Good marketers have their eyes on the prize. They’re not distracted by vanity metrics because the expected outcome is crystal-clear from day one.

They wear their customer’s shoes at all times. They can teleport themselves to each step of their customer journey and think: “How would I be feeling at this step? What would help me take the next step here?” – and then go and address just that. Good marketers also know the customer journey by heart and which medium to use when. They’d never use a hammer to drill a hole if it depended solely on them.

Bad marketers have fun at lunch talking about how much of an idiot their boss is for going all-in on an awareness campaign when the desired outcome is short-term revenue. Good marketers know when to educate others, even if they’re above their pay grade.

Good marketers influence many things: the product roadmap; how the budget will be distributed; the size of the sales team, the positioning; the strategy; and the tactics – even if they’re not in a leadership role. Bad marketers complain about last-minute top-down requests from upper management rather than taking it on themselves to improve their interpersonal skills. Bar marketers don’t realize that if they can’t sell their ideas to peers and leaders, they’ll probably not be able to sell them to customers too. Marketing is all about storytelling and selling ideas, after all, no matter who the target audience is.

Good marketers are great salespeople, even if they’re not aware of it. They naturally use their Marketing skills to promote their hard work and attract larger budgets for their projects. Bad marketers will complain that they never have the resources – money, people, or both – to achieve their goals.

Bad marketers never have the time to analyze their campaigns. There are always too many tasks or important meetings to attend. It’s a lousy lie they tell themselves to avoid the confrontation of looking at the results – or hiding the fact that they don’t have the hard skills yet. Instead of asking for help, they keep Schrödinger’s box closed.

Good marketers build cases to defend their ideas and get the needed support to make it work. And if they don’t have the data to do that, that’s no problem: they’ll be just as comfortable using assumptions and proxies to build a case. Also, these cases are always tied to the bottom line – aka revenue – not only top-of-the-funnel metrics.

Good marketers communicate clearly, ensuring everyone’s on the same page as a project evolves. The same logic applies to managing expectations. Bad marketers wait until the last minute to land the news on this display campaign that could’ve been paused ten days ago. Good marketers look at their stats and take action when something smells fishy.

Good marketers are tech-savvy. They know there’s a tool for everything these days. Even if they don’t know one by heart, one will be swiftly found with a few searches and clicks. They’re not intimidated by platforms they’ve never used before. It’s all software: inputs are provided, buttons are pressed, and magical things happen.  They can move whole markets with a few no-code tools, good copywriting, and a customer-centric mindset.

Good marketers understand that strategies, plans, and tactics aren’t written in stone. There’s no hesitation when a u-turn is needed to get back on track. It just takes a little courage and a good PowerPoint slide with the right amount of data and feedback from real customers.

Most of all, good marketers know they’re not the best they could be yet. They take each campaign and every project as a learning experience. Each lesson is a brick that is laid down firmly. Their knowledge palace only gets bigger, stronger, and more beautiful over time; It never parishes.

Still, bad marketers are considered good when they know one thing: it’s not about how good they are but about how good they want to be. It just takes time and the right mindset.

📕 What I’ve been reading and listening to

Who: A method for hiring A Players: I’ve been hiring people for a decade. Still, I must confess it’s one of those areas where sometimes it feels more like witchcraft than actual science – at least, so far. Although some things he explains are basic (like collecting references and then actually calling them), it provides an excellent blueprint, and essential tips can be built upon. Also, I read it in just 2 hours which was what I needed. This time I went one step forward and created a Notion template from this book. It contains a summary and a template so I can use it whenever I need to hire. Yes, I’ll be sharing it soon 🙂

How to deal with burnout: Josh Terry talks brilliantly explains in five minutes what the shift in perspective you need to make to prevent burnout. A must-watch in a post-pandemic world.

First Million Podcast with Ryan Holiday: I finally surrendered myself to it, and I regret nothing (thanks, Yuri, for the recommendation). In this episode, he breaks down the economics of book publishing which is an exciting topic. As an aspiring writer, this interview is all I asked for, so I thought it might be interesting for you too.

(reading time: 3 minutes)

The danger of trying to beat the algorithm is that it usually leads to short-term hacks and spammy tactics that tend never to last.

I learned that the hard way, so I do my best not to think like that.

Instead, I try to understand what’s the game I’m playing and its rules.

Let’s take the App Store as an example

Although Apple provides guidelines for app developers, they never disclose their algorithm’s details.

So the best I can do is to test stuff and see what happens – which sometimes also includes observing what the others are doing.

On top of that, I also like to think like the enemy.

I remind myself that the App Store is like a supermarket, filled with millions of products. There, Apple is the owner, and I’m just one of the products they have on their shelf.

And if I put myself in Apple’s shoes, I can think about their goals and then try to use that information to my advantage.

For example, we could assume that Apple always aims to delight their customers while taking the iPhone and the App Store to gain more market share and revenue. Therefore, they probably need apps that are: high-quality, unique, trending, from top brands, or that leverage iPhone’s unique features.

From that, I might realize my app doesn’t use any of the iPhone’s new features. Or maybe my customers are leaving tons of negative reviews. Or maybe my retention sucks. Or all of the above.

Therefore, I’m probably not the best one to recommend. So you start thinking about how you could change that.

Suddenly, we’re aiming to go the extra mile and deliver something others will struggle to keep up with – instead of blindly trying to scam our way to the top.

This doesn’t exclude the hard work of creating the best metadata I can and trying to squeeze performance from every little technical aspect of it. Instead, it means that I can also take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and try to identify the big leaps I could make.

Applying this concept to other algorithms

But it doesn’t stop with the App Store. We can apply the same principle to any other black-box ecosystem you’re dealing with.

You’ll notice that your mindset will genuinely change if you do that. Instead of thinking about how to hack the system, you’ll start thinking about how you can play a better game – and this is one of the things true experts do that the rest don’t.

Ps: if you try this approach, I recommend following the news about these platforms. Press releases and documentation updates are a true gold mine if you want to be one step ahead of the others.

Putting it into action

Stop for 10 seconds to think: why is Instagram making the changes they’re doing? What could you do to play their new game better?

Thinking like the enemy on ASO

In my ASO course, we go more in-depth on how you can think like Apple and Google to rank your app on the top and how you can snowball your growth. If you’re struggling to grow your app, consider taking my course. It’s available on-demand here.