“PDFs no longer work as a lead magnet!”
“Email marketing is dead!”
“Advertising campaigns are a waste of money!”
“You can’t sell SaaS on Twitter!”
No matter where you look, you’ll find some guru, proclaiming ‘hard truths’ about this thing or the other.
And it’s really tempting to take their claims for true – but if you do, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Because whether something does works or doesn’t work, depends on many moving parts.
And blindly following the advice of someone else, means you let someone else do your thinking, and that’s never a good idea.
If you want to get a return on all the time and money you put into your business, you need to think for yourself.
Email marketing still works, if you do it right – and I can attest.
Software As A Service subscriptions can certainly be sold on Twitter, so long as you focus on building an audience and connections, instead of pushing product and constantly being promotional.
Advertising campaigns can be very profitable, provided you do plenty of research first, start small, and persistently run A/B tests.
And yes, PDFs still work as lead magnets – so long as you have your audience, their problem, and your messaging dialed in, and you’re able to generate traffic.
Whenever someone says something no longer works or is impossible, you need to ask yourself why.
Why do they say that?
What context is it in?
What audience or offer does it relate to?
What other, ‘better’ thing are they trying to sell you instead?
It’s not that the claims are always wrong, or that there’s always nefarious intent behind it.
It’s that you need to think for yourself, critically and analytically.
Because business is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, all the time.
Which means it’s foolish to blindly follow 3rd party advice, unthinkingly.
Your business is 100% unique, and no matter what teachings or best practices are out there:
If they’re going to work for you, you’ll need to think, and roll your own.
As I like to put it:
Advice should be chosen, not followed.
