When you’re running a startup or marketing a new tech product, “best practices” sound like a safe bet. Everyone touts them – agencies, blogs, advisors – as the surefire way to get results. After all, if the big brands do X or Y, shouldn’t you? The comfort of a proven playbook is hard to resist. But here’s a controversial idea: those same best practices might be exactly what’s holding your marketing back. Some experts go so far as to say “best practices are where creativity goes to die”. It’s a provocative claim, yet it reflects a hard truth: blindly following the usual marketing playbook can lead to bland, “invisible” campaigns that blend in with everyone else’s. In a world of Web3, AI, and fast-paced tech innovation, playing it safe can actually be riskier than taking a chance on something new.

Before you dismiss this as hype, let’s clarify – we’re not saying all best practices are evil. They exist for good reasons and can provide a solid foundation. But if you stick to them religiously and never stray, you risk becoming just another mediocre player. Let’s dig into why that happens, and how some of today’s most exciting brands have found success by breaking the rules (and how you can strike the right balance).

The Allure of Best Practices (and the Hidden Trap)

It’s easy to see why marketers cling to best practices. They’re essentially the “wheel you don’t have to reinvent”, a ready-made checklist of what has worked before. Under pressure to get results quickly or avoid mistakes, following established tactics feels like the prudent path. Best practices promise guaranteed wins, safe results, and a clear path when you’re not sure what else to do. In industries like health tech or fintech, where stakes are high, sticking to proven methods can also feel safer from a compliance or trust standpoint. In short, best practices are popular because they work…decently.

The problem is, “decent” can also be boring. As one marketer quipped, “Best practices can be your fast lane to mediocrity”. They often lead to competent but unremarkable outcomes. If your startup is using the same playbook as everyone else, you might get acceptable results – but you certainly won’t stand out. By definition, a best practice is a common practice. Alix Penning put it bluntly on LinkedIn: “Best practices are not what the disruptors are doing… They’re what everyone is doing. They’re the ‘good enough’ we lean on when we don’t have time – or ingenuity – for ‘perfect.’”. In other words, best practices tend toward the average. They minimize failure but also cap your success at “good enough.” For a startup trying to make a mark, that’s a hidden trap – you end up blending in instead of breaking out.

When Playing It Safe Backfires

The irony is that what’s “safe” in marketing can actually be dangerous for growth. Here are a few ways blindly following best practices can backfire:

• One-Size-Fits-All Solutions (Lack of Context): Best practices are generalized tactics meant to apply broadly – which means they often ignore the nuances of your particular audience, product, or industry. What works in one context might flop in another. For example, a common best practice in web marketing is to use exit-intent pop-ups to capture users before they leave a site. Sure, that tactic can boost sign-ups on desktop web pages. But on mobile devices, pop-ups are far more annoying (tiny screens and pop-ups don’t mix well) and can drive users away for good. The “best practice” in one scenario becomes a worst practice in another. Similarly, an email drip campaign that worked for one brand might irritate your unique audience, especially in sectors like AI or health tech where audiences might prefer less frequent, more substantive updates. Marketing tactics don’t exist in a vacuum – “What works for one audience, device, or moment might be an utter failure in another”. Blindly applying a tactic because it’s industry standard can lead to tone-deaf marketing.

  
  

• Creativity Killer: If you’re following the same playbook as everyone else, you leave little room for creativity or innovation. By the time a tactic is labeled a “best practice,” countless companies are already doing it. That means using it will make you hardly distinguishable from others. As one article noted, if you never veer from the established rules, you risk becoming “a carbon-copy of other brands, which are also carbon copies of other brands…”. Ouch. The brands that truly capture our attention are usually the ones that zig when everyone else zags. Simply put, you can’t lead by only following. A marketing strategy that amounts to checking boxes (“Post on social media at optimal times, use these 5 SEO keywords, run an email welcome series…”) might be solid, but it won’t spark excitement. As marketing expert Aaron Agius says, “Best practices breed forgettable ineffectiveness. They camouflage you while the bold few carve dominance.”. In the race for attention, playing it safe is actually the more perilous route – it virtually guarantees you won’t be noticed in a crowded field.

