If I had a dollar for every marketing mistake I made early on, I’d have enough to buy a decent ticket to a sold-out concert. The journey from a humble startup to a powerhouse in the ticketing industry has been anything but straightforward.
It's been a rollercoaster ride filled with lessons learned the hard way, with plenty of trial and error. As a budding entrepreneur, I thought great marketing was about flashy ads, catchy slogans, and hope (spoiler: hope is not a strategy).
What I’ll Cover
- Why trusting your gut isn’t enough—test everything.
- The real ROI of obsessing over customer experience.
- How to avoid shiny object syndrome in marketing.
- The underrated power of good people over perfect plans.
- Why long-term thinking wins (even when short-term hurts).
It took two decades, plenty of wrong turns, and a few forehead-slapping moments to really understand what moves the needle.
I’m sharing these hard-won marketing lessons with you, the new budding entrepreneurs. Whether you’re leading a marketing team, running your own business, or just trying to figure out why your last campaign flopped, this one’s for you.
Grab a coffee and let’s dive in!
Lesson 1. Trust Your Gut But Test Everything
When I first launched Event Ticket Center, many marketing decisions were based on instinct (aka a gut feeling). Sometimes, that gut feeling paid off. However, it also led to many failed campaigns that could have succeeded otherwise.
I learned that your instincts and prior experience can give a general idea of the right direction, but the data tells you where to go.
A recent McKinsey research found that data-driven organizations are 19 times more likely to be profitable than those that are not. Yet, we didn’t have this level of knowledge or access to data in the early days.
A real turning point for us was when we started A/B testing everything: email subject lines, landing page designs, even the color of call-to-action buttons. (Fun fact: swapping a blue "Buy Tickets" button for a green one led to an over 10% increase in conversions.)
The lesson: Trust your instincts to spark ideas and always validate them with real data. If you’re not testing, you’re guessing, and guesswork doesn’t scale.
Lesson 2. Obsess Over Customer Experience
Good marketing isn’t about being the loudest (or the most obnoxious, for that matter); it’s all about caring for your customers in the best way possible.
If the customer experience doesn’t deliver, no amount of marketing can save you. And I’m not alone. According to PwC, 73% of consumers say customer experience is a deciding factor when purchasing.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel!”— attributed Samuel Charmetant, Founder at ArtMajeur by YourArt.
This adage holds even more weight today, where customers have infinite purchasing opportunities.
One of the smartest moves I ever made was to double down on making the buying experience as smooth, simple, and trustworthy as possible. That meant faster checkout, better seat selection tools, and a transparent purchase process.
The Lesson: Make the customer experience so easy, seamless, and personal that they’d never even think about going elsewhere.
Lesson 3. Don’t Chase Every Marketing Trend
Source: Unsplash
I’ve been in the marketing game long enough to see trends come and go. Early on, I jumped on every marketing bandwagon, from paid search to branded non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
According to a report from HubSpot, today’s marketers struggle to keep up with new tools and trends. That’s because the technology and markets move extremely fast nowadays, so it’s impossible to keep up with everything.
The best approach was to focus on the basics (SEO, email marketing, and customer segmentation in our case). It gave my team room to experiment with emerging technologies on the side.
So, when we finally dove into social media ads, for example, we did so strategically, aligning our campaigns with what our customers wanted.
The lesson: You don’t need to do everything. Focus on what works, and only dabble in trends that fit your long-term strategy. Keep your foundation strong before adding all the “fun” stuff.
Lesson 4. Keep an Open Mind
If there's one trap that's easy to fall into after a few years (or a few decades) in business, it's getting stuck. Stuck in old ways of doing things. Stuck with old tools. Stuck assuming that “what worked before will always work again.”
Today’s businesses, especially small ones, have access to incredible tools that can take over time-consuming tasks. Take advantage of them!
Automation tools, analytics platforms, smart chatbots, AI social media post generators, CRM systems, collaborative tools, and many others can streamline business operations and offer valuable insights into your strategy.
It is not limited to just the tools you can use. You should also pay attention to suppliers and business partners that can ease your work.
