Marketing Tools HQ

Listen, we need to have a serious conversation about the state of marketing trends. Not the kind of polite, professional discussion you’d have at a networking event while nibbling stale cheese cubes and pretending to care about someone’s LinkedIn updates. No, this is more like the conversation you’d have with your best friend after three cups of coffee and a particularly frustrating week of watching marketing “experts” push strategies that work about as well as a chocolate teapot.

The marketing world has become infested with trends that sound revolutionary but deliver results somewhere between “mildly disappointing” and “complete disaster.” These trends spread through the business community like a particularly persistent cold, infecting marketing strategies and draining budgets faster than a teenager with a credit card at the mall.

It’s time for some tough love. Some of these marketing darlings need to be taken behind the woodshed and put out of their misery. Not because we enjoy being marketing trend assassins, but because small business owners deserve better than throwing money at strategies that were questionable from day one and have now overstayed their welcome by approximately five years.

So grab your favorite beverage, settle in, and let’s perform some long-overdue marketing trend euthanasia together.

“Going Viral” as a Business Strategy

Let’s start with the granddaddy of delusional marketing strategies: the obsession with going viral. Somewhere along the way, businesses convinced themselves that the secret to marketing success was creating content so amazing, so shareable, so utterly irresistible that it would spontaneously explode across the internet like digital wildfire.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: trying to go viral is like trying to get struck by lightning while winning the lottery during a solar eclipse. It’s theoretically possible, but basing your entire marketing strategy around it is roughly as smart as quitting your day job to become a professional unicorn trainer.

The “viral” obsession has led to businesses creating increasingly desperate content that screams “PLEASE SHARE ME” with the subtlety of a foghorn at a library. Dance challenges for accounting firms. Meme marketing for funeral homes. TikTok trends featuring CEOs doing things that would make their mothers question their life choices.

Most viral content happens by accident, often for reasons that have nothing to do with brilliant marketing strategy. The dancing baby from the 90s wasn’t created by a marketing team—it was just a weird thing that captured the internet’s fleeting attention. The dress that broke the internet (was it blue and black or white and gold?) wasn’t a calculated viral campaign—it was a random photo that happened to hit during a slow news day.

Meanwhile, businesses spend ridiculous amounts of time and money chasing viral dreams instead of focusing on boring, reliable marketing that actually builds sustainable growth. They’ll create fifty pieces of “viral-ready” content that get seventeen views each while ignoring email marketing that could generate consistent revenue.

The viral strategy also ignores a crucial reality: viral content rarely converts to meaningful business results. Getting a million views on a funny video doesn’t automatically translate to customers if those viewers have no interest in your actual products or services. Going viral for the wrong reasons can actually hurt your brand if the attention comes from controversy or embarrassment rather than genuine interest in your business.

Influencer Marketing

Remember when influencers were actual influential people? When being an influencer meant you had genuine expertise, a meaningful audience, and the ability to actually influence purchasing decisions? Those days are as extinct as the dodo bird and just about as likely to return from the dead.

The influencer marketing landscape has become so saturated that calling someone an “influencer” has about as much meaning as calling water “wet.” Everyone with 500 Instagram followers and a Ring light now considers themselves a micro-influencer ready to partner with brands in exchange for free products and “exposure.”

The fundamental problem with modern influencer marketing is that it’s built on a foundation of purchased followers, engagement pods, and artificial metrics that make a house of cards look structurally sound. Brands are paying premium rates for “influencers” whose audiences consist largely of bots, inactive accounts, and people who followed back during a follow-for-follow spree three years ago.

Even legitimate influencers with real audiences often have engagement rates lower than your high school reunion attendance. Their followers might double-tap a photo out of habit, but that doesn’t mean they’re rushing to buy the protein powder being hawked in the caption.

The influencer-industrial complex has created a bizarre economy where brands pay people to pretend to use products while audiences pretend to care about sponsored content. It’s like watching a play where everyone knows it’s fake, but they keep performing anyway because someone’s getting paid.

For most small businesses, influencer marketing represents a particularly expensive form of gambling. You’re paying upfront for access to an audience that may or may not be real, may or may not be interested in your product, and may or may not take action based on a recommendation from someone they follow but don’t actually trust.

