Don't Be a Twatwaffle: 15 Marketing Mistakes You Can Avoid

By Tamsin Haley

The most important meal of your marketing day

Businesses struggle with marketing. We have a set idea of how we expect it to work and we get frustrated when it doesn't do what we want it to.

Your marketing doesn't have to be a frustrating process or leave you feeling annoyed with the world and with yourself.

"Don't be a Twatwaffle" explores 15 problems we have encountered through our experience in working with businesses. This book condenses over 10 years of experience and learning into an easy to understand guide. Get clued up on how marketing should work for you, and get that engine churning faster.

Tamsin Haley has over 10 years of experience in the marketing field. She started in franchise education marketing, and her business Social Happiness has been running since 2018. She has worked with a number of different businesses, ranging from startups to corporates, and has identified patterns in their marketing behaviors that you can learn from.

Tamsin's Goal is to empower as many businesses as possible through their marketing. Good marketing means businesses will grow, which in turn will impact communities as businesses increase their team size.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angel of Rock Productions
• Release date: Aug 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9780639715858

Book preview

For Luke - my Light

CONTENTS

I have known Tamsin Haley for all her working life and from the very start I recognised her as part of that rare breed of modern women who not only surmount the challenges of single parenting, but who demonstrate an uncanny ability to understand with remarkable clarity, the practicalities of marketing in this modern age.

Facing an interview panel for her first job she boldly proffered a point of marketing philosophy and I asked her where on earth she got that idea. She looked me straight in the eye and with a wan smile said I got it from you and one of your lectures to my group at Stellenbosch University.

She got the job, having proved that she was not only a good listener, but also a marketing pragmatist with absolutely no tolerance for pie in the sky gimmicks and communications charlatans.

In this book she introduces the term Twatwaffle to describe someone who acts foolishly or arrogantly without expertise. This is typical Haley.

My own research over the years proved quite conclusively that the marketing environment in South Africa and particularly the advertising industry, is crawling with Twatwafflers. So much so that I calculated some years ago that misguided marketing strategy, egoistic advertising and insane sponsorship account for R50 Billion in waste every year.

It is clear from this book that Tamsin intends to reduce this mind-boggling wastage with almost obsessive intent.

Her experience at a digital marketing agency called Social Happiness highlights the  importance of understanding target markets, establishing authority, clear communication and focusing on customer value.

The book promises to share fifteen valuable marketing lessons learned from real-life experiences, with a focus on practical solutions.

Pragmatism is what she is all about. Pragmatism is what all marketers should be about. Sadly it is almost completely missing, as a prime example, from South Africa’s retail environment where supermarkets persist in forcing suppliers to waste money on outdated advertising.

I was particularly taken by the section of her book in which Haley emphasizes the importance of planning in marketing and shares examples of businesses that didn’t plan effectively. She quite rightly suggests that marketing often gets neglected or isn’t well thought out, leading to less than optimal results. She highlights the significance of having a clear marketing plan and understanding why each marketing activity is chosen.

Haley encourages business owners to evaluate their marketing channels, set goals, and allocate budgets. She highlights the importance of taking marketing strategy seriously and having a clear plan of action. The passage also provides a practical step-by-step guide for creating a marketing plan, including researching new marketing activities, setting monthly goals, and creating to-do lists.

It has always fascinated me that one of the greatest problems in marketing is that boards of directors very often do not understand the mechanisms of marketing and treat marketing and expenditure with suspicion. Frankly, I don’t blame them most of the time, because they are continuously presented with silver bullets, magical smoke and mirrors, utter fantasy and without any mention of return on investment.

In my experience I have always found that marketing strategy should ideally be presented to finance directors because this forces marketers to use language that finance people understand. Which is something this book does. It is a must read for Finance Directors and CEO’s. Because in this day and age, visible return on investment is key to all marketing strategy.

In this book Haley hones in on the critical importance of measuring return on investment (ROI) in marketing and emphasizes the need for marketers to understand the value of time and expertise when assessing ROI. She also highlights the significance of information and market research in achieving successful marketing campaigns.

Tamsin Haley is level-headed, pragmatic and passionate - everything that makes up the DNA of a great marketer.

Chris Moerdyk

Simonstown

2023

1 What is a Twatwaffle?

And how you can avoid being one.

Twatwaffle

/twɒt,’wɒf(ə)l/

noun

Complete idiot that; mere idiot, dumbass, or imbecile cannot adequately describe. However, to earn the title of twatwaffle, one must also attempt to assert authority/expertise where none is had. - Urban Dictionary

I fell in love with this word while I was at university. What a beautiful way to perfectly capture how silly someone is being, while enjoying the feeling of the syllables running out of your mouth.

