5 Pieces Of Bad Marketing Advice To Avoid

Every food truck owner I’ve spoken with has always busy trying to improve their business. Whether they had just launched their food truck or were a longtime vendor each of them was looking to stay at the top of their marketing. To do this, they speak with everyone to find out what worked and what didn’t. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad marketing advice out there. Advice that’s well-meaning, but just bad.

So, how are you supposed to determine the good advice from the bad marketing advice? Over the years, I’ve read and heard a lot of bad marketing advice and for this article I’ve compiled some of the worst advice I’ve heard and explained why it’s bad.

5 Pieces Of Bad Marketing Advice To Avoid

You don’t need a mobile-ready site

Do you remember the last time you were on your phone and ended up on a website that wasn’t mobile-friendly? If you are like me, you probably backed out of that site as quickly as you could.Without a responsive site, food truck customers and catering leads may do the exact same thing. So do them a favor and let them give you their business by having a site that’s ready to be viewed on a mobile device.

Don’t ask for likes, retweets, or clicks

Would you like to gain more likes, shares and retweets,? Don’t worry…ask for them. In the marketing world its called a call to action, it helps to have some sort of directive. It’s not an act of desperation. So remind your customers to help you out. Your audience won’t mind.

Automate all of your social media updates

Don’t get me wrong, social media automation is great, you just have to make sure you don’t become looking robotic. If the only updates that appear on your Twitter account are just broadcast posts about your next location, you’re doing it wrong. There are so many other ways you can engage with your Twitter following.

You should also be wary of automated tweets during a crisis, you need to be aware of the world around you. If there has been a mass shooting, death, or other type of crisis, pause your automatic updates to avoid looking like an uncaring individual. Don’t let automation cause a social media crisis for your brand.

When Tweeting add as many hashtags as you can fit in 140 characters

So you are starting up your food truck’s twitter account and you want to get more retweets, favorites, and follows. Beware of the bad marketing advice that says that adding a lot of hashtags to each post is the way to do it. Don’t get me wrong, hashtags are a great way to join different conversations. If you start to fill each and every one of your updates with 3 or more hashtags you’ll quickly see how easy it is to lose followers.

Only join social media if your customers are on social media

A lot of food truck owners still tell me they object to social media because they say their current customers aren’t using it. Unfortunately, they probably don’t know how many people use social media. Chances are, most of your food truck customers are and if they aren’t, most of your future customers will be.

You don’t have to be on every social media network, but you should be on ones that can help grow your food truck business.

What other bad marketing advice have you gotten? Share your stories on social media. Facebook | Twitter