THREE LESSONS OUR CLIENTS LEARNED THAT LEAD TO RESULTS
One of the greatest mistakes the business world makes in its assessment of marketing agencies is “if they’ve tried one, they’ve tried them all.” When a business has a bad experience with marketing in any respect, they sometimes react by dismissing it altogether. Which is a huge mistake. Though one we’ve addressed countless times. Before we get into the details about what our clients have learned from working with us, let’s first explore some of the things we’ve learned from working with them.
We often hear (too often if you ask us) that some businesses suffer from the “once bitten, twice shy” mentality. They’ve attempted marketing in some form in the past, only to have a bad experience that sullies their perception of marketing in general. Which, when considering the investment that serious marketing campaigns entail, rightly causes them to be reluctant to engage in any future efforts.
However, this same reasoning has also worked in our favor from the true believers that know marketing is a must, but only if it’s done with intention. We’ve heard plenty of stories from unhappy customers that had a less than desirable experience, yet knew that there must be a better way. And those that fall in that camp are correct. Not every agency works in the same methodology, the same way not every hair stylist is going to style your hair in the same way. We all have our methods.
We’ve learned that nurturing the relationships with our clients and first learning their needs and goals not only helps to find an immediate common ground, but also to sow the seeds of success.
Here are a few takeaways from our clients that might have you thinking twice about your previous experiences and what to expect from a marketing strategy that works.
Collaboration Breeds Results
There is a faction of the business world that operates with internal marketing personnel, whether that be one marketing manager or a full-fledged marketing team. It’s a bizarre assumption, but some companies see outsourcing marketing activities as an unnecessary expenditure if they have an internal marketing director or department.
This is just flat out wrong. In an ideal world, your marketing team, much like a sports team, would have a skilled individual at every position. Writers for content, designers for graphics, photographers, videographers, web developers and a leader to handle the strategy and draw up the plays. Big companies will have that. But, that is not the norm for many businesses.
Except for marketing agencies. Well, any agency worth their salt. Your marketing agency should bring with it the expertise your internal team lacks. The strategic knowledge your team holds, together with the agency talent to fill those creative roles your team doesn’t have, should create a marketing powerhouse well poised to meet those goals. Your marketing “dream team” if you will.
For comparison, consider the cost. How much would you have to pay to have an internal expert in every one of those creative divisions vs how much it would cost you to hire an agency of highly qualified individuals to take care of that for you? Do the math. It makes sense. If you don’t know how much it costs to hire an agency, we’d be happy to have that conversation!
What Seems Impossible Very Well Could be in Reach
Which brings us to our next point: what would you like for your business that you just haven’t been able to achieve on your own? What kind of goals are on your list, but just don’t seem attainable at the moment? Is the only thing preventing you from pursuing those goals time and personnel? We totally understand. And we can help.
This is an issue many of our clients face. They have a long-term plan of achieving a specific goal, but just don’t have the time, personnel or know-how to get there immediately. Which is why those initial conversations with our clients are so vital.
The first thing we do when we meet a client is talk about goals; what they want to get out of their marketing efforts, and then how they want to see their business move forward. For some businesses, it means reaching a new target audience, or focusing sales on a certain product or service. In other cases, it might be trying to expand your audience to an international level. Every business is going to have a different set of primary, secondary and long-term goals than the next.
We work to put together a plan to achieve as many of those goals as possible and work to do it sooner rather than later. What a client might not be able to commit to themselves we can make our priority.
Data Reveals Marketing's Impact
Another hurdle we typically encounter when discussing the merits of marketing with a potential client is doubt. We’ll hear things like, “But how will we know if it even works?” This is another instance that can occur if a business has previously attempted some type of marketing, but didn’t know how to quantify the investment.
Which, in the past, isn’t necessarily wrong! When considering traditional marketing tactics such as radio, billboards, tv commercials and newspaper/magazine ads, the only thing you can really promise are the “potential number of eyeballs” on a given ad. It’s really hard to gauge its effectiveness, unless there is some type of deal attached to it, and you’re diligently asking customers where/how they found out about you.
But with modern marketing technology, we are able to analyze data down to the most specific details. We can provide concrete numbers that reflect the success of a particular tactic.
Then, we can report back to our clients with all kinds of hard data showing how many people clicked on ads, web traffic trends day-by-day and month-over-month. We can monitor how long a visitor lingered on a website and the pages they were most interested in. We can see how many people opened an email and how many clicked on a certain link, what the most popular links were, how many times they reopened it, and so much more.
Now we can answer the “did it even work” question with data that shows specifically the impact a particular marketing campaign made in any given time frame.
We understand that making the investment in marketing can be a big decision, and one that comes at a price. We also understand a business’s reluctance to hit the gas and move forward with a strategy. We’re here to help you navigate through those concerns and provide you with a path toward whatever success looks like for you.
And that all starts with a conversation. Do you have questions or concerns about the next steps you should take toward strengthening your business? We’re here and ready to help. Give us a call or drop us a line today to see what we can do to help your business get a leg up on the competition.
