Remember when you could use a scheduling tool like Buffer to post social media content? You could set it and forget about it and your audience would still grow.
Or when all emails had 60%+ open rates?
When all you needed for SEO was keyword stuffing?
Yeah, none of these things work (so well) anymore. This is the tragedy and the beauty of marketing — as soon as you get good at something, your audience demands something else. Today, we’re exploring the inherent decay of marketing channels and tactics and how you can stay ahead of it.
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Why do marketing channels decay?
Please forgive the bout of self-hate but it’s true: marketers ruin everything. We find something that works, we tell everyone, and then we continue to abuse that tactic and milk it for all it’s got and then some.
The consumer’s response is but natural: they loathe everything that reeks of marketing. So you need to find new ways to promote your stuff, something less blatant and less obnoxious.
Andrew Chen calls it The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs: “Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty clickthrough rates.”
The first example he gives is that of banner ads, debuted by HotWired in 1994:
“HotWired CTR, 1994: 78%
Facebook CTR, 2011: 0.05%”
You can replace “clickthroughs” with pretty much any marketing goal or result you were expecting. Here’s an example of social media engagement declining (save for TikTok back in 2022, but the platform is now following the regression to the mean model too).
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- Social media platforms rise and fall too — this is directly correlated with the rate of engagement and clicks. Who’s gonna spend time on a platform that doesn’t deliver them anymore?
- Zero-click approaches are already mainstream.
- SEO is going through a radical transformation.
Customers respond to novelty, freshness, and unfamiliarity
At first, they click because they’re curious, just like they did on the first banner ads. As the novelty wears off, they either ignore your messages, or they develop banner blindness aka they literally don’t see ads and promotional messages anymore.
This fascinating Nielsen study reveals that users are incredibly good at ignoring ads and focusing on what matters to them. The heatmaps show that the users don’t see the ad banners at all.
The same goes for any promotional message, even an organic social media post where you promote your services/products. You can disguise it as regular content and thus get more engagement but fewer and fewer people will click on the link to your website.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. As some channels become obsolete, others take their place.
And the best news of all:
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Channels come and go but persuasion techniques stay the same.
Case in point: do you know who ran the first (documented) referral program? Yes, like the one at the bottom of this email that can get you cool prizes. It was Julius Caesar! In 55 BC, he promised 300 sestertii to any soldier who referred another soldier to join the Roman Army. [300 sestertii = roughly a third of a soldier’s annual pay.]
Banner ads aren’t new either, they just used to be offline and some of them still are (in OOH advertising, for instance).
Emails used to be physical letters, flyers, and catalogs. Some companies still use them today. The wording they use is also nearly identical to what we use in emails these days.
Influencer-endorsed products first popped up on TV ads and then on Instagram and TikTok. In fact, celebrity endorsement can be traced back to the 18th century.
Feel like you’re in a time warp? You’re not. There’s just no need to change the fundamentals.
The human brain is (roughly) the same as it was millennia ago. We respond to the same tactics, the same types of stories, the same persuasion techniques.
Shameless plug: this is exactly why The Audience Accelerator Workshop is platform-agnostic. Not all businesses thrive on the same platforms, be they social media or something else. You’ll be learning perennial audience-building and persuasion techniques, not hacks bound to a specific algorithm.
Did you save your spot yet? They’re filling up fast, so grab yours here!
All this to say: don’t sweat the changes in algorithms, ranking factors, copywriting trends, or AI-powered resources. If you know the basics, you’ll be able to navigate anything.
Here’s how 👇
What can you do about it?
This is a hill I’m willing to die on: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Tactic decay rarely happens overnight and, still, it takes most of us by surprise.
LinkedIn reach in the gutter? I just need to comment more!
The CTR of paid ads increased? Fine, I’ll up the budget!
Instagram favors reels instead of pics? I’ll invest in video production!
We tend to stick to what we know because it’s more comfortable and because we doggedly refuse to accept that things change much faster than we’d like them to.
Before long, we end up piling more resources onto an already sinking ship. I’m not saying abandon a lucrative ship at the first sign of trouble. But make sure you have a backup.
Explore, diversify, and expand
Don’t be afraid to leave a channel behind, even if it used to be lucrative. There are countless more. Check out these 20 channels, for example.
As soon as another one starts to pick up, you can lower your time/money investment into the first one. Re-assess and re-allocate your resources, ideally every three months.
How much marketing you need to do depends on how mainstream your product/service is
The more commonplace your craft/service/product becomes, the more marketing you’ll need to do.
Rogers’ bell curve for technology adopters provides a good primer:
If you’re the first to market, you can tap into innovators, early adopters, and early majority. The later you start, the more marketing you will need to do.
Why?
Because “early birds” are fueled by enthusiasm. They want to try new things, they want to be the first users, even in the absence of social proof.
More often than not, they’re risk-takers and savvy experts in their field.
The others, the late majority and the laggards, will need more convincing. You’ll need more reviews and testimonials, better copywriting, and more marketing in general.
Since the market is already mature, you have more competitors too, so, again, you’ll need more marketing to differentiate yourself and to get and retain attention.
In the creator economy, you can look at businesses like Amy Porterfield’s. She was one of the first people to create courses about business building, email marketing, course creation, and others.
When she first got started, building an email list was a walk in the park and so was attracting people to this quirky, exciting idea of learning business fundamentals online, not through an MBA.
Today, even huge creators like Amy face fierce competition. There are thousands of people teaching similar things and all of them invest in paid and organic marketing more than ever.
Your turn: think about your own industry. How crowded is it? How many competitors are there? What about the market size?
More importantly, are you marketing to early adopters or laggards?
Answer this question and you’ll know how much you need to invest in marketing. Be honest, though: we all like to think about our offers as cutting-edge and revolutionary. More often than not, however, it’s a very old product/service in a new wrapper.
A new wrapper doesn’t change who’s more likely to buy it.
Don’t be afraid to go where no one has gone before
In a recent strategy session, I recommended a client of mine to try TikTok. She stared at me in disbelief because her audience was people over 60. And we all know TikTok is a place for kids.
Two months later, she DMed me to say her TikTok channel got 10k followers and she’s got a waitlist now.
Why? Because that’s where those 60-year-olds’ kids and grandkids hang out. Also, don’t assume 60-year-olds only hang out on Facebook, where they share pictures of their morning coffee. They want in on the cool new platforms too, there’s just very little content that they resonate with there.
As creators and entrepreneurs, we get to shape how social media works and which platforms can be monetized (I’m preparing an issue about this topic, stay tuned!).
So don’t be afraid to challenge the norms and forge a new path for your business because:
If a tactic is too mainstream, it’s on its way to obsolescence
Use it while it’s still working but keep your eyes peeled for something else. Even if the learning curve of a new platform may look steep, it’s a better idea to get comfortable with it while you can still use the old tactics to some degree.
This is it, the marketing game in a nutshell. Learn the basics, try to stay ahead of the curve, and be an early adopter even if you market to laggards.
Adriana’s Picks
- I partnered with Red Knot Development to support their education-based initiatives in the areas of agriculture, livelihoods, and sport in Tanzania. For YOU, this means you can snag a strategy session with me at the lowest price it’s ever been on. Place your bid here — all proceedings go to Red Knot Development.
- Katie Kelly interviewed me about my biggest F-ups. The story is now live, so please read it so you don’t make the same mistakes I made.
- The Beehiiv 2024 State of Newsletters report is live and it has quite a few interesting finds.
That’s it from me today.
See you next week in your inbox!
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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