, I had an Instagram page with over 17K followers.
I decided to do the clothing line thing again. This time, with better design skills, I launched a new brand and announced it on this Instagram page.
On the first day of launch, I got 4 sales. My 19 year old head exploded.
I bring this story up because it was the seed that made me become obsessed with marketing. And the main takeaway for me was that initial growth comes from “piggybacking” off platforms that garner attention. For Gymshark, the pioneers of influencer marketing, it was tapping into existing audiences on Instagram and YouTube. For me, it was creating an audience.
In the end, I shut down the site because I had no business acumen and cultural pressures told me to focus on school. But soon after, I couldn’t help but continue to chase that “4 sales in one day” feeling again.
And it made me realize that the most important marketing skills someone can have is mastering a distribution channel.
And the number one mistake I see many marketers make, especially those just graduating, is they don’t know how to drive traffic. Be it to social media accounts, email lists, or websites.
All theory, no skin in the game.
Sure, there are amazing copywriters, product marketers, and brand marketers out there. That stuff is very important — like the high quality materials you use to to create t-shirts and the brand you build that makes people feel something.
But it doesn’t get your foot in the door. In other words, you have to know where and how to build the door first.
I preach a lot about how marketing is a science (tactics) and an art (strategy). And these days, I’m more fascinated by the arts. But, when I first started out, I was obsessed with the science. The tactics.
And that fascination has evolved from growing social media accounts, to running ads, to SEO.
But the science of growth isn’t the whole picture. It will get you going, but it won’t keep you in the game for the long-term. It won’t build a brand that survives generations.
It’s the match that starts the fire. Without it, you won’t be able to cook your food.
But without the skills to keep the fire burning, you’ll eventually come to a standstill (why my semi-successful clothing line eventually shut down).
The main takeaway? The first skill you should master as a marketer (if you want to be recession-proof) is to learn how to drive the traffic. With this skill, you can always find a job, freelance, or grow your own projects.
And in next weeks edition, I’m going to explain the second lesson/mistake I see most marketers make. It’s the one I’m most passionate about right now.
With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):
Marketing news from the past week
How to drive demand in marketplaces
Lessons from analyzing 7.5B email subject lines
How SEO and UX work together
2024 social media marketing tactics
Ad from the past
Website of the week
Cool marketing jobs
And much more
🗞 In the news
Meta’s testing a new bonus program for Threads creators to stimulate growth
Inside X’s latest efforts to make advertisers believe it’s a platform that’s safe for brands
Meta shares Insight into Instagram’s revenue performance, providing new growth context
2024 LinkedIn benchmarks: Engagement rate data and top-performing content insights
🚀 All things growth & product
How Arc browser grows, from 0 to 10M users in 4 years, how to do event marketing for B2B growth, and the best way to drive demand in marketplaces.
💭 Guess the riddle
There is one of me in every corner, but two of me in every room. What am I?
Answer is at the bottom of this email
💌 Emails, lifecycle, & ads
Lessons from over 7.5B email subject lines, how to create an engaging onboarding flow, a Figma design template for your ad designs.
✍️ SEO, copy, & content marketing
What is a zero volume keyword, the importance of SEO and UX, and how to create product-led content.
2024 social media tactics, a guide to freelance social media marketing, how KitKat’s branding is winning ‘top of mind’, and how Notion is embracing AI.
🦖 Interesting stuff
📣 Ad from the past
A 1999 ad for the Olympus Stylus Epic Zoom 80 camera
💻 Website of the week
🏝 Cool marketing jobs
Okay, that's it for now 💜. See you next Tuesday!
What did you think of this newsletter? |
“The success I see is within my reach, and it is my responsibility to make it a reality. I will learn from failures, show up everyday, and master my craft. My success is guaranteed.” — Unknown
Riddle answer: The letter O.
🤳 Social media, branding, & AI