  
  

• Complacency and Laziness: Relying on best practices can make marketers a bit lazy (it’s harsh, but true). It’s tempting to go on autopilot: why brainstorm a new approach when there’s a “right way” that’s supposed to work? This mentality leads to rubber-stamp marketing – doing things because “that’s what we always do” or “that’s what everyone else does,” rather than because it’s genuinely the best for your situation. “We have a problem,” writes Kevin Clark of devEdge Marketing. By blindly following a best practices checklist, marketers forget why it worked and who it worked for. We just assume it will work again – that’s the thoughtless and lazy way of applying our craft. Ouch, again. When teams fall into this trap, they stop thinking critically and stop innovating. Over time, this breeds complacency – you keep doing the same things even as the market evolves. In fast-moving sectors (say, an AI startup in 2024 using the same marketing playbook from 2021), staying still means falling behind. The digital world changes rapidly, and today’s “best practice” might become tomorrow’s outdated tactic. If you never experiment beyond the proven formula, you won’t notice when it stops being effective. As one article succinctly put it, “In marketing, staying still is the same as falling behind — you’re risking losing customers if they get bored.”. And remember: no one remembers the campaign that toed the line and followed all the rules – they remember the ones that took risks and broke patterns.

  
  

• “Crowdsourced Mediocrity”: This phrase captures the essence of overused best practices. If everyone is following the same so-called best practices, you end up with a crowd of very similar strategies – and by definition, not everyone in the crowd can be above average. Conformity can feel safe, but “conformity just makes you normal. Average. The same.” as one blogger put it. That’s fine if your goal is to be normal. But if you’re aiming to be exceptional – to really grow your startup or disrupt an industry – normal isn’t going to cut it. The comfort of following the herd comes at the cost of becoming invisible in the herd.

So, while best practices can prevent major mistakes, they can also prevent major successes. They emphasize not failing, rather than truly winning. For a startup or emerging tech brand that needs to break through, that distinction matters. As the saying goes, “Playing it safe is the most dangerous thing you can do.” In marketing, playing it safe can kill the very creativity and boldness your brand needs to thrive.

Real-World Rebels: Brands That Broke the Mold

Still not convinced? Let’s look at some real brands (including ones in tech and beyond) that flouted conventional best practices – and reaped the rewards:

• Duolingo – The Sassy Owl that “Died”: Duolingo, a popular language-learning app, has become famous for its wildly unorthodox social media presence. Traditional best practice for a corporate social media might be “maintain a consistent, on-brand voice and don’t confuse your audience.” Duolingo threw that out the window. Their social media team, especially on TikTok and X (Twitter), acts more like an entertainer than a staid company. In early 2025, they pulled off one of the most bizarre (and viral) campaigns in their history: they “killed off” their own mascot Duo the owl. Users opened the app to find Duo depicted as dead – tongue out, eyes turned to cartoon X’s. It was shocking, a little morbid, and completely unexpected for a brand stunt. The internet went wild. People immediately realized it was a playful PR stunt, “a clever marketing stunt – the latest move by Duolingo to dominate internet culture”. Over a few days, Duolingo kept the momentum with a whodunit mystery (Who killed Duo? A rogue Tesla Cybertruck, it turned out, in a tongue-in-cheek twist) and engaged users in solving the “crime.” The result? 1.7 billion social impressions and worldwide media coverage. Duolingo’s daring approach – “make it weird, then make it weirder,” as their CEO encouraged – broke all the usual rules of brand management. And it paid off spectacularly in attention and engagement. The lesson: By doing something authentically playful (and yes, risky), Duolingo energized its community in a way no generic social media calendar ever could. It’s a prime example of how breaking a best practice (in this case, “don’t mess with your logo or confuse your brand message” would be the conventional wisdom) actually made the brand even stronger and more beloved among its audience.

