LANGUAGE WARNING: We apologise in advance for the potty mouth…
“Shitty marketing”, it’s not exactly a technical term…
You probably won’t find it in a marketing textbook. You’re unlikely to hear it in a corporate boardroom. And I’m fairly sure no one is building a very serious LinkedIn thought leadership series around “the strategic implications of shit marketing.”
Except maybe us 😅
Because, unfortunately, shitty marketing is real.
And it’s everywhere.
It’s in the Instagram captions that say a lot and nothing at the same time. It’s in the websites that look fine, but don’t tell people what to do next. It’s in the boosted posts that get a few likes from your aunt and absolutely zero enquiries. It’s in the “we should probably post something” panic that happens every time you realise your business hasn’t shown up online for three weeks.
But most worryingly, shitty marketing isn’t always obvious.
Sometimes, it’s not ugly, nor is it not inconsistent. Sometimes, it’s not even badly executed.
Sometimes, shitty marketing looks polished (sadly, contradictory to the ‘you can’t polish a turd’ analogy), active and perfectly acceptable from the outside.
But, it’s just not doing anything useful.
Shitty marketing is marketing without a point
This is probably the biggest one.
Marketing becomes shitty when it exists for the sake of existing.
A post because it’s Tuesday. An email because you “should really send something.” A campaign because everyone else is doing one. A reel because someone said reels are getting reach. You get the idea.
None of these things are inherently bad.
But without a clear point, they just become noise.
You see, good marketing knows what job it’s doing.
It might be building trust, explaining your offer, educating your audience, generating leads, nurturing people who are nearly ready to buy, or helping someone understand why your way of doing things is different.
Shitty marketing skips that part entirely and goes straight to execution.
It asks, “What should we post?”
Before it asks, “What do we need people to understand, feel or do?”
And that’s where things start to go downhill.
Shitty marketing makes people work too hard
People are busy. They’re distracted, impatient, half-listening, multi-tasking and probably scrolling on the toilet (let’s be real… also the stats reinforce this, the average person spends around 49 hours per year using their phones on the toilet 😳 – wild).
So if your marketing makes them work too hard, you’re going to lose them.
💩 If someone lands on your website and can’t quickly understand what you do, who it’s for, why it matters and what to do next, that’s a problem.
💩 If someone reads your caption and still has no idea what you’re trying to say, that’s a problem.
💩 If someone sees your offer and has to mentally connect all the dots themselves, that’s a problem.
Clear marketing doesn’t mean boring marketing. It means your audience should not need a detective board, red string and three coffees to figure out why they should care.
Shitty marketing often hides behind vague language.
Things like:
- “We help you unlock your potential.”
- “Solutions for modern businesses.”
- “Empowering brands to thrive.”
- “Your partner in success.”
Nice words. But they have very little meaning. The problem isn’t that these phrases sound bad. The problem is that they could belong to almost anyone.
Good marketing makes people feel like, “Oh, this is for me.” Shitty marketing makes people feel like, “Wait, what do they actually do?”
Shitty marketing copies instead of clarifies
It’s very easy to look at what other businesses are doing and assume that’s what you should be doing too.
They’re posting memes, running ads, doing talking-head reels, offering a free guide, using that trending audio, launching a podcast, they’re suddenly very passionate about carousels. The list goes on and on.
Then, the next thing you know, you start doing the same.
Not because it makes sense for your audience, your offer or your goals, but because it feels safer than doing nothing.
The problem is that copying the surface of someone else’s marketing doesn’t give you the strategy underneath it.
You don’t know what they’re trying to achieve.
You don’t know what their audience already understands.
You don’t know what happens after someone clicks.
You don’t know if it’s even working (!!!!)
And truthfully, sometimes they don’t either.
Marketing that works isn’t built from panic-copying competitors. It’s built from clarity.
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What do they need to understand?
- What problem are they actually trying to solve?
- Why should they trust you?
- What is stopping them from taking action?
- What do they need next?
Without those answers, you’re not building a strategy. You’re building a very anxious content calendar.
Shitty marketing treats symptoms instead of causes
This is where things get very “phone in a bag of rice.” (you know like how when you drop your phone down the toilet, you put it in a bag of rice. Also, isn’t it crazy that almost 1 in 10 Australians admit they’ve dropped their phone in the toilet?!).
