The Danger of Playing It Safe: Why Brands Lose Relevance On Social Media (with Alex Smith)

Your marketing strategy isn’t broken—your foundation is.

Laney Goff interviews Alex M H Smith, founder of Basic Arts, to uncover why so many brands fail to gain traction despite following all the “right” tactics. Alex explains why strategy isn’t just another department—it’s the missing piece that ties everything together.

If your content feels flat or your audience isn’t engaging, this episode will give you a new lens to see what’s really holding you back and how to fix it.

Want to take your strategy even further? Learn more about our Social Media Consulting Bootcamps here: https://strellasocialmedia.com/social-media-bootcamp

Transcript

Laney Goff: Welcome back to the Untamed Social Podcast. Today's episode is really for the brands who feel like they're doing all the right things, but nothing is clicking. The content maybe feels a little bit flat. It's stagnant with growth, and no one on the team really knows what's going on. Our guest today I'm really excited about is Alex M H Smith.

He is a strategist, a writer, and the founder of Basic Arts. He helps CEOs and founders build brands that standalone in their markets by focusing on one powerful question, which is, how can your business deliver the most value? So if your marketing strategy feels like it stuck in 2016, then this episode might just be the wake up call that you need.

Alex, thank you so, so much for joining us.

Alex Smith: Thank you. I need to get that, uh, I need to get that bio from you. That's better than, that's better than what I put.

Laney Goff: Fully crafted for you. Definitely, definitely. So, you know, you clearly have a lot of expertise on strategy. I know this personally because I follow you on LinkedIn. That's how I found you. I also subscribed to your newsletter, The Hidden Path. And your approach to strategy, in my opinion, kind of breaks all the traditional rules of marketing.

I mean, your book alone is called No Bullshit Strategy. Um, and I think it's really a fresh take on what it takes to stand out in a really, really competitive and crowded space. So with that being said, maybe to start, we should define the problem when it comes to relevant strategies. So from your perspective, what are some signs that a brand's marketing strategy is outdated?

Alex Smith: Well, I think that you actually said it really well, um, in, in your intro when you said, uh, you feel like you're doing everything right and yet it isn't working. You know, I sometimes liken it to, I think that when people have got what they perceive to be marketing problems or sales problems or anything that is just in the universe of like, why aren't people buying our stuff?

Uh, they tend to try and address the problem, kind of, at the, at what they perceive to be the sort of the, the epicenter of the problem. So I've got a sales problem, I've gotta deal with my sales stuff. I've got a marketing problem, I've gotta deal with my marketing stuff. But to me, this is what they're often doing is it's like they are tuning the engine on a car that has no wheels.

Right? And it doesn't matter how well you tune that engine. The thing's just not gonna have any traction because the issue is that the fundamental concept of the business in the market is flawed. So, you know, I, I love all that kind of Alex Hormozi kind of content, talking about all these tactical things that you can do.

Um. And it's all brilliant stuff and I, and I agree with all of it, but what I also think is that there are loads of businesses out there who are following all this advice, and it still isn't working because the problem actually lies at a higher level. The problem lies on the fact that this business, because of whatever it is that it does, it doesn't actually have any real, um, leverage or traction or competitive advantage in its industry.

Uh, and so, you need to first of all get that sort, that stuff sorted out. And then when you apply those sales and marketing tactics, what do you know? Suddenly those exact same tactics, they, they magically start working because, and I'm being a little bit too reductive here, but you'll get my point, because suddenly you're actually selling something that people want, rather than selling something that people don't want.

And it kind of is as simple as that. Um, but it's weird how like people will often work on everything, except for the actual core fundamental idea of the business. And that, to me, that's what that's, and to me that's what strategy is all about. It's actually like making sure that that core idea, um, is kind of high demand and has traction.

Laney Goff: Yeah, definitely. And, and I mean, we see this in social media all the time. I can't tell you how many brands come to us and they, you know, tell us, well, you know. Our, our views are high, but our engagement is down. And the truth of the matter is, is that they're, they're looking at things from the wrong perspective, just like you said, like tuning that car up with no wheels.