The rise of influencer marketing has also created unrealistic expectations about what marketing should look like. Small business owners see brands partnering with influencers who have millions of followers and think that’s what successful marketing looks like, ignoring the fact that most of those campaigns fail to generate meaningful ROI.

“Authentic” Marketing That’s More Fake Than a Three-Dollar Bill

Somewhere in the past decade, marketers discovered the word “authentic,” and it’s been all downhill from there. Now every brand is desperately trying to be “authentic” in the most inauthentic ways possible, creating marketing that’s about as genuine as a reality TV show about finding true love.

The authenticity trend has spawned an epidemic of brands trying to sound like your best friend, complete with emoji-laden captions that read like they were written by a 16-year-old who just discovered social media. Corporate social media accounts are sliding into DMs with “Hey babe!” and acting like multinational corporations are your college roommate who wants to grab coffee and talk about feelings.

This forced casualness creates a weird uncanny valley effect where brands are clearly trying to sound human but missing the mark by just enough to make everyone uncomfortable. It’s like watching your dad try to use slang—the effort is appreciated, but the execution makes everyone cringe.

The authenticity obsession has also led to oversharing that makes people question your judgment rather than trust your brand. Businesses think they need to share every behind-the-scenes moment, personal struggle, and random thought to appear “real” and “relatable.” The result is often content that makes followers feel like they’re trapped in a conversation with someone who has no understanding of appropriate boundaries.

Real authenticity isn’t about using the right slang or sharing personal details—it’s about consistently delivering on your promises and communicating honestly about what you offer. A plumber who shows up on time and fixes your sink properly is more authentic than one who posts daily Instagram stories about their journey of self-discovery.

The authenticity trend has also created pressure to take public stances on every social and political issue, regardless of whether your business has any expertise or genuine connection to those topics. Brands feel compelled to have opinions about everything from global politics to celebrity drama, often resulting in tone-deaf content that alienates customers rather than building connections.

“Growth Hacking”

“Growth hacking” sounds like marketing for people who are too cool for traditional marketing, too innovative for conventional wisdom, and too clever for strategies that have worked for decades. The reality is that growth hacking is mostly regular marketing dressed up in Silicon Valley buzzwords and sold to people who think there’s a secret shortcut to business success.

The growth hacking movement convinced entrepreneurs that successful marketing requires finding clever loopholes, exploiting platform glitches, or discovering secret formulas that competitors haven’t figured out. This led to businesses spending enormous amounts of time looking for magic bullets instead of executing basic marketing fundamentals consistently.

Most “growth hacks” are either temporary tactics that stop working once platforms catch on and close the loopholes, or they’re just good marketing practices rebranded with sexier language. Email marketing becomes “lifecycle automation.” Customer referral programs become “viral coefficient optimization.” Writing helpful content becomes “content-driven acquisition funnels.”

The growth hacking obsession also created unrealistic expectations about marketing timelines and results. Traditional marketing acknowledges that building brand awareness, trust, and customer relationships takes time. Growth hacking promises exponential results in impossibly short timeframes, leading to disappointment when businesses don’t see hockey-stick growth curves within their first month.

Many growth hacking tactics also prioritize short-term metrics over sustainable business building. Strategies focused on rapid user acquisition often ignore user quality, leading to high churn rates and low lifetime value. It’s like judging a restaurant’s success by how quickly they can get people through the door rather than whether those people enjoy their meal and return as loyal customers.

The term itself has become so diluted that every marketing tactic gets labeled as a “growth hack,” making it meaningless. Sending a follow-up email is now a “retention hack.” Asking satisfied customers for reviews is now a “social proof hack.” Adding a phone number to your website is now a “trust optimization hack.”

Personal Branding (When Everyone’s a Thought Leader and Nobody’s Thinking)

Personal branding has reached levels of saturation that make Black Friday shopping look peaceful and orderly. Every professional now feels obligated to be a “thought leader” sharing profound insights about their industry, their journey, and their unique perspective on topics ranging from leadership to morning routines to the philosophical implications of coffee choices.

The personal branding trend has turned LinkedIn into a strange hybrid of professional networking and personal therapy, where people share intimate details about their struggles, failures, and breakthroughs in pursuit of engagement and followers. Reading LinkedIn feeds now feels like attending a networking event where everyone’s giving TED talks about their personal growth journey instead of having normal conversations.