Something stops working.
Engagement drops, enquiries slow down, the website stops converting, ads aren’t performing, your inbox is quiet, your content feels stale.
So the knee-jerk reaction/instinct is to find a quick fix.
Post more ✔️
Boost something ✔️
Change the colours ✔️
Rewrite the bio ✔️
Try a trend ✔️
Launch an offer ✔️
Discount the thing ✔️
Send an email with “just checking in” energy ✔️
Put the whole marketing strategy in rice and hope it comes back to life in 48 hours ✔️✔️✔️
But most marketing problems aren’t fixed by doing more random stuff. They’re fixed by diagnosing the actual issue.
🕵️♀️ Maybe your message is unclear.
🕵️♀️ Maybe your offer is hard to understand.
🕵️♀️ Maybe you’re attracting the wrong audience.
🕵️♀️ Maybe you have traffic, but no trust.
🕵️♀️ Maybe you have awareness, but no conversion pathway.
🕵️♀️ Maybe your content is entertaining, but not moving people anywhere.
🕵️♀️ Maybe your website is pretty, but not persuasive.
🕵️♀️ Maybe your audience does want what you do, but you haven’t given them a strong enough reason to act now.
The point is, until you know what’s broken, it’s very hard to fix.
Shitty marketing jumps to solutions. Good marketing investigates first.
Shitty marketing confuses activity with momentum
This one hurts a little because so many business owners are genuinely trying.
They’re posting, emailing, updating the website, making reels. They are showing up and doing the things.
But “doing the things” isn’t the same as building momentum.
Activity is output.
Momentum is movement.
Activity is posting three times a week.
Momentum is your audience becoming clearer on who you are, what you do and why they should care.
Activity is sending a newsletter.
Momentum is people starting to recognise your point of view.
Activity is running ads.
Momentum is turning attention into enquiries.
Activity is having a website.
Momentum is helping people take the next step.
This is why shitty marketing can feel so frustrating. Because you can be working so hard and still not getting anywhere.
It’s not because you’re lazy, or because your business is bad. And it’s not because the algorithm personally hates you.
It’s because the pieces aren’t connected.
Shitty marketing has no next step
A lot of marketing fails because it forgets to tell people what to do next.
And no, this doesn’t mean every post needs to scream “BOOK NOW” like a desperate sandwich board.
But, your marketing should create a path.
✅ A curious person should know where to go.
✅ A warm lead should know how to learn more.
✅ A ready-to-buy person should know how to enquire.
✅ A past client should know how to come back.
✅ A referral partner should know what to send people to.
When there’s no next step, your marketing creates interest and then lets it wander off into the abyss. This is especially common when businesses rely heavily on social media.
Someone sees a post. They like it. Maybe they laugh. Maybe they nod. Maybe they even think, “I should look into that.”
Then… nothing.
There’s no clear offer, no useful link, no reason to act and no pathway forward.
That’s not a social media content problem. It’s a customer journey problem.
So, what does un-shitty* marketing look like?
*claiming that as a technical term.
Un-shitty marketing isn’t perfect. It doesn’t require a 48-page strategy document, a huge team, a giant budget or a brand voice that sounds like it went on a silent retreat.
It just needs to be clearer, more connected and more intentional.
- It knows who it’s speaking to.
- It has a message people can actually understand.
- It makes the offer obvious.
- It connects content to commercial outcomes.
- It gives people a next step.
- It builds trust before asking for action.
- It stops treating every marketing problem like a content problem.
And maybe most importantly, it stops relying on panic as the strategy.
Because if your marketing has gone to shit, the answer is not always to do more. Sometimes the answer is to pause, look at what’s actually happening and work out what needs fixing first.
If your marketing has gone to shit, don’t panic
It’s our free marketing Q&A for small business owners dealing with content emergencies, caption crises, strategy spirals and those deeply relatable “what the hell do I post?” moments.
Ask us your marketing question, anonymously if you like, and we’ll answer it with actual advice. I promise, there’ll be no jargon, no judgement and no telling you to “just post more” nonsense.
Because some things belong in the toilet.
Your entire marketing strategy shouldn’t be one of them.