I mean, they, they, I don't know what it is. Do you, do you feel like there is a reason why it's hard for brands, even brands with like giant marketing teams to understand that there's a core foundation, like a core place that they're missing out on? And it all comes back to the one thing that is strategy.

Alex Smith: Well, yeah, I mean I think there are loads of reasons for that. I could go on for an hour about that. But for example, one of the main ones is that like, sorry, my kids are all just coming home now. So you might hear some—

Laney Goff: That's okay.

Alex Smith: Uh, one, uh, one of the main things, um, is that you will get, um. Uh, every other sort of part of business, if you like, it has a team, a department, a person looking after it.

And so these are the sort of like the pillars of a business that, that we might work on. We've got our marketing team, we've got our sales team, and we've got our, all these other things. But the thing about strategy is that it's actually kind of like the umbrella concept that glues all these things together and broadly speaking it, nobody has responsibility for that.

No one's even thinking about it. Now, in principle, the person who should be thinking about it is the founder or the chief executive, but not everybody. Not everybody operates like that. You know, a lot of founders might be a product person or a technical person, you know, and they, so even though technically they are the founder of the business, they aren't actually taking on that sort of strategic role of looking out across the market and thinking about, okay, what is the angle that we can take here that's actually going to give us leverage?

So in a lot of businesses, you just simply have nobody who's even thinking about the question, like, if every single company on the planet. Like, I would think like nobody doesn't have a website, right? Anybody who's starting a business just thinks to themselves, oh, well I better get a website, sort of thing.

Uh, even if, even if maybe they don't really need it. But, you know, generally they do need it. It's just something that people remember. People do not say that about, oh, I, I guess I better get a strategy. Uh, people just don't, it doesn't even cross their mind. So it's not so much that they are doing it badly.

It's just a question that never gets asked in the first place. And then when they don't perform, they put all the blame on the low performance on these sort of tactical things that they're doing, and then they'll give a hospital pass to an agency like yours, let's say, and they'll say, hey, no one's buying our stuff.

Maybe you can fix it. But actually the truth is, is that, I mean, sometimes you can fix it if that truly is their problem, but broadly speaking, you know, they're kind of asking you to polish a turd, aren't they? You know, and—

Laney Goff: Yes.

Alex Smith: If, if someone, if someone just comes to you with a duff offer, like it's, there's a limited amount that you as an agency can actually do.

And in a way, if I was in that situation, I would be kind of like, I don't really want to be held accountable for the results of this business when what I'm doing is not able to solve the fundamental problem.

Laney Goff: Yes, you— I think you just nailed that on the head for us and probably our biggest problem that we run into, you know, being, uh, a lot of people look at us and they're like, oh, it's a social media management agency. And it's like, yes, we do do full management. But also, you know, I think what makes us stand out is that we're also consultants.

We know social media inside out, and we're here to help you with your social media strategy. A lot of times we get just exactly what you described, where a client will come to us and they'll say, make this better, do do better for us. And we show up and we're like, okay, well there are a lot of things that need to to change and we need to get down to the fundamentals of your strategy and, and what that looks like to align with your entire messaging for your brand and, they sometimes don't really adapt to that because they think we're just kind of, you know, there to execute the social media management side. And so that is definitely a difficult, a difficult situation for us to be in. And it happens more often than we would like.

Alex Smith: I, I, I think, I think that's just the sort of cost of the cost of entry. And I would imagine that from looking at it from the client's point of view, I think most client, most client-agency relationships probably end in tears. I, I mean, I have no stats on this, but it wouldn't surprise me if 80% of client agency relationships basically end up with the agency thinking the client's an idiot, and the client thinking that the agency did a terrible job.

And little, and little do well, maybe, well actually little do both parties know, that like it was a doomed relationship in the first place because the brief that was being given to the agency was, in essence, an impossible brief.

Laney Goff: Yeah, definitely. You, I mean, it, it just couldn't be more true and um, I wish more people had that perspective and understanding and it's something that we really have to teach our clients a lot. Um. The other thing with that too, being that a lot of times we find clients who are kind of stuck in their maybe old strategy.

