Believe everything you read on the internet, right? I started to call out “outdated marketing beliefs,” but really most of this was never true. It’s part good-intentioned misunderstanding and part “internet marketing guru BS” that they came up with to sell you some new twist. Either way, let’s bust some marketing myths!

My name is Dustin, and I’m a branding and marketing strategist, StoryBrand Certified Guide, and agency owner. This blog is about educating business owners on marketing and branding strategy so that those with more time than money can more effectively market their own businesses, and those with more money than time can better communicate their needs to a marketing agency and not get taken advantage of by less-than-honest marketers.

Here are a few myths that seem to persist, and let’s see if we can put them to bed for good. Call me Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Let’s make sure you know enough to make an informed decision for yourself. You’re reading this blog, and your competition isn’t, so you’ll have a leg up. Let them keep believing in myths.

Myth #1: More Traffic Equals More Sales. Partially true.

Brick-and-mortar stores are immediately going to know why this one is full of baloney. For the rest of us, imagine you’re out shopping. Let’s say you’re wandering through the mall at Christmas or in the heart of a small downtown. You know, those times when the words, “I’m just browsing,” come out more than once.

Do you buy something in every store you stick your nose into? What if it’s run down and in disarray? The clerk, sitting on a stool behind the counter, doesn’t even lift her head up from her phone to acknowledge you. You buying anything?

But that’s the experience that so many of us unintentionally give our website visitors. We throw up our websites, and the only message we give is, “We’ve got stuff to sell,” and worse, some of us don’t even ask people to buy something. More traffic isn’t going to lead to more sales…UNLESS your website is designed to convert visitors into buyers.

Myth 2: Email Marketing is Dead. Long live email marketing.

Completely untrue. I’m not entirely sure why this one persists. Partly to blame is our perception. We think about all of the spam we get and don’t want to be a part of that. That stuff is so obnoxious it sticks in our heads, and we don’t think about all of the cool newsletters and offers we get from companies we actually want to hear from. Partly to blame are the “gurus.” If you’re selling social media marketing, then email marketing is basically your competition. You talking it up or talking it down?

I don’t have a horse in this race other than helping you pick the best one for you personally to bet on. The ROI for email marketing is quite honestly staggering. For every dollar, you get $36 to $42 back. I challenge you to find another marketing channel with that much potential. In fact, the next closest is $10 for SEO, $2 to $8 for PPC. Even TV and radio come in at $6.50 and $4.95.

Email is far and away the most effective and cost-effective form of marketing you can do.

I think we may need to make a distinction between cold and warm email here. So far, the data I’ve found is a bit mixed, but to be on the safe side, we’re talking about the kind of email marketing where they’ve opted in and have invited you to be in their inbox. Cold email will work; it just takes time, effort, and a lot of experimenting with different messages.

Myth 3: Social Media is Only for Brand Awareness

This one is a strange one for me. We use social media for keeping up with and communicating with our family and friends. We check in with our favorite small brands to see what they’re up to. We use it to research new products and find products we didn’t know we needed until just now.

So, why do we persist in believing that for our own businesses, social media is only for brand awareness? Or worse, thinking, “My business is too small for all of that, so I get to ignore social media!”

I will absolutely hear your excuse that it takes up too much time. I will still push back with solutions to get you through that, with one of them coming later on in this post. But social media can do so much more for your business.

Look at my list above. In addition to driving sales by keeping you top of mind with your customer base, it’ll introduce you to new customers.

But it keeps you interacting with your customers. You can interact with them in near real-time and sometimes in real-time, at scale! I know it’s hard to keep up with, but there is software out there that I can point you to that can help you keep up with all of it.

The other excuse I hear is something along the lines of, “Dude, I’m a plumber; nobody gives a crap about the work I do. What am I possibly going to say or do?” Let me put it to you this way: I have NO desire to drive a garbage truck. But I find the jobs that other people do fascinating enough that I actually found myself watching a video of a guy explaining how he picks up dumpsters in an apartment complex. You’ll find your audience.

Heck, do what I do! You really think marketing is that exciting? But talking about ways you can make more money sure is. So, plumber, teach people how to do the small things. They’ll still call you for the major jobs.

Myth #4: Content Marketing is Only for Big Brands

I don’t know where this one comes from either. Maybe because it’s hard. It takes up a lot of time. I don’t know. But overall, I think there’s just this impression that small brands can’t compete with bigger brands and their teams of content creators.

