Today, let’s talk about the myth of quick. Quick weight loss, quick learning, quick money. You have heard it time and again from different sites and companies offering miracle fixes that give you the “quick” results to the problems you have been searching for. Usually these fixes include some sort of marketing along the lines of, “Try this new diet pill from South America and you will lose ten pounds in one week” or “Need to make $150 in one hour? Sign up now and get cash fast.” How often do these quick fixes really work? My guess is not very often.
It is important to realize that the myth of quick is not something that just occurs in our general life and tempts us with quick fixes for problems like weight loss, finding love or making money; this myth is also a frequent visitor in the business world. The myth of quick can be seen in various fields such as web development and digital marketing with just as tantalizing promises of enhancing and expanding product reach quickly or a quick way to help your business become an overnight success.
If you look at the way many digital marketing “experts” target their own customers, it is with the promise of quick results for someone’s business, and these promises are probably one of the most popular marketing tools for sales. Some of the most common places I see these promises are on social media sites or from bloggers who claim they have cracked the code to getting X amount of followers in X amount of days. I am sure you have seen it too, “Gain thousands of followers instantly without following anyone!” or “7 day Instagram training to get you 1,000 followers!”
How do these digital marketing myths of quick happen and why do so many people fall for them? Mana, of Lightspan Digital, wrote an article debunking some of the marketing myths that are out there. Two of the four myths that were debunked by Mana and various CEOs who weighed in involved promises of quick. The very first myth was that, “There’s a formula to achieve [fame] in less than two months.” CEO of Arment Dietrich, Gini Dietrich, took on this marketing myth calling out the myth of quick and how society now expects these instant results that are promised.
In one of the best breakdowns of this myth I have read, Gina attacks the idea that you can use quick in a business whether that use is to gain 100’s of thousands of fans on Facebook or becoming the next overnight business success. She states in the article,
“A great content marketing campaign takes a good two years to take hold. An engaged and vibrant community takes years to build (and only a moment to tear down if you aren’t careful). A reputation is at least 10 years in the making. Expertise and thought leadership don’t come with only a year of trying.”
Becoming a household name in your niche is such an exciting and hopefully motivational thought. Why settle for some quick and easy result that could only be a very fleeting success, when you could have the holy grail which consists of a dedicated community that includes consistent customers paired with a strong reputation that makes your business a household name?
While it may be an exciting goal and give you the instant satisfaction you crave, getting a ton of followers or fans quickly means nothing if you do not have quality content to keep people coming back. Instead of wasting time trying out all the different quick tricks to possibly grow your business, spend that time and effort on developing your campaigns and your content to really create something that will pay off in the long run.
Another way these quick results are promoted and reasons why they often fail is they typically offer a one size fits all approach to whatever problem you are currently working on. In the Lightspan Digital article, Dr. Pete Meyers of Moz, addresses how what works for one company does not always work for another. A lot of times those offering the myth of quick propose their one tried and true formula, but that is just what worked for them. Who is to say that same formula is going to work for you if you follow it to a T?
Everyone wants to believe their problem can be solved quickly that is why the myth of quick exists, but in reality it does not actually work like that no matter how hard a business believes it does. Dr. Meyers furthers this assertion in the article by stating:
“The problem isn’t just that some people try to sell snake oil and want you to believe they know the one-sized-fits-all secret tactic. The problem is that so many companies want to believe that lie, just as they have since the real snake oil peddlers rolled into town.”
Web projects also suffer from this same myth of quick and are a prime example of how people would rather believe in the lie of quick results rather than the slow gains that develop and occur over time. Any web development project or even digital marketing campaigns should expect to be in it for the long haul. There are stories of those who build a website and expect thousands of visitors to come automatically and make money quickly, but it simply does not work that way. Just like in digital marketing, quality content needs to be developed to keep people coming to your site on a consistent basis to grow your business.
The majority of those individuals promising quick success on websites or with social media and marketing work off of the feeling of desperation others are putting out. They sell e-books that offer quick fixes. These fixes they offer are typically just regurgitated content describing what they did to you to get your sale and how you should copy the same pattern to get your own quick sale.
Eventually there are just a ton of replicas and nothing that sets you apart from the competition - so not only will you lose the money invested in the quick results you wanted, but in the long run you will lose money to your competition as well because you stuck to the same formula and nothing makes your content as unique as it could have been.
Do not believe the myth of quick. Many businesses and others that have declared themselves experts are going to claim services that can offer unbelievably amazing and quick results for you. It is important to realize that these quick results being offered are just empty promises. Gina put it perfectly in the digital marketing myth busters article stating, “If you are consistent, you are strategic, and you approach things with patience, you will have success.” Remember, there is no quick solution for anything so do not fall for the gimmick of quick.