Um, so my question to you is, number one, which I think I know the answer to because you had a post on LinkedIn earlier this week that really caught my attention, but I'll let you answer it. But do you believe in kind of timeless marketing strategies or do you think that you can get stuck and become irrelevant if you're not updating your strategy,

Alex Smith: Um, also we need to slightly, um, we obviously need to be careful of terminology here. The sort of like the distinction between, I guess like sort of marketing strategy and kind of business strategy. Um, and again, and these things mean— they mean whatever people want them to mean. So I I, I, I don't have any opinion of this means this, and that means that whatever you think they mean, that's what they mean.

Um, but obviously we need to kind of like just align for the purposes of the, of the question. So I think that the way that I see it is that like the, the business strategy. There are exceptions to this, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the business strategy determines the, um, the specific value that this business owns in the market.

So this is the thing that like they deliver and only they deliver or the perception is that only they deliver it. And if the, and if a business gets into that situation where they have this owned area of value in the market where like, you know, everybody knows that like IKEA is where you go for cheap, but nicely designed furniture for sake of argument.

Even if there are other people you can get that from. That is, that is, you know, IKEA managed to kind of carve out that space for their own. Um, uh, if you do that job incredibly well, which is obviously very unusual, then actually I do think it should never change because what you then do is you just burrow into that position in the market indefinitely, and you could even like, in theory, although this in practice, this very rarely happens in theory. You can even ride out technological disruption because if you understand your business in terms of the value it gives to people rather than the product that it makes, then you can adapt. You can have lots of different products to deliver the same value.

So I mean, this is, this is a silly analogy, but it'll just land my point, like, you know, in theory, Blockbuster could have become Netflix and had, and it would, and had it be a coherent thing. They, they didn't, but like, it wouldn't have been a weird thing for them to do if they thought it through, because it would've been just been a way for them to continue, um, uh, holding their strategic position in the market and that, but just adapting with whatever's going on with technology. Um, so in that respect, I do believe that in a purest sense, strategy should be completely timeless. But that being said, you know, um, there are, uh, and, and I think that, you know, when, but, but there are being realistic, like it is possible for people to get sort of disrupted, um, in a way that they can't really bounce back from.

Um, but I think that that sort of disruption is rarer than people give it credit for. Then when we drop down a level from like, what does this business do? Down to the marketing strategy, which just for the purposes of asking this question, I'm gonna say is like, how does the business, how does the business market what it does?

How does it present what it does? That to me, is something that actually does change kind of constantly. So a great example of this, just a big famous example, is that like Nike, I think have managed to hold position in the market as a business, not the last five years, I think they've been a bit crap actually, but for a very, very long time.

They've managed to hold position, um, in the market. Uh. Since like, you know, let's say from the seventies till the 2010, let's, let's call it. Very, very long time. But to do that, they've had, so what Nike is all about has kind of never really changed.

Laney Goff: Right.

Alex Smith: But the way that they've marketed has had to adapt constantly because marketing is obviously in negotiation with culture and different generations coming through and whatever it might be. So like a Nike ad from 1974 is very different than a Nike ad from like 2007, but the two things are actually pointing at the same place. So, uh, so I kind of talk about this as the idea of, um, you have to keep moving in order to stand still.

You know, you're trying to stand still in the market. You are trying to burrow into a given position in the market so deeply that nobody could ever dislodge you. Um, and that position has to be a timeless position. But in order to do that, it requires constant movement, constant innovation, constant new thinking.

If the world never changed, then you wouldn't have to do that. If the world never changed, you would just do like run the same ad forever.

Laney Goff: Yeah.

Alex Smith: Kind of thing.

Laney Goff: Yeah, which would be nice.

Alex Smith: It would be nice. But unfortunately it doesn't, unfortunately it doesn't really work. So, um, so yeah, so, so that's. So, so you see what I mean about how you have these two layers?

One layer is static. One layer is constantly in motion.

Laney Goff: Yes. And I think that's actually exactly kind of what your LinkedIn post was about earlier this week. It was, I, I, I loved it because as a, a social media expert, looking at the content that you're sharing on LinkedIn, it's just so in depth and full of value that it's very hard to ignore. Um, I think that it was something crazy.