Let me give you an example of a small business that produces custom apparel, such as T-shirts, for concerts, fan gear at festivals, you name it. If this company tries to do everything in-house — sourcing shirts, managing inventory, handling shipping logistics — they'll end up buried in busywork.
But by using specialized suppliers, they can outsource these time-consuming tasks. It frees up time and energy for the original team, so they can focus on creating amazing designs and building a brand that fans want to wear.
The lesson: Stay curious. Stay flexible. Use every tool, partnership, and system to make your work easier and your brand stronger.
Lesson 5. Reputation Matters More Than You Think
According to a recent Edelman Trust Barometer report, 81% of consumers say they must trust a brand before they’ll buy from it. Now, this trust stems from your brand’s reputation online and offline.
You work on your reputation every single day, from the moment you launch your brand into the world. This is how I managed to position Event Ticket Center as one of the major secondary ticket marketplaces in the U.S., reaching around $100 million in annual sales.
Our long experience in a highly competitive market, since 2005, is also a sign that people can trust us.
Of course, endorsement from other well-respected individuals and organizations also helped, but the most solid evidence we’re doing something right came from customer reviews.
Brand consistency and positive customer experiences are two factors that have led to our current level of recognition and trust.
This is why investing in services like white label support, third-party logistics (3PL) providers, or branded content creation makes sense.
The lesson: Guard your reputation like it's your most valuable asset! Stay consistent. Stay authentic. And never, ever cut corners on the customer experience that defines your brand.
Lesson 6. Good People > Perfect Marketing Plans
In marketing and business, planning is important. But a brilliant plan is worthless if you don’t have the right people to execute it.
As the business grew, I learned (sometimes painfully) that talent, attitude, and ownership mattered far more than perfectly formatted strategies. The right people aren’t just following the playbook; they’re improving it, innovating it, and sometimes ripping it up and writing a better one.
This is why I always encourage my team to bring new ideas. Their job is to spot opportunities I miss and challenge assumptions I may take for granted.
In the age of generative AI, thinking you can do everything using smart tools is tempting. But you can’t automate creativity.
Tools can assist, but true innovation comes from humans who understand your business model, customers, and long-term vision. Real marketing magic happens when smart, motivated people take risks, question assumptions, and use the tools to create something fresh.
The lesson: You can have the best marketing strategy in the world, but without the right people, it’s just a fancy document. Invest in good people first. Plans can be fixed. Culture and character? Much harder.
Lesson 7. Play the Long Game
When cash flow is tight or a campaign underperforms, long-term thinking can feel like a luxury you can't afford. I get it. I've been there.
But the truth is, some of your most important decisions won’t pay off immediately. For instance, we invested in SEO even when paid ads were faster. We also worked hard to build partnerships that took years to develop.
Every one of those moves felt risky at the time (and they were). But five years later? Ten years later? Those long-term bets became the foundation that kept us profitable, stable, and positioned for growth even during market turbulence.
Still, long-term thinking doesn’t mean ignoring short-term needs. It means making decisions today that serve both, even if it’s harder, slower, or less immediately rewarding.
Say you’re launching a new product. You can invest in a few hundred Facebook ads to get the word out.
These will probably bring in a few sales, but the real value comes from creating brand advocates who will keep buying (and referring others) for years.
The lesson: Don’t build a house on sand. Build a castle on bedrock. Make decisions for which your future self will thank you.
TL;DR
- Trust your gut—but back it up with data. Instincts spark ideas, but A/B testing drives real results.
- Customer experience beats clever ads. Make buying smooth, simple, and unforgettable.
- Ignore the hype machine. Nail the basics before chasing trends.
- Tools help, but people win. Invest in smart, creative humans over perfect strategies.
- Play the long game. If you're patient, SEO, trust, and brand loyalty compound over time.
About the author:
Adam Young, CEO and Founder of Event Tickets Center, launched in 2005 with just $100 and has since grown into a nine-figure business serving over a million customers. A pioneer in PPC marketing for the ticketing industry, Young brings decades of experience in digital advertising and business strategy, having started his career in accounting before transitioning to entrepreneurship.