  
  

• Liquid Death – Murdering Thirst with Meme Marketing: Liquid Death is a company that sells…wait for it…canned water. Just water. On paper, that sounds like a tough market to stand out in – water is the ultimate commodity, and traditional beverage marketing would emphasize purity, health, maybe serene mountain streams. Liquid Death did none of that. Instead, they branded their water like a hardcore energy drink or heavy metal band. Their slogan: “Murder your thirst.” Their cans are adorned with flaming skulls. Early on, many “best practice” marketers might have cringed: a water brand with violent, edgy humor? Won’t that turn off health-conscious consumers? But this outrageous divergence from the norm is exactly what propelled Liquid Death into cult status. The company focused on sharable, viral content above all. “Whenever Liquid Death makes content, its team asks: Will this get shared on social media?”. Likes and views were nice, but shares were the goal – because shares meant the content was remarkable enough that people had to show their friends. This strategy led to insane stunts: Liquid Death has done things like sell a limited-time “Kids Hydration Kit” (featuring a teddy bear stuffed with crushed Liquid Death cans as a tongue-in-cheek mascot), launch a fake workout tape for drinking water, create a “toilet water” taste test challenge, and even give away a real-life private jet in a contest. In essence, they operate more like a content studio or meme account than a beverage company. And guess what – it’s working. As of 2025, Liquid Death hit a $1.4 billion valuation and amassed 14 million followers on Instagram and TikTok by marketing “what is, at its heart, just canned water”. The product is ordinary, but the marketing is extraordinary. By ignoring traditional best practices (which would have said something like “emphasize product benefits, target a specific demographic, don’t alienate anyone with weird humor”), Liquid Death tapped into a huge audience of people who find the brand’s irreverence refreshing. Sharable marketing propelled Liquid Death into a $1.4B juggernaut, proving that unique branding can be the difference between yet another forgettable water and a brand with rabid fans. Their VP of Creative bluntly calls it an “anti-marketing strategy” built on humor and virality, and notes that as a smaller brand they could take risks big beverage corporations wouldn’t. In summary, breaking the rules put Liquid Death on the map in a way safe marketing never would have.

  
  

• Tesla – Ditching Ads and Playing the Long Game: In the automotive world, conventional marketing wisdom says you should spend big on advertising, endorsements, and campaigns to drive sales. Yet Tesla famously spent $0 on traditional advertising for years, defying every auto industry best practice. Instead, Tesla relied on Elon Musk’s personal brand, viral stunts (launching a Roadster into space, for example), and word-of-mouth from an intensely loyal community. While not every startup has a celebrity CEO or rocket company attached, the takeaway here is that Tesla zigged where other car companies zagged. They poured resources into product development and let the buzz build organically. The result: Tesla achieved massive brand recognition and demand with virtually no ad spend, something unheard of in its industry. It’s an example of questioning the default strategy (“we must pay for ads because that’s what car companies do”) and finding a novel route. For emerging tech companies, it’s a reminder that sometimes the best marketing isn’t “marketing” in the traditional sense at all – it can be thought leadership, community-building, or in Tesla’s case, spectacular feats that earn free media.

We could go on (mentioning how Bored Ape Yacht Club turned its NFT-owning customers into a community of co-creators, or how OpenAI’s ChatGPT gained 1 million users in 5 days purely by viral spread without a big launch campaign), but the pattern is clear. The brands winning attention are often those willing to break with best practices and write their own rules. They still have strategy – it’s not chaos – but they favor originality and bold moves tailored to their audience, rather than a cookie-cutter approach. As one LinkedIn commenter aptly said, “The biggest wins come from challenging assumptions, not following playbooks.”

Of course, once a brand like Duolingo or Liquid Death has success, everyone else tries to copy their “new” best practices. (How many other brands started being snarky on Twitter after Wendy’s and Duolingo proved it can work? Now it’s practically a cliché.) This highlights another truth: once everyone copies a breakthrough idea, it stops being as effective. “If everyone starts using the same tricks as Liquid Death, the edginess will quickly lose its flavor,” one article noted. That’s why even the rule-breakers can’t rest on their laurels – they have to keep innovating and reinventing. The lesson for you: don’t chase what others have done; think about what no one else is doing yet.

New Domains, New Rules: Web3, AI, and Emerging Tech

This “break the mold” mindset is even more crucial in emerging tech sectors like Web3, AI, and health tech – the areas many of you might be working in. Why? Because the landscape in these fields is so new and rapidly evolving that yesterday’s best practices might not just be mediocre – they might be outright misguided.