First of all, you don’t need to compete on sheer volume. Quality is going to win over quantity. I don’t know if you’ve ever paid real attention to what the big guys are putting out there, but at least in my world, a lot of it is just fluff. Some of it is generic SEO crap that doesn’t say much of anything at all, and lately, more of it is not very well done AI output.

I’m not anti-AI, and I think it can be a great tool when used the right way. We can explore AI in another post if there’s any interest. I’ve been using it quite heavily since OpenAI really hit the scene, and while I’m no expert, I have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t. If you’d like a rundown, let me know in the comments!

Small businesses have a great advantage over bigger brands. They’re a lot closer to their audience. A local business can speak to the local community about what matters to them, whereas big brands can’t. A local bakery can create content around baking tips, but they can also talk about where to source local ingredients.

Some other quick tips:

There are cost-effective tools you can use to make and post. For example, you don’t need an expensive graphic designer for everyday mundane social posts. Pop on over to Canva.

Repurpose content: Here’s what I do:

1. Create a long-form video for YouTube.
2. Chop that video up into smaller sections that I can turn around and post on YouTube Shorts, Instagram and Facebook Reels, TikTok, etc.
3. Take the transcript from the video, clean it up a little, and post it as a blog post.
4. Take the audio from the video and post it as a podcast episode.
5. Post teasers to social media to entice people to watch the full video.
6. Post teasers to social media to entice people that would rather listen to check out the podcast.
7. Post teasers to social media to entice people that would rather read to check out the blog post.
8. Take fun takeaways from the blog post and post them to social media.

All of that off of the effort of one video. Granted, the first video is a bit of work for me. But I hope that it gets easier and faster the more of these I make. Mostly, I hope I get these to a point where more people enjoy watching them and you get value out of these.

But you don’t have to do a video. You can start with a short blog piece that you repurpose to other platforms. Or just record a short video that you can post to Shorts and Reels. Maybe six weeks from now, you reuse all of it again. Some platforms, like Instagram, tend to fall off pretty quickly, and by reposting, you could gain views and followers again.

Oh, and one other thing: consider UGC. Ask for your reviews and then ask your biggest fans and customers to make videos or write about you! Not only do you get someone else to do the work making the content, but instead of just you telling the world how great you are, it’s your customers, and that holds a LOT of weight.

Myth #5: “You Need to Be on Every Social Media Platform”

I feel this one so hard. I am on nearly every social platform. It isn’t easy. But you probably don’t need to be on every social platform. I am because right now my audience is pretty wide, but also, how can I expect to give advice to you if I’m not living it myself? I try really hard to either give you the fruits of my hard-won experience or research something like crazy before I spout off. There’s plenty of that out there already.

But you just need to meet your audience wherever they hang out.

Facebook and Instagram are pretty good overall bets. LinkedIn isn’t the best choice if you’re targeting retirement-aged people, but it’s great for B2B-type businesses.

If you run a fashion brand or anything related to travel, anything that’s image-heavy, Instagram is your obvious answer.

TikTok isn’t all dancing. I post videos that don’t really cater to the kinds of videos that do well over there, and they still get between 300 and 700 views, along with a few likes thrown in. I’d probably do a lot better if I made videos that matched the style. In fact, since I’m giving advice, I’d better experiment and get back to you!

But the point I’m trying to make is to figure out where your people hang out and go meet them there.

Rapid Fire Marketing Myths Wrap-Up:

1. More traffic doesn’t always turn into more sales. Get your website or landing page on point first!
2. Email marketing is NOT dead; it gives you the best possible return on your advertising dollar.
3. Social media is a great tool for more than just brand awareness.
4. There are a lot of tools you can leverage to make better content.
5. You don’t need to be on every social media platform. It’s exhausting and time-consuming. Go find your people and hang out with them there.

I hope you found this helpful and valuable. There is more to come, and it’s only going to get better! If you know somebody who could use the information, please consider sharing it with them. Finally, if you got any value out of this post, please give it a like. It means a lot to know somebody got something out of this.

What are your experiences? I’d love to hear your favorite myths and why you think they’re wrong. I know I’ve fallen for a lot more than just these five!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. I will do my best to answer. If you want to go deeper on this or anything else, let’s have a virtual coffee.