In this episode, we discussed 5 of the most common marketing hacks, why we think they simply don’t work and what you should do instead. We also touched a bit about our origin story and why we believe that playing the long game is the only way to achieve long-term success.
Links in this episode:
- https://www.nohacksmarketing.com/services/
- https://www.nohacksmarketing.com/podcast/013-how-to-make-your-website-better/
Episode Notes
In this episode, we will be talking about:
- What “hack” means
- The marketing hacks with tried and failed
- The origin story behind No Hacks Marketing
What is a “Hack?”
There’s a time and place for hacks. For instance, if you need to do something once and don’t care about what happens next then don’t waste your time coding a perfect website. If you need just one page to show it to one person, it’s not going to matter. But if you’re talking about long-term growing your brand, then no hacks bleed like that.
The short and sweet answer is “A hack of something that gives you instant success.” Or at least gives the assumption that you’ll be successful overnight. And it may work a little while, but it doesn’t last.
The thing is you must think long-term. A hack is a strategy that works for a short time, and then it doesn’t work anymore or has never been supposed to work. It’s just that no one has considered that people will do that.
For example, a hack would be buying audiences from Facebook. It worked for so long but before it became popular. That’s an invasion of privacy, but it worked for so long because people allowed it to work.
No Hacks Marketing: The Origin Story
We’ve known each other for 10 years now. We’re always been about focusing on long-term gains. It’s not about “What I can do for 30 mins to get some instant thing.” It’s about “What can I do in the next day or a month. So, it can be set for the next few years.”
That’s just the way we approach things. We wanted to focus on ways to help our audience use marketing and optimization on their website so that it doesn’t get in trouble and work for a long time.
To give you an example, many people are concerned and obsessed over Core Web Vitals. We think that it’s a great thing and we can help you with that. But we’ve been talking about page speed and optimization for a long time. That’s what we’re focusing on here.
We know that only hard work pays off. That’s something we believe in and how we expect to win. We started this podcast and then we thought, why not offer our expertise and help other businesses? That’s how we grew our podcast.
Three months ago, we started offering web optimization services that include page speed optimization, core vitals, conversion rate optimization, and technical SEO. Long-term consistent hard work is what matters to give you the success that’s needed for your business.
Hack #1: Buying an Audience
Buying an audience has become popular, not only on Facebook but all the social media pages and email lists. It will give you an instant boost that seems like you have a lot of followers or a lot of customers. But those people or companies who are buying audiences are just fooling themselves.
That’s because they paid for terrible audiences who are not their target audience. So, by the time that they market and promote to them and send them an email, they won’t get any response. Because their followers don’t care about their product or their services.
So, rather than going to an agency to buy an audience, the only way to have a legitimate audience is to have direct and strong communication with them. Buying email audiences is just a horrible thing, and people who do that are just risking themselves. Because there’s the GDPR and there’s a lot of regulatory policies that are happening.
So if someone reports that you’re spamming, it can cost your domain or the deliverability of your emails will be blocked, and you can no longer send emails.
Hack #2: “Steal This Formula”
There’s just no formula that will work for all businesses, so you can not blindly copy what’s working for the others. You can try and do a small test, but you can’t guarantee that it will work.
The strategy we’re following was written at a different time and wasn’t written for your specific example. Even if you’re talking about two brands or the same kind of marketing tactic, their audience is not the same as yours.
Hack #3: Make Sure Your Video has a Band
If you’re fighting for an audience that you can trigger by putting a bar at the top or bottom of your video, maybe you should fight for a better audience.
What will help you boost your video views? Make sure that your content is providing value to your target audience. There are simpler things, like making sure that the quality is good, thumbnails need to look good, and the audio needs to sound good.
Black bar or red bar at the top and bottom is not going to work forever. Meanwhile, good quality content is forever, no matter the platform.
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