Take Web3 (blockchain, crypto, NFTs, decentralized apps) as a prime example. Marketing in Web2 (the traditional internet) was largely about companies broadcasting messages to consumers: a one-to-many narrative controlled by the brand. Standard best practices included things like maintaining tight brand voice control, optimizing a funnel from awareness to conversion, and using paid media to target customers. But Web3 flipped that script. In Web3 communities, the users aren’t passive consumers; they’re active participants, even stakeholders. As one report summarizes, “Unlike Web2, where brands control the narrative, Web3 flips the funnel, making communities the audience, co-creators, co-decision-makers, and end-users.”. If you’re a Web3 startup trying to apply a Web2 playbook, you’ll likely hit a wall. For instance, the “best practice” of carefully controlling your messaging doesn’t fly when your community expects radical transparency and a say in the project’s direction. Successful Web3 projects often market through community building, memes, and incentives rather than polished ad campaigns. They might do token airdrops or Discord events instead of email blasts. The point is, the context changed – so the old best practices may kill your marketing if you follow them blindly. You can’t just take a checklist from a Web2 SaaS company and apply it to a decentralized crypto app; you’ll miss what makes the Web3 audience tick. As one Web3 marketing guide put it, “Web3 marketing pushes marketers to move beyond traditional strategies based on control, segmentation, and optimization — and adopt a new approach centered on transparency, collaboration, and shared ownership.”. In other words, new domains demand new rules.

The same idea applies in AI and emerging tech. AI products often have highly tech-savvy early adopters who value authenticity and substance over slick marketing. A generic “best practice” might tell you to dumb things down for a broad audience, but if your core users are developers or researchers, that could alienate them. Instead, some AI companies “market” by open-sourcing projects or sharing research on blogs – building credibility and community trust, even though that’s not a traditional marketing tactic. In health tech, you might find that trust and expertise (via thought leadership content or physician ambassadors) convert customers better than any growth-hack tactic. The key is to know your domain and audience deeply. If you march in with a template strategy from another industry, you risk misalignment. One-size marketing rules are especially risky in these cutting-edge fields, because everything is evolving – including how audiences expect to be engaged. Best practices from even two years ago might be outdated now (think of how fast AI trends shift, or how the pandemic upended health tech marketing approaches). Flexibility and open-mindedness are your allies. Don’t be afraid to write a fresh playbook that fits the reality of Web3 or AI or whatever space you’re in. The fundamentals of good marketing (storytelling, understanding your customer, offering real value) remain, but how you execute them might need to be very different from the past.

Baseline, Not Bible: Using Best Practices the Right Way

After all this, you might be thinking: So should I never use best practices? Throw out every marketing 101 rule? Not exactly. Best practices do have value – just not in the way many assume. The smart approach is to treat best practices as a baseline, not a bible. They are starting points, not the final destination.

Think of best practices as the IKEA instructions of marketing: they’ll help you assemble a decent table, especially if you’re a beginner, but if you want something truly custom or outstanding, you’ll need to bring your own creativity and modifications. A recent article put it perfectly: “They aren’t designed for your brand, your audience, or your goals — they’re made for the average. And if your brand isn’t average, your marketing shouldn’t be either.”. Use that as a mantra. By all means, learn the fundamentals – you need to know the rules before you can break them effectively. Follow best practices to cover your bases (e.g., ensure your website is mobile-friendly, your messaging is clear, you’re tracking analytics – those are important!). But don’t stop there. Adapt and personalize those practices to fit your unique situation.

Here are a few tips for balancing best practices with originality:

1. Start with Research, End with Insight: It’s fine – even wise – to study what’s worked for others in your industry. Take note of common tactics and trends. But instead of copy-pasting those tactics into your plan, ask why they worked and if they apply to your audience. Use best practices as inspiration or hypotheses to test, not as guaranteed prescriptions. Always loop back to insight about your customers. For example, maybe the best practice is to post on social media daily at peak times – but if your audience is a niche developer community, maybe they engage more on forums or at odd hours. Know your people better than anyone and let that guide you more than any generic rule.

   
   

2. Customize and Tweak: If a standard tactic doesn’t quite fit, don’t be afraid to tweak it. Maybe the “ideal” landing page layout recommended by experts doesn’t allow you to tell your story well – so change it. Maybe common SEO advice says you must blog weekly, but you find biweekly deep-dives resonate more with your tech audience – do that. It’s okay to bend or break the rules once you understand them. In fact, it’s necessary. Critical thinking is key: why is a best practice a best practice, and does that reasoning hold in our case? As Kevin Clark advised marketers, “Think about what your clients (or users) care about. Think about why your service is right for them. Start developing creative ideas and tweak your best practices for them.”. In short, tailor everything.