It had like 50 slides. Am I right?

Alex Smith: Oh that one. I, I was just—

Laney Goff: Yes. Oh my gosh. It was so good.

Alex Smith: I was just like, experiment, like how would a really long in-depth one do? That was basically my question and the answer is not particularly well, so I don't know if it was really worth the effort. Uh, but some people liked it.

Laney Goff: You know, for you, I mean, number one, you just really hit on so much of what you put into that post. So all of that value that you just delivered here, you know, you clearly delivered in a carousel post on LinkedIn and you talked about, you know, exactly that, where you have to be timeless with your business strategy.

But then you talked about new innovation on the marketing side and the differentiation and duplication. I mean, I read it and I was like, this is great. You know, um, and I think that you've really nailed it on, you know, what did you say? Standing still, but moving forward. Was it was?

Alex Smith: Keep on moving to stand, in order to stand still.

Laney Goff: Yes. That's what it is. So.

Alex Smith: There's a more elegant way of saying that, but you get the gist.

Laney Goff: Yeah, and I think that's so foundational and something that a lot of businesses really miss on, like we talked about before, is that you, you forget that fundamental aspect of the business strategy that you have to have that in place first, in order to even begin on the marketing side of things, because that's gonna constantly be evolving.

Alex Smith: Well, exactly. Yeah.

Laney Goff: If you can really find that niche and, and where you should be for your business strategy to make it so that it is timeless and you don't have to switch it up all the time, then it becomes easier to shift when it, you do need to do that for your marketing strategy, in my opinion.

Alex Smith: Exactly. Yeah. And so, I mean, and in a sense it's actually quite useless advice on the basis that like 98% of companies do not have that sort of that unique value piece sorted out. So the I, so the idea that you would then keep on innovating around that space is sort of useless because you don't have anything to innovate around.

So instead they do what of course we know most companies do, which is that they basically sort of flip flop and jump from sort of one thing to another, constantly sort of scrambling for the magic thing that works. And then maybe they hit the magic thing that works by, by accident. Um, but they haven't necessarily unpacked what that thing is and why it works. And so then they actually move away from it and they're like, oh, hold on. Things aren't working anymore. Uh, so there, so, so because, because there's never that still center to what they're up to.

Laney Goff: Never. Yeah, never. It's probably one of the most frustrating, frustrating things. Um, but, okay, so let's say that a brand does realize that, say they do have, you know, their timelessness in their business strategy and, and they've got a solid foundation for that. They've carved out their space, but they realize that their marketing strategy is becoming outdated. They're ready to make a change now. What, what kind of advice do you have for them in, in that respect?

Alex Smith: In the scenario where they actually have the business strategy reasonably well sorted?

Laney Goff: Yes.

Alex Smith: Um... What would be the pithy way of answering it? Um, I think that... Well, what springs to mind is that the purpose of any business and any business strategy is the delivery of value. So the only, the only the definition of a business in my mind is system that creates value. And then exchanges that value for other value i.e. money. Um, so just like simple value exchange thing.

And in that situation, the more value you create, the more value you, you, you collect. Uh, now when it comes to then marketing that value. Um, you basically, it's not enough to just sort of like know that you are creating it. You have to frame it in a way that the customer's gonna understand and the way that the customer's going to want, and there isn't one way of doing that.

There are lots and lots of ways of doing that. And one thing that I think where I differ from a lot of what people's, I think a lot of people think that like the way that a company works is like you sort of. You identify a problem and then you solve that problem, which I actually don't think is really true because if you, if you have a company that like generates new value, you'll actually find that that is the solution for lots and lots of different types of problems.

Um, because if you can just sort of ask, okay, what would the absence of this value look like? That gives you the starting point for lots of different sort of customers. So if we take some, someone like Ford. Ford have done amazing strategy work in the last couple of years, but like, uh, Ford have got an, uh, Ford means one thing to a soccer mom.

It means one thing to a dad going through a midlife crisis. It means one thing to an outdoorsy person, it means one thing to a plumber. So like Ford is one cohesive business, but its value can manifest in different ways for different people. So I believe that like you, if you start with like the value that you are creating and you have a clear idea of that, you can then ask under what circumstances would people benefit from this or who, what different types of people would benefit from this? And you can then sort of market accordingly.

