In this podcast episode, the speaker argues that many businesses confuse "online marketing"—the data‑driven, platform‑focused practice that grew out of direct‑response advertising—with "marketing online," which is fundamentally about creating valuable, trust‑building content and solutions that earn attention organically. He critiques the industry’s obsession with metrics, dashboards, and algorithm hacks, noting that these tactics are short‑lived and fail to address the core problem of understanding and serving customers. The speaker emphasizes that real marketing should focus on solving buyer problems, building trust over time, and using paid ads only to amplify a solid, customer‑centric strategy. He warns that chasing ever‑changing platforms and skills leads to busywork without lasting impact, and calls for a shift back to strategic, audience‑first thinking.
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Many of us are wasting our time, our effort, and certainly our money on online marketing when we should be focused on marketing online, which is a very different thing. You see, online marketing is what happened when direct response discovered the internet. Growth hacker became an actual job title. An entire industry was built around gaming systems and exploiting loopholes that stopped working, of course, once everybody else found them, right? Everything online gets measured because everything's trackable rather than because the metrics tell us if people will care about us next year. We measure because the data sitting there and a dashboard makes it look like we know what we're doing. Now, marketing online, on the other hand, is the act of building something worth talking about, earning attention instead of having to re-rent it every month. Yes, we've shifted the media and channels to digital, but our work, or the quality of our work, shouldn't have changed. We serve an audience, we show how we solve real buyer problems and build trust over time instead of trying to force conversions in like 3 clicks. The problem is many businesses can't tell these two places apart. Marketing departments are full of people who can explain TikTok algorithms, but they can't tell you what their company actually does or what problem our product solves for our customer. Instead, we fill up our day optimizing ad spend without even talking with buyers. We'll know every single dashboard metric by heart. But we can't explain why someone would pick our product over not buying anything. We'll have 2-hour meetings about whether the button should be blue or green, or whether the email should go out at Tuesday at 11:00 AM or Thursday at 3:00 PM. But all the while, nobody's actually asking if anybody actually wants to hear from us. But when people trust you, tactics work better. When they think you understand their problems, when you come to mind when they need whatever you're selling, emails suddenly get opened. But the tactics can't build trust out of thin air. You know, myopic execution can't fix products that nobody wants or messaging nobody believes. Yet time and time again, we continue to try to fix things by repeating what we already know doesn't work. We'll hire somebody who knows Facebook ads, for example, and give them a budget and put point them at some vague idea of goals, only to find out 6 months later that nothing's changed. The marketing guy didn't work out. Oh, the new smart tech software didn't help, or the agency couldn't figure it out. The problem must be the market, or the algorithm, or maybe we need to try LinkedIn instead. Online marketing has its place. We need people who understand platforms without burning money, of course. But when that's the whole focus, when we study algorithms more than customers, then something's broken. Some businesses build things people recommend, solving problems that matter and earning attention by being useful. Yes, they all also run ads and optimize stuff, but the tactics amplify the strategy—something real, something tangible—instead of manufacturing it. Everyone else is chasing platforms or media or cadence or whatever. Learn it, Results decay, move on to the next one. We're always busy, we're always measuring, but we never actually build anything, nothing lasting. You know, these so-called skills expire in like 18 months. There's nothing that we're doing that compounds over time. We're hoping that next tactic is going to work, that the next hire is going to crack it, that there's some kind of shortcut that we haven't found yet. But there isn't one. And I think in our heart of hearts we know that. The internet didn't create shortcuts to good marketing. Just more ways to look busy while avoiding the actual work of figuring out who we're for and why they should care. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, please pass it on. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm saying many out there are wrong. Please subscribe, share, comment, whatever works for you. Find out more at kexino.com. That's K-E-X-I-N-O. Hope to see you again here soon.