   
   

3. Foster a Culture of Experimentation: Make it a goal in your startup to try new things regularly. Dedicate a portion of your budget or time to experiments that deviate from the usual playbook. This could be A/B testing a wild creative idea, trying a new platform, or targeting an unconventional segment. Not every experiment will be a hit – and that’s okay. You’ll learn something each time. What’s dangerous is not experimenting at all and assuming the status quo will continue to work. Encourage your team (or yourself) to challenge assumptions. If you catch yourself saying “but that’s not how it’s usually done,” that’s a flag to at least examine why not, and what if we did? Bold ideas often start by asking “what if?” instead of saying “we can’t.” As one LinkedIn commenter said, “Best practices aren’t a map, they’re a cage. Real growth demands boldness, relentless testing, and breaking the mold”. In practical terms: run those pilots, test that crazy campaign on a small scale, and see what happens. You might be surprised.

   
   

4. Iterate and Learn: Treat your marketing strategy as a living, evolving thing. Measure results, and if a so-called best practice isn’t delivering “seismic results” (to borrow Aaron Agius’s words), be ready to toss it out. Conversely, if an offbeat idea shows promise, double down. The point is to continuously iterate. The only real law in modern marketing is that things change. Consumer behavior changes, algorithms change, cultural trends change. So our strategies must change too. Don’t get stuck on any tactic – best practice or experimental – that isn’t moving the needle. Stay agile. In the words of Agius, “The only law that matters: relentless iteration”. Make small bets, learn from data, and keep refining. This adaptive mindset will serve you better in the long run than any static rulebook.

   
   

5. Keep the Fundamentals, Ditch the Dogma: Some traditional marketing best practices are fundamentals that remain important: know your value proposition, communicate clearly, understand your customer’s pain points, etc. These aren’t really “trends” – they’re rooted in human psychology and good business sense. Keep those as your bedrock. But ditch the dogma – the idea that you “must” do X because that’s what the gurus say or because your competitors are doing it. There is no single formula for success. You might find success through channels or messages that the so-called best practices would never have led you to. And if you do, that new approach becomes your best practice – until it too needs updating.

Remember, best practices aren’t bad – they’re just not enough. Use them as a jumping-off point, but not as handcuffs. Your marketing should ultimately be as unique as your brand is. If you’re in a cutting-edge field (web3, AI, health innovation, etc.), you’re likely already innovating in your product – don’t be afraid to innovate in how you tell the world about it.

Final Thoughts: Break the Rules, But Know the Rules

“Why Best Practices Are Killing Your Marketing” is a bold statement, but one we hope you see has some truth to it. The real killer isn’t the practices themselves – it’s the blind adherence to them, the lack of critical thinking and originality that can result. The opposite of “best practices” isn’t “worst practices” – it’s creative practices, adaptive practices, bespoke strategies that fit your situation in a way no generic checklist ever could.

So, if you’re a startup founder or marketing lead feeling unsure, here’s our advice: learn the best practices, but don’t worship them. Use them for their wisdom, not as an excuse to avoid taking risks. Be willing to rock the boat a little. Test the unorthodox campaign. Speak in a genuine voice rather than corporate jargon. If everyone in your space is doing the same old playbook, that’s a golden opportunity for you to do it differently and get noticed. As one marketing leader said, “Safe content is invisible. Best practices build brand cemeteries.”. Strong words, but the point is clear – conformity is marketing suicide in a noisy world.

In the end, marketing is part science, part art. The science (data, learned best practices) helps you avoid mistakes and understand the playing field. The art is what helps you win the game – the storytelling, the creativity, the emotional connection, the surprise and delight. Don’t let the science completely overrule the art. If you do what’s “best” on paper every time, you’ll miss what’s great in reality.

Your brand has something unique to offer – let that uniqueness shine not just in your product, but in your marketing. Take those so-called best practices as advice, then craft your own “next practices.” The brands that do this are the ones that move markets, build cult followings, and yes, make a lot of money in the process. So ask yourself: are you just following the marketing cookbook, or are you ready to write your own recipe? The answer could determine whether your marketing is merely fine or truly phenomenal. The choice is yours – and that’s the best practice of all.