Someone asked recently what marketing habit we’ve changed in the last year, mentioning that they personally started spending less time chasing every new trend and more time doubling down on what consistently works. Good instinct honestly. But when I sat with that question, my honest answer was… no, it really hasn’t changed for me. I’ve basically been doing the same core approach for like 12 years now.
That said, the landscape around that approach has changed constantly. Theres just an endless, untold amount of AI slop out there now that you have to actively dodge left and right just to keep your own stuff looking legit. Technologies shift, integrations change, the entire ad market has shifted under everyone’s feet. So yeah, half the tools and tactics we use today are different from a year ago, even if the underlying philosophy hasn’t moved.
The ad thing specifically has been driving me a little crazy lately. Ads just… don’t work like they used to, and its wild watching businesses still throw money into that machine without really questioning it. Like, how does that business model even sustain itself anymore? People are apparently still paying for it, so I guess thats the answer, but you’d think more businesses would be scrutinizing that spend way harder than they actually are.
Theres a ton of businesses that basically treat advertising like a utility bill – they just run it indefinitely without checking in, not even realizing they might be barely breaking even, or worse, actively losing money on it. I’ve seen this play out over and over recently, especially with Meta ads specifically. Companies are technically getting clicks, technically getting purchases, but those purchases barely cover the ad spend, nowhere close to a meaningful profit margin. So many businesses just set an ad budget once and never revisit whether its actually making them money. Some of them are in a loss for literally half the year and dont even realize it because nobody’s actually looking at the numbers.
I’ve watched businesses genuinely collapse because they went all-in on paid ads and it just didn’t pan out. Nobody’s clicking, or the cost per conversion is like $500 and the actual job only nets them $700, so after paying two employees to do the actual work, theyre left with like a hundred bucks of profit for an entire days worth of labor. That math just doesn’t work, and I’ve seen it happen across a bunch of different industries over the last year specifically. Something about that whole ad ecosystem feels like its heading toward a breaking point, I genuinely don’t see it being sustainable much longer in its current form.
Organic marketing on the other hand, while its definitely not “easy,” feels a lot more effective long term, especially with younger audiences. A huge chunk of purchasing decisions from younger buyers now come straight from stuff like “oh I saw this on TikTok, so and so uses this shampoo” – genuine organic discovery rather than a paid placement. It’s less about budget and more about actually being present in the right conversations.
So no, my core approach hasn’t shifted much in over a decade, but the tools I use to execute that approach are constantly evolving, and I think leaning further into organic, authentic content over blind ad spend is going to matter more and more going forward, not less.