I used to use this very liberally, especially because it was fun to say. While thinking about this book after I had written down the structure of what I wanted to cover, I was a bit struck by what the theme could be and this mysterious word drifted into my mind again.

Twatwaffle.

The one thing I would definitely not want to be in business. And if I would not want to be a twatwaffle in business, I'm sure that there are many other people who feel exactly the same way.

I work in a business to business environment on a day to day basis. We look into business functions, operations and targeting to be able to assist our clients with what they are struggling with, and to help them achieve the most important thing in their business: More revenue and growth.

The thing is, so far, I have not come across the perfect business model. All businesses have something that is tripping them up and stopping them from aiming towards success. I constantly work on my own businesses to create more efficient systems and flow so that they can become more successful.

What I have seen though, is that there are some recurring themes when it comes to marketing that business owners struggle with. And these are the struggles that can leave you feeling like a twatwaffle. Or your service providers are twatwaffles. Or the world itself is just one big twatwaffle.

If there is one thing I would like for you to take from this book, it is that everyone can be a twatwaffle at times. We are all human, and we all put our foot into something at one point or another.

But, I can help you avoid a number of different marketing errors that can help move your business towards its success faster, and which can leave you feeling smarter and more of an expert than you were when you started reading this book.

The stories and examples that I will share with you in this book are all from my experience running Social Happiness, the digital marketing agency that writes you into your ideal client’s story. In our first four years of operations, we have worked with a number of start up, small, medium and large businesses. We have had some amazing marketing results for our clients, and there have also been frustrating and difficult accounts.

I started Social Happiness by myself in 2018, and now as I write this book in 2022, while we are in an economic crisis, I have a team of ten people who work in this business daily. We have seen hardship during the COVID outbreak for many businesses, but we have also seen businesses flourish and grow.

I'd like to share some pointers and lessons to help you develop your business faster and smoother. There are a number of pitfalls and mistakes that business owners make that I can help you avoid when it comes to your marketing.

We specialize in digital marketing, but my background comes from my first job out of university, at Master Maths. I worked in their marketing department and it gave me the opportunity to learn how to approach problems from different angles and find solutions. It taught me that the same successful business model could be rolled out in a new area and it could either soar immediately, or take forever to get off the ground.

I will say that your business success is definitely tied to your drive. On average, you are going to get out of it what you put in.

One of the biggest things that slows down business progress is understanding our target markets and connecting with them. Helping people to see how we assist their lives and make them more effective is paramount when it comes to making your business a success.

People only buy from brands they feel bring value to their lives. Not people - otherwise everyone you know would be your biggest supporter. Not businesses - which are a dime a dozen. BRANDS!

Every business has the opportunity to create a brand if only it can connect with its target market. To do this, we need to:

1) Know who our target market is and stop trying to connect with anyone and everyone.

2) Have authority in our space.

3) Have a clear message to communicate.

4) Realize that even though it is our business, our brand is all about our customers and how we impact their lives.

We have learnt some amazing lessons in our time in business so far. We focus on connecting and communicating with our clients, so that we can work and adapt with them. Sometimes we have had to navigate very tricky situations. Things do happen in business. But we focus on looking at what happens when things haven’t gone to plan, fixing it, and then dissecting it so that we can learn from the experience and do things differently in the future.

From these dissections and other observations, I give to you fifteen things to learn in marketing your business that will help you avoid being a twatwaffle.

All of the occurrences and examples I will give you to learn from have happened in real life, and I would like to help you see the lessons we found in them, so that you can help your own business grow.

Why?

I love business and people in business. I also really love my country and all the people in it. We have a very murky past, and a turbulent way of doing life. But there is a beauty in our people and culture which is absolutely amazing.

I don't think there is much a government can do to effect massive change in a country. I believe that our democratic right should not stop with a vote when we are asked for it. I believe that every person who can should rise up and do their part to help their country.

And this does mean helping ourselves first. Without building and developing a way of life that works for us, we can’t possibly have anything to give to other people. Not energy, not focus and definitely not money.

If building a business starts with a dream for you to make a way of life that works on your terms, that's amazing. You’re already committing to something that affects you and your customers in a positive way. If not, then you’re doing something wrong - all business should leave both parties satisfied.

As your business grows, you have an impact on your service providers, and other businesses that you provide services for. And as you grow and can employ people, you start affecting a community of people. Families whose lives you improve by giving them a position in your business. In a country where the unemployment rate is incredibly high, this is a huge deal. Growing businesses means more jobs, less poverty and a growing economy.

I believe business is what will shape the way of our future. I also believe that there are easier and harder ways to do business.

To clarify something here - every part of developing your business is going to take effort from you. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. You are a very special kind of unicorn that decided that the old nine to five wasn’t for you, and it’s time to create something that keeps your time flexible and keeps you motivated.

So if you’re