The pressure to be a thought leader has created an epidemic of content that sounds profound but says nothing meaningful. Business professionals are cranking out posts about “lessons learned,” “key insights,” and “game-changing realizations” that could be summarized as basic common sense dressed up in inspirational language.

Personal branding has also created unrealistic expectations about what professional success should look like online. People see others posting constantly about their achievements, insights, and opportunities, creating FOMO and impostor syndrome among those who prefer to do good work quietly rather than broadcast every professional moment.

The authenticity problem becomes particularly acute with personal branding because people feel pressure to share personal struggles and vulnerabilities to appear relatable, but in a calculated way that undermines the very authenticity they’re trying to project. The result is often content that feels like performance art rather than genuine communication.

Many professionals have become so focused on building their personal brand that they’ve forgotten to actually be good at their jobs. They spend more time creating content about their work than doing the work itself, leading to brands built on perception rather than competence.

Chatbots That Make Customer Service Worse

Chatbots were supposed to revolutionize customer service by providing instant, 24/7 support that could handle common questions and free up human agents for complex issues. Instead, they’ve mostly created a layer of frustration between customers and the help they actually need.

Most business chatbots are like having a conversation with someone who’s perpetually having a stroke—they sort of understand what you’re saying but respond in ways that make you question their grip on reality. They’re programmed to recognize keywords and provide canned responses, but they miss the nuance and context that make human communication actually helpful.

The chatbot experience usually goes something like this: You have a specific question about your account. The chatbot asks how it can help. You explain your situation. The chatbot responds with three generic options that don’t address your question. You try rephrasing. The chatbot provides the same three options. You ask to speak to a human. The chatbot asks if you’ve tried turning it off and on again.

Businesses implement chatbots because they promise cost savings and efficiency improvements, but they often create more work for human customer service agents who have to deal with frustrated customers who’ve already spent twenty minutes trying to get basic help from a digital assistant that’s about as helpful as a chocolate teapot.

The worst chatbots are the ones that pretend to be human with names like “Sarah” or “Mike” and casual conversation patterns, creating an uncanny valley experience where customers know they’re talking to a bot but the bot keeps acting like it has feelings and weekend plans.

Good chatbots can handle simple, transactional requests like checking order status or store hours. Bad chatbots try to handle complex customer service issues that require judgment, empathy, and problem-solving skills that artificial intelligence hasn’t mastered yet.

Video Marketing (Because Everything Must Be a Production)

Video marketing has become the equivalent of that person at parties who insists on taking photos of everything instead of actually enjoying the moment. Businesses now feel compelled to turn every piece of information into a video, regardless of whether video is the best format for communicating that information.

The video-first mentality has created an arms race of production values where businesses feel pressure to create increasingly polished content to compete for attention. What started as simple, helpful videos has evolved into elaborate productions that require significant time, money, and expertise to execute well.

Many businesses are spending more time planning, filming, and editing videos than they spend on the actual business activities they’re trying to showcase. The tail is wagging the dog when your marketing production schedule starts dictating your business operations rather than supporting them.

The video trend has also created unrealistic expectations about engagement and results. Businesses see viral videos with millions of views and think that’s what successful video marketing looks like, ignoring the fact that most business videos get viewed by dozens of people, not thousands.

Video marketing works well for certain types of content and audiences, but the assumption that everything should be video has led to awkward attempts to force inappropriate content into video formats. Some information is just better communicated through text, images, or audio, but businesses feel like they’re failing if they’re not creating video content constantly.

The production demands of quality video content also create barriers for consistent content creation. It’s much easier to write a helpful blog post than to plan, film, edit, and distribute a helpful video. Many businesses start video marketing initiatives with great enthusiasm and abandon them when they realize the ongoing time and resource requirements.

The QR Code Resurrection (Because 2011 Called and Wants Its Marketing Back)

QR codes have made a comeback that nobody asked for, like a fashion trend from your awkward middle school years that somehow convinced itself it was ready for prime time again. Businesses are slapping QR codes on everything from business cards to billboards, apparently forgetting that QR codes failed the first time for very good reasons.

The QR code revival seems to assume that the problems with QR codes were technological rather than practical. The technology has improved, but the fundamental issue remains: QR codes create friction in the user experience rather than reducing it. They require people to stop what they’re doing, pull out their phones, open a camera app, focus on a small square, wait for recognition, and then decide whether to follow the link.

