Amplifiers don’t make you a better guitar player. They make you a louder guitar player. So if you are not a good guitar player, an amp just helps you tell more people that you don’t know what you are doing. In this same metaphorical line of thinking, marketing is the amplification of a brand. It takes your brand and makes it louder. Here are 5 signs your brand isn’t ready to be amped via marketing:

1. Your product sucks. Shoddy brands used to get away with using advertising to create a falsely positive impression of a product or service. This charlatan approach blew up with the advent of social media where a customer can immediately tell 1000s of people that indeed the burger doesn’t look like the picture. If your product sucks, at least create marketing that is directed towards people who are ok with that. If you don’t want your product to suck, then re-branding begins with standards and quality control.
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2. Your internal culture is broken. A brand’s internal culture is always manifested externally via customer experience, product quality, community reputation, etc. Marketing and advertising can no longer cover up these areas. If you have the self-awareness to know that your culture is in trouble, the best marketing tactic is to go dark and address the root problems. Amplifying a broken culture will just make it worse.
3. You don’t know why you’re awesome. Awesomeness is another term for “differentiation”. If you don’t know why you are different, better, etc, what are you planning on marketing? What is the reason someone should buy from you? This lack of clarity and/or insecurity leads to poorly executed marketing, squishy messaging and business model/pricing turmoil.
4. No clear message. Directly related to the above issue, lack of a clear message kills marketing efforts. With no clear message, there is no way for your audience to create context, you have endless meetings about what to say, and you expend time and treasure that you will never get back. A metaphor: a surgeon can use a butter knife to do surgery, but would much prefer a scalpel. Your message is your scalpel.
5. You don’t understand modern marketing. Social media, story-telling, customer experience, content, events, etc are all necessary elements of modern marketing. If you are struggling to learn and implement these, you are not ready to use them. All of these tactics are not only amplifiers; they are indicators of your ability to market yourself. When poorly executed, they do way more harm than good – and you are better off not doing them at all. So learn, read, go to workshops, hire a consultant, etc. – just make sure you know what you are doing before you do it!

Final thought: “We’ve got to do something!” is not a marketing plan nor a brand strategy. It is desperation – and desperation kills the law of attraction and erodes your confidence.