And I know that like Ford is like this massive company, but if you take it down to a smaller company, so in my case I've got the whole sort of no bullshit strategy thing, right?

But I'm a very, very, very small business. I'm not Ford. But the truth is, is that like when I step back from that, there is an application of that for a big corporate client like, Proctor and Gamble or Porsche or someone, there's an application of that for a sort of little startup-y solopreneur type business.

There's an application of that for other strategists who want to sort of do strategy, the kind of the, the no bullshit way, whatever. So you see there are all, so you see even a tiny company like myself, when you have a clear idea of what you're doing, you can identify these new marketing possibilities and you can spread your risk.

Um. Which is very different from that widget mindset, which is like, I need to find a problem and then I need to solve that problem. Um, and then therefore, well, don't get me wrong, that does sometimes work, but I think it's, it's kind of, it's a lot, it's a lot harder than it sounds because everyone out there is looking for a problem to solve, and if there was a problem that was crying out to be solved and people were begging for, someone would've already like, figured it out.

You know, you're not, you're not very likely to find sort of unsolved problems that have got a, that have got an easy to generate solution because like markets are very mature, right now. Um, so you have to be much more creative than that. You have to generate slightly weirder, more kind of like unpredictable ideas, which nobody was asking for.

Nobody asked for Liquid Death. Nobody asked for Apple. Nobody asked for any of the fucking, pardon, I dunno if you swear on here.

Laney Goff: That's okay.

Alex Smith: Nobody asked for any or, or nobody asked for any of the great companies. But then when they saw them, they were like, oh, suddenly I can understand. I want that. I can understand what that would mean in my life.

So do you see how that's very different than doing this sort of problem then solution mindset that doesn't, that was a bit of a tangent, but to take it back, I think you just have to like essentially just. Ask, what does the absence of your value look like for different people? And then suddenly, boom, you open up a whole bunch of different possibilities that is actually like, you know, I'm very, very judicious about my use of AI in all of this, but there are certain tasks where it can do a really good job.

That is one task where it could do a really good job. 'Cause you can say, what my business is all about is blah. Um, the, the value that we create is blah, by doing blah, give me a list of 10 different scenarios or different types of customers, um, for whom this would be, uh, useful. And then you'll see and it'd be like, oh, well I never thought about taking this to them.

That could, that could be a good idea.

Laney Goff: Yes. And, and actually that's something that you really, at the core of it, it's all about your audience. Um, and so that's something that I know that I preach all the time, especially when I'm consulting with these brands, um, who are looking to do, you know, whatever that could be, they need to see more engagement or they want more conversions, or whatever it is at the, at the crux of all of it, in my opinion, it comes down to, especially on social media and and marketing in that area, it comes down to the consumer and sometimes I feel like brands really forget to put themselves in the shoes of the consumer and deliver what they're seeking and it's more about, you know, what would I do? And it's like, well, you're too, you're too in depth in the brand. You need to step back and, and you need to look at yourself as a consumer, you know? And I think that a lot of brands really miss out on that. So you, I, in my opinion, you nailed that. And that is at the core of everything, is if, if you don't understand what your audience is looking for or who your audience even could be, potentially, then you're already like on your way to being irrelevant when it comes to social media.

Alex Smith: And it's, it's, it's damn hard. I mean, I, I screwed this up. I, I, I sort of screwed this up royally for myself because like, you know, like I, like we were talking about before we came on air that, like, the truth is, is that like, you know, obviously I'm targeting sort of business owners with what I do, but, um. Uh, but the fact is, is that, I don't know, 80, 90% of my audience is not business owners. So, you know, you can, so you can make an offer to that audience and you think, wow, my conversions are absolute crap. But actually, like if you were doing the numbers properly, your conversions from the amount of your audience that is actually relevant for the offer are perfectly fine.

It's just that most of them weren't there, you know, so it's, uh. The, the, the subtle, so like the subtleties? Yeah. They're, they're, they're, they're really difficult to, uh, to, to tease out.

