The Cure For What Ails Ya?

The turn-of-the-(20th) century practice of ‘snake-oil’ salesmen travelling the country to sell remedies of questionable efficacy has returned in the form of ‘Patent Marketing’, a term I’ve coined to play off ‘Patent Medicine’, the term given these early ‘medicines’.

I am seeing a lot of ads for – and an increasing number of small start-ups buying – crowd-sourced logo development, marketing plan builders, and social media starter kits touted as an inexpensive equivalent for professional guidance - and by extension, purposeful reflection and consideration on the part of business owners themselves.

I understand the appeal of these services. We are a society of the easy fix, the cheap alternative, a society where Wal-mart sets the expectation. Plus, much of marketing and advertising can appear on the surface as obvious and intuitive. (The reason for this is that generally, 'the obvious and intuitive' was created by marketers who created that perception from the complicated and obscure, but I digress.) Marketing, it then appears, is certainly not the province of supposed ‘experts’ – many of which by my own admittance, aren’t worth a tinker’s damn themselves.

Still, it is simple due diligence to find a consultant with whom you can feel confident. One that knows, or is committed to learning, your industry and your business. One that will take your lead but feels confident not to necessarily follow it. One with relevant experience that allows them to apply past experiences and ask the right questions.

The idea of selling ‘Mad Libs’ style pre-written marketing plans or picking a logo contest winner is worse than doing nothing at all: it is potentially destructive. It allows sloppy thinking, hides what might be an under-capitalization of the business, reinforces marketing as a support, and therefore, optional, function, and suggests that marketing’s end game is a document or advertisement, and not an ongoing process of communication with stakeholders.

Your business is unique. Can what you are selling be reduced to a document like an off-the-shelf lease agreement? If the communication with your customers can be reduced to being positioned like every other business that purchases your same ready-made document, then perhaps that’s all the differentiation that you can muster for your own product or service. And ultimately that’s another way these services are truly destructive, providing insufficient differentiation and discounting the real value of your product or service.

Snake oil remedies were touted as a cure for ‘what ails ya’, but were generally loaded with opiates that made the patient feel good for just long enough for the salesman to pack up his wagon and move on. If you are in business for the long haul, you’ll need a better prescription.