a single source, nothing corroborates it

Distrust marketing advice that has no steps in it

Require examples, instructions or references before acting on anything you read, because the absence of detail means the writer was optimising to look helpful. Reject the opening plan of a new marketing hire, the rebrand and the site overhaul, which get chosen for being fast and visible, and be most suspicious in B2B where a long sales cycle hides the absence of impact for months.

The method

1. 01

   Require examples, step-by-step instructions or references before acting on marketing advice; the absence of detail means the writer is optimizing for looking helpful.

2. 02

   Reject the first plans a new marketing hire or contractor proposes: rebrands, site overhauls and new social accounts get chosen because they are fast and visible, not because they drive growth.

3. 03

   Treat visible activity as especially dangerous in B2B, where long sales cycles can hide the absence of impact for months while designers, reviews and queued posts create a feeling of progress.

4. 04

   Keep tactics out of the strategy conversation: search optimization, content and self-serve trials are the plays, not the system.

5. 05

   Stop listening to business podcasts so that what you build comes from your own interest rather than from whatever someone reported is working.

What it returned

• 2025

  By the end of 2025 he had gone close to three years without a business podcast and reports much less envy and fear of missing out as a result.

• He advises avoiding marketing forums and communities generally, and names the ConversionXL blog and Brian Balfour's essays as consistently substantive.

• A company hired a head of marketing whose opening plan was a new logo, a site overhaul and social accounts; months later nothing of substance had happened and they cut their losses.

• Haines separates firsthand expertise, gained by doing, from secondhand expertise, gained by watching, and asks how much of a copywriting expert anyone can be without having written copy for clients.

Sources

• 2025 Year In Review | Corey HainesCorey Haines · corey.co · Still no business podcasts · 2026-01-01
• Astronomers vs Astronauts | Corey HainesCorey Haines · corey.co · 2024-07-26
• Bad Marketing AdviceGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 1. It's vague. · 2016-10-11
• Reject the First IdeasGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2017-10-29
• Commit to a SystemGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2018-02-23