COMMENTS
Enjoyed this blog, well done!all smo companies are getting likes and fans and followers from fiver...they all are not relevant likes and fans I tries I got 20k likes but all are silent fans...
Cheers to you! I just wrote my blog about this subject - or close - mid-year planning. If your marketing isn't work GET RID OF IT! The world is changing- same old same old doesn't work anymore. Every businessowner needs to measure every marketing activity -- if your marketing person or agency isn't willingly to try something new and you aren't seeing results! Fire them NOW! Life is short - a business life is even shorter -- take action and find what works for your business. Very often this answer is in taking risks and making change - move out of your comfort zone. Vicki
Great article, really illustrates what kind of agencies people should be working with these days. Creative is nice and will never be unnecessary but in today's business world of practically unlimited access to messaging and interaction points if you can't quantify and justify the activities you are engaging in to a bottom line profit you might as well be dead in the water in my opinion. Control your message, know your customers and interact with them where and how they want to be connected with. You can't beat great strategy, timing and above all else intelligent data analysis and tracking.
As an agency, I can tell you that #2 isn't usually the reason behind #1/
Two types of marketers - those who have little to no experience and think they can do everything better than everyone else and those who have worked in the trenches and have been accountable...usually as an in-house marketing/communications director/manager. The 2nd type will get you results because they know they must be accountable. Every day they are being measured by their performance, having to go submit a proposal for a new idea and have to live/breathe the company to know them. Those are the marketing people you need to hire...?
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Lastly, marketing is different than PR, advertising, communications, promotions and plain media buying. Unfortunately, most people think they are all one in the same but all are part of the bigger plan. ?
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Yes, the biz owner is the best marketer! If you can't sell your company/product/service then should anyone really be buying?
Good post, and a lot of sound advice here. Sounds like you worked with an agency that had a toolbag of tactics, but no strategic skills to determine which ones to use. They were all "hammer", and you appeared to be all "nail". This relates to your #2 point for Small Biz Owners - it may be counterintuitive, but if you do have money to spend, think about spending it on strategy first, not execution. Getting everyone on the same page about what matters and developing the big ideas that come from that will then make it easy to execute.?
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Every small business wants exactly what you did - leads, but misunderstands where the real value comes from - the ideas from strategic planning. Execution is a commodity that can guarantee quality when the direction is good. Having an agency that you can partner with to think big about the real value of your product and who you should communicate with is something to leverage well beyond the first campaign. It works even better when the small business wants to execute themselves (as many are capable of doing now).
Well said, Brian. I don't even think I have anything to add other than... YES!!
Great article, and very timely for us. You have just inspired me to change tack- thanks!
here here Brian! well written. Focus on whats important and flexibility to respond will keep you moving in the right direction.
Brian, I don't disagree with the many of the points you raise here. We are a small marketing agency in Scotland but refuse to be told we are an SEO company. I promote our services as Internet Marketing Services to achieve business online growth. I get very frustrated by those who think it is all SEO. The give me a few keywords and I will rank you at the top brigade, and the I will build you a 1000 links a month people, need to take a look at their business service model. And, instead, focus on delivering structured plans that will of course challenge the business owner, but hopefully (in our case) also educate him so he not only sees movement in the numbers but understands a little about what the 'dashboards' are telling him. I talk about driving the website like a vehicle and we are the 'fuel'. To ensure our clients get the max miles to the gallon each month, we keep reports simple, but detailed enough so the business owner understands more about how the change came about. Some business owners are willing to challenge themselves with DIY Online Marketing, but many still fail 6 months to a year down the line. I am a believer in employing the right skills. If my BMW breaks down, I won't fix it myself, and I won't take it to some back street Joe. I get a BMW qualified mechanic. So, if your business owner, don't get a graphics person or a programmer to do your marketing. Get someone who understands Internet Marketing. And one final point, be aware of those people who insist on using the words DIGITAL AGENCY!!
This was actually very accurate and right on the money, Either Produce me the numbers , leads and results or dont bother doing business. Besides as an agency its great to have all the work like designs and portfolio but a example of number generated and ROI is the bottom line and even the agency itself has to outsource in order to focus on the client a do it all by yourself is harder than what a person thinks, but providing quality and accurate number and services is what boosts an Ad Agency, Marketer or Niche's Reputation
Now time for the follow-up article from those of us on the agency side: "Why I Fired My Marketing Client"
Awesome Article! But with some clients I have noticed, they try to tell me things they want to do, and I try my best to tell them, thats not a good idea or that will not work, but they are do determined. Or they say after hiring you after 30 minutes, I do not see any results, everyone wants everything FAST FAST FAST, AND RIGHT NOW! If nothing has changed in a hour you suck. This is not FastFood pick 1, 2, or 3 marketing.
Firstly, you should have the foresight to appoint a Marketing Agency who already know what they're doing, and are able to provide the proof required.?
Next, you should take care not to dictate the path of the exercise to strictly, as it stifles innovation.?
It's very easy to be too bossy, but are you actually sure of exactly what you're doing, apart from setting demands??
The client and the agency should guide each other to a mutually established goal, rather than dictating terms and conditions to each other.?
Cutting through the fog of information overload requires the precision of the scalpel as well as the eye of the surgeon, and economy of stroke delivers the most powerful results.?
In this word-heavy environment, there are certainly more flag wavers claiming to have the know-how, than there are flag-burners who know how well they have done. A space filled with more "how-to" than "how-zat"!?
Tread carefully and always be aware, the Marketing Agency you fire today may just be hired tomorrow by your competition, if only for the insights they have gained into your product or service.?