Laney Goff: Yeah. And, and actually, you know, we run into that problem as well, you know, I mean, if you look at our Instagram and our following over there, you're gonna see that it's a majority social media managers. They like the advice that we give and, and how the business is run. Um, so I feel like that's a common problem is that you attract other people kind of in, in your area. Um, and so it does make it difficult to kind of, uh, differentiate between those numbers and those conversions.

Alex Smith: This is why everyone who builds up a following online ends up selling to peers, not customers. This is why everyone ends up doing that whole sort of like, here's a course teaching you how to do a course, kind of snake eating tail because that is so easy to sell compared to— So, and then, and, and it is all, I mean, I'll probably end up doing this as well, but it is all kind of bullshit because what these people never tell you is that like, um, if I, uh, like— selling, if you like doing a course telling people how to do courses and you're saying you can do a course for your customers, so like your clients, not your peers, and that never really works because selling from a supplier to a client, is a very difficult sell, whereas selling from a peer to peer is a very easy sell. So everyone will look at my business doing a course, teaching you how to do courses, and they'll say, wow, Alex is absolutely killing it because like, look, he's made this work so I can make it work.

But the secret is I'm only making it work in this hypothetical scenario because I'm selling to other people who are the same as me, and then those people are trying to sell to their clients. And the dynamic is not actually the same. Then the whole thing is a bit of a kind of Ponzi scheme, but no one could ever kind of admit to that.

Laney Goff: Yeah. Well, hey, and I'm guilty. I mean, back in 2010, you know, I got my, my start in social media on Instagram, and how I really got into it was I was selling courses to online teachers to show them how to market their businesses on Instagram. And, you know, so it, I think you're, you're right. Like, you know, I was an online teacher at one point, so I had kind of the nuance of knowing the ins and outs of that side of it, but then I was just giving them this one little extra piece, uh, this little nugget to help them to, you know, enroll more in their classes.

But what happened from that was because I was one of the first to do it in that, that space of online teaching, it then became very common for other online teachers to start to offer courses on how to get enrollments in their classes. Um, so I think you're, you're very much right about that, you know? Um, and I think, I think it ha it is gonna die down.

It has started to trend down in my opinion, but it's definitely still out there. And it, I mean. At some point, what do you do? You know, like you said, whenever you, the majority of your audience are those who are your peers. Um, so I, I like your honesty with that. I think that's important and it, I think it makes people trust you more too.

Alex Smith: Yeah, I mean, look, and I, and I just think that, uh, if I, um, if I drop an offer which is targeted at strategists or other solo consultants and that like sells, you know, half a million dollars straight off the bat. I'm gonna chase that, aren't I? So like, no judgment here. Uh, but that, but that, but that's, um, but yeah, that's, that's how it goes.

But I think as a purchaser of this advice, you just have to keep that, you have to keep that in mind.

Laney Goff: You really do. You definitely do. Well, Alex, this was definitely a powerful conversation, um, especially for those of us who are kind of navigating strategy, in an area that changes almost daily. Thank you so much for joining me. Um, but before we wrap you, can you share with our listeners, you know, where they can follow you or get in touch with you, um, to learn more about what you do and, you know, maybe even adding to that list of peers.

Alex Smith: Oh yes. Come on, peers. Uh, yeah, I mean, like, uh, you could, if you wanna know, if you want, if you wanna obviously like, uh, know more about strategy. The best resource is my book, which is very, very short. So it's very easy read. You can read it in one sitting, pretty much no bullshit strategy, and you can get that on Amazon or whatever.

Um, and then if you want to go sort of deeper into it, then definitely, um. You can find me on LinkedIn or be the best source is obviously the, the newsletter where I'm sort of dropping all the free webinars and, um, and articles and et cetera, uh, every single week, which you can get to from the website, basicarts.org/newsletter, or even just on the homepage.

Laney Goff: And it's worth it. I promise. I am a subscriber and it's worth it. Well, thank you so much again. Um, and thank you all for, uh, tuning into another episode of Untamed, uh, excuse me, Untamed Social. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll catch you next time.