There’s no shortage of marketing advice out there or on this blog lol.
Scroll for five minutes and you’ll be told exactly what you need to be doing.
You need a pop-up.
You need a welcome sequence.
You need to email your list three times a week minimum.
You need urgency. Scarcity. Funnels. Systems.
What almost never gets asked is the simplest question of all
Is this actually true for this business, this audience, at this point in time?
Most advice skips that part entirely.
The moment “marketer mode” kicks in, common sense leaves.
Here’s a useful gut check I come back to often
If you wouldn’t tolerate it as a person, don’t justify it as marketing.
Because the second people put the “marketer” hat on, they stop behaving like humans who use the internet.
We don’t like pop-ups.
We ignore most emails.
We scroll past ads that interrupt what we’re actually trying to do.
We close tabs when we feel pressured, rushed, or talked down to.
None of this is new information. We all do it every day.
And yet, advice keeps pushing the same tactics, just louder.
Tactics aren’t neutral. Context matters.
Pop-ups aren’t inherently evil.
Email marketing isn’t broken.
Ads aren’t the problem.
The problem is treating tactics like universal truths.
A pop-up can make sense for a high-traffic e-commerce site.
It can also be completely unnecessary for a service-based business with low volume, high trust clients.
Daily emails might work for someone selling time-sensitive offers.
They can also burn an audience to the ground if there’s nothing meaningful to say.
But instead of asking should this exist here?
People are told this is just what you do.
That’s not strategy. That’s copying homework.
Marketing isn’t about forcing behaviour
A lot of modern marketing advice is obsessed with control.
How to nudge. How to trigger. How to optimise behaviour.
Real people are not a set of levers you pull in the right order.
Good marketing is observational.
It notices patterns. It listens. It adapts.
It asks
Where is my audience already paying attention?
What do they actually need help understanding?
What would feel useful instead of intrusive?
Bad marketing drags people somewhere they never asked to go and calls it a funnel.
Just because something “works” doesn’t mean it’s right for you
Most tactics “work” in the broadest possible sense.
That doesn’t mean they work for your business, your energy, or your clients.
A strategy that relies on constant output might technically convert, but quietly exhaust the person running it.
A system that increases clicks but erodes trust is not a win.
It’s just a slow leak you don’t notice yet.
Sustainable marketing feels aligned.
Not because it’s gentle or nice, but because it makes sense.
A simple filter that fixes most bad marketing decisions
Before adding another thing to your marketing, ask
Would I appreciate this if I were on the other side?
Not in theory.
In real life. On your phone. On a busy day. With ten other tabs open.(or in my case right now 35 oops!)
If it feels annoying, overwhelming, or unnecessary to you,
there’s a very good chance it feels exactly the same to them.
Marketing doesn’t need more tricks.
It needs more awareness.
Human first.
Everything else is optional.
Unsure what you need? Need to talk some things through? Here we are.