This multi-step process wouldn’t be so bad if the payoff was usually worth the effort, but most QR codes lead to basic information that could have been communicated more directly. Restaurant menus that require QR codes instead of physical menus don’t improve the dining experience—they add an unnecessary technological hurdle to the simple act of seeing what food is available.

The QR code trend has also created accessibility issues for people who aren’t comfortable with smartphone technology, have older devices, or simply prefer not to use their phones for every interaction. Businesses that rely heavily on QR codes are essentially telling certain customers that their experience doesn’t matter.

Many businesses use QR codes as a lazy solution to avoid creating better user experiences. Instead of designing clear signage or improving their website navigation, they slap a QR code on the problem and call it innovation. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a broken bone and calling it surgery.

The Subscription Model for Everything (Including Things That Shouldn’t Be Subscriptions)

The subscription economy has convinced businesses that everything should be a recurring revenue model, leading to subscription offerings for products and services that work better as one-time purchases or usage-based pricing. This has created subscription fatigue among consumers who are drowning in monthly charges for services they rarely use.

Businesses have started offering subscriptions for products that don’t require ongoing delivery or updates, simply because subscription models are trendy and promise predictable revenue. Software that used to be purchased once is now available only through monthly subscriptions. Physical products that don’t need regular replacement are being packaged into subscription boxes.

The subscription trend has also led to complicated pricing structures that make it difficult for customers to understand what they’re actually paying for. Free trials that automatically convert to paid subscriptions, multiple subscription tiers with confusing feature differences, and annual vs. monthly pricing that requires a calculator to compare.

Many subscription services provide less value than their one-time purchase alternatives but cost more over time. Customers end up paying monthly fees for software they use occasionally or products they don’t need regular deliveries of, creating resentment rather than loyalty.

The subscription model works well for services that provide ongoing value, regular updates, or consumable products that customers need consistently. It works poorly for businesses that are forcing the model onto products or services just because subscriptions are fashionable.

Social Media Marketing for Platforms Your Customers Don’t Use

The pressure to be present on every social media platform has created a scatter-shot approach to social media marketing where businesses are trying to maintain active presences on platforms where their customers don’t spend time. This dilutes marketing efforts and wastes resources on audiences that don’t exist.

Many businesses feel compelled to have TikTok accounts because TikTok is popular, even if their target audience consists of people who think TikTok is what clocks do. They’re creating content for platforms they don’t understand, targeting audiences they don’t serve, using formats that don’t suit their expertise.

The platform-chasing mentality leads to generic content that doesn’t work well on any platform rather than focused content that works excellently on the platforms where customers actually are. It’s better to do one social media platform really well than to do five platforms poorly.

Many businesses also misunderstand platform demographics and user behavior, leading to strategies that feel tone-deaf and irrelevant. LinkedIn content that sounds like Instagram captions, Twitter strategies that ignore the platform’s conversational nature, Facebook posts that don’t account for the platform’s algorithm preferences.

The Path to Marketing Sanity

The antidote to marketing trend madness isn’t avoiding all new strategies—it’s developing better judgment about which trends deserve attention and which deserve to be ignored. Good marketing trends solve real problems for real customers. Bad marketing trends create solutions looking for problems.

Before adopting any marketing trend, ask yourself: Does this help my customers get what they need more easily? Does this build genuine relationships with people who can benefit from my products or services? Does this create sustainable value for my business, or just temporary excitement?

The most successful marketing strategies are often the most boring ones executed consistently over time. Email marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization, and customer referral programs aren’t trendy, but they work reliably when done well.

Focus on understanding your customers deeply rather than chasing the latest marketing fads. When you know what your customers actually need and how they prefer to interact with businesses, you can make better decisions about which marketing strategies are worth your time and money.

The marketing graveyard is full of trends that promised to revolutionize business growth but delivered mostly frustration and wasted budgets. Don’t let your marketing strategy become another casualty in the trend wars. Stick to fundamentals that work, ignore the noise, and save your innovation energy for improving your actual products and services.

Your customers will thank you, your bank account will thank you, and you’ll sleep better knowing your marketing budget isn’t being sacrificed to the marketing trend gods who demand constant offerings but rarely deliver promised results./isolated-segment.html