And keep up the weeding, it's good for the garden.
At the risk of throwing a spanner in the works, I will be the Devil?s advocate here as I am a bit surprized by some things I read (article AND comments). It sounds like this agency ? that I don?t know and in which I have no share ? suggested things that any reasonable marketer today would do: having an online presence, especially when selling software as a service products sounds to me like a must. Maybe the business has been developed originally via telesales, or door to door, or physically networking, but whatever the recipe from the past, one would assume it had become neither successful nor satisfactory for this business as they decided to call on a Marketing agency for help. We can discuss their prices (absolutely outrageous from what seems to have been delivered) but the service offered in itself sounds neither surreal, nor deceiving for the goal set.?
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Now for people who think that Marketing is accountable for the actual Sales ? that is ?closed deals? for the business ? I would like to suggest the reading of an excellent article from Mark Ritson who clarifies the purpose of Sales and Marketing activities. He also states: ?Directors of sales and marketing. There are thousands of you out there with that title. And not one of you has the faintest clue what marketing actually means. Because if you did, you would realize that your title makes no sense?. Mark Ritson (you can read the full article here http://z6.co.uk/markritson). I am quoting Mark Ritson because I think we need to remember that Sales people are not order takers and that 600 followers on Twitter sounds to me like some interest was generated around the brand and/or the service and may not have been exploited to the best at the time. However, Marketing can only generate exposure, desire/interest and prospects. There is a responsibility for cost per leads and leads generation on targets. The quality of the leads is already a concept that can be arguable and the closed deals, that is the action of purchasing, is definitely down to the Sales, not the Marketing. Expecting a Marketing agency to physically deliver purchasing prospects is illusionary. A Marketing agency can do a lot about positioning, assessing a brand/product/service against competitors, surveying a target market but they cannot be accountable for the sales figures in the end. Marketing KPIs are not about the sales generated. They provide the leads, Sales have to close them themselves. If there is an obstacle to closing, it is not necessary a Marketing issue BTW.?
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To conclude, I would also like to speak about the business goals defined by Brian in this article as he explains: ?So on New Year's Day 2012, I sat down and wrote out our businesses goals for that year the total number of leads we would need, lead conversion rates, cost of customer acquisition, total number of new customers, revenue per customer, lifetime value of each new customer 20 pages worth of strategy about how we would achieve those numbers?. There are a number of items in this list that are a genuine psychic exercise: ?total number of new customers?, based I assume on the average basket from the previous year and the revenue needed? We all know forecasts are only what they are: forecasts based on the past and wishful thinking. The reality involves many more parameters that forecasters cannot take into account when preparing their figures (competition?s behaviour, economic circumstances, etc.). Besides, increasing sales is not a goal; it is a mere intention that needs to be backed up by a proper goal. All companies want more sales (again, wishful thinking) but once they have announced their intention (be it in thorough detailed figures like Brian did), they have not achieved anything. The real questions are still pending and this may be the real mistake of this Marketing agency not to have clarified the goals behind the intention: Do they want to go vertical? Do they want to penetrate new markets abroad? Do they want to explore new categories / segments of markets? Are they planning on shifting products and services positioning to adapt them to a specific new demand? Increasing sales and calculating figures is again a Sales game but it has nothing to do with Marketing; Marketing is only an enhancer, a sales enabler. Marketing works on branding, corporate communication, leads generation and Channel management at its best, any other business is stretching it outside of its natural ecosystem.?
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I hope I don?t sound too harsh on Brian. I get his points and I think there are also elements in this article that are very true and worth thinking about, but I can?t let him slash an entire profession on a bad experience ? especially when I think responsibilities seem to be shared here between a business not knowing which model to follow and having misplaced expectations on their Marketing agency and an agency that failed to understand, reading between the lines, that the goal was nebulous as a start). Marketing is powerful but it needs to be focused and Marketing agencies will never guess better than the business owners where they want to take their company/brand/products. They can only be working on behalf of their clients: the clearer the goal, the better the results. Trust! ;-)?
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I'm in the process of figuring out if our agency is worth keeping around or not. I'm trying to light fires under their rears, but they just aren't performing. Not to mention I seem to be putting more work into getting them to do the work.
Great article. My favorite line was,?
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"If you hire a "Yes Man" marketing agency, you're done for...You need people to challenge your thinking, and get them to drive results for your business..."?
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However, I think it's important to mention that even though it's vital to quantify the bottom line with stuff like, how many new customers you brought this month and how many sales dollars you produced, etc...new twitter followers and Likes are also important. These social KPI's indicate an interest and awareness that is being generated around your brand and/or the service ? it's what you do with all of these listeners that's important.?
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Is it fair to say there need be some sort of balance? Also, I'm aware that you can play the numbers game successfully but quality suffers. I?d prefer 10 substantive relationships over 1k empty ones. I guess what i'm say is, I think having the best of both worlds is optimal and is what agencies should strive for.
So are you getting more leads now than before?
"Four months and 30 new customers later"?
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How many new customers did you have the previous year without the agency??
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It'll be interesting to see how you do the next 4 months without the agency, please let us know.
It shocks me sometimes how online marketing agencies have a big retainer plus percentage of spent + cuts from brokering deals with affiliate networks etc. Really great article by the way. Pointers for my business.
This article is an eyeopenner, thanks.
Spot on. Too many agencies that try to pull the wool over their client's eyes. Azam Marketing is a marketing agency agency and we often see our clients having been burnt by recently-formed agencies that don't live up to their word.
Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33412/Why-I-Fired-My-Marketing-Agency.aspx
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