Posts in category: Strategy

You, your goals, your budget, your timeline. These and only these factors should be at the center of your strategy. Not the capabilities or limitations of a marketing agency. We’re able to uphold this approach because we work for you, not the marketing agency(ies).

How is this different from the typical marketing approach? 

Most marketing agencies do one to three things extremely well- branding, content marketing, digital advertising management, SEO, web design, media buying, etc. 

If you happen to talk to an agency that has a technical focus- SEO, ad management for example- when they scope your needs and give you a proposal, you can bet SEO and ad management will be at the center of their proposed strategy for you. They have a hammer, you are the nail. 

Now, make no mistake- you may need SEO and ads for your strategy. But, it may be more important to focus on your email marketing, or your sales enablement efforts first- depending on your goals, budget and timeline. 

In marketing, the right thing at the wrong time, is the wrong thing. 

This is where strategy comes into play.

When you work with us, we develop your marketing strategy based only on your GBT, (Goals, Budget & Timeline). Not the capabilities of an agency. 

The best marketing agencies are often not the best at promoting and selling their services. They’re too busy doing client work and most of their business comes through referrals, strategic partners or white labeled agreements.

When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. 

If you’ve ever shopped for a marketing agency or outsourced marketing solution, you probably did the smart thing and interviewed 3 or 4, or maybe more. And you likely saw very different scopes of work, pricing, strategies across all of those. How did you know which agency to trust? Perhaps you chose the agency with the most dynamic or charismatic owner or salesperson. Or, maybe one of those agencies dazzled you with a piece of technology or promises of ROI in a short period of time. Or perhaps you just posted those proposals on a dart board and let fate decide. 

The reality is, most marketing agencies will fit you with the solutions they are most interested in providing to you. For instance, if the agency’s strength is SEO and digital advertising, that’s likely what you’ll see in their proposals. Conversely, if the agency’s strength is creative work, you’ll see proposals with a heavy emphasis on this. 

But, in the end- one thing remains true, the focus is not on you or your goals, the focus is on the agency and their capabilities. This is why it’s important to have an advocate on your side, who can suss out the capabilities of the agencies- after your Blue Sky strategy is developed. 

Agencies rarely disclose their niche. 

In an effort to attract new business, agencies often position themselves as “all things to all people” or “full service”. You may be talking to an agency who has a 80-90% client base consisting solely of…fill in the blank, (landscaping companies, car dealerships, dentist offices, manufacturing brands)- but if you are outside of that client profile, they will often still try to sell you on their agency. If you choose one of these agencies and you are far outside of that client profile, your work with that agency is almost certainly doomed from the start. You’re now on a “whack-a-mole, hang on to the client for dear life for as long as we can” treadmill that will not end well. The result is not good for the agency or you, the client. You may even leave bad reviews about the agency or even enter into legal disputes. But the reality is, the agency wasn’t bad- they just weren’t right for you. 

Every agency is good at something. 

Well, almost every agency. 

If you’re talking to an agency that’s been around for several years, there’s a good chance that they’re very good at something. Maybe they’re excellent website developers, or copywriters. But, as business owners often do, they try to grow their capabilities to meet their clients’ needs. The growth of agency capabilities are often dictated by the largest, highest paying clients within that agency. Which means, if that’s you, you’re the guinea pig, and you’ll never know it. 

At The Marketing Agent, we only match you with agencies with proven success to meet your needs, on every level (industry, budget, tactic, timeline). 

Client expectations. 

Clients often sign agreements with marketing agencies without properly level setting expectations with that agency. This is the fault of both the agency and the client, and this usually results in a fall out and an early termination of your contract, and little to no ROI. At The Marketing Agent, before we match you with any agencies, we walk you through a “How to get the most from your marketing relationships” course. The goal is to leave nothing to the imagination, which means no unsaid expectations or assumptions. All cards on the table. 

Most agencies outsource. 

It is extremely common that a “full service” agency is made up of 2, 3 or 4 people, especially those looking to serve the SMB market. 

Those people likely have titles like “Account Manager” or “Partner”. 

Here’s what often happens in those scenarios: 

Dynamic agency owner or “Partner” approaches you with some great ideas, wins your trust and signs an elaborate marketing contract with you, consisting of creative work, branding, copywriting, web design, SEO, digital advertising and social media management. Your ticket price is $6,000/ mo, plus ad spend (digital media). 

You’re then passed off to an “Account Manager” who emails you a few times a month and has a status call every couple of weeks or so. 

A few months go by and you realize there’s no traction in your marketing. No leads, no new business, nothing to show for your investment so far. You start asking questions like “should we change the SEO or advertising strategy?”

The agency gives you excuses as to why your marketing isn’t performing. And they may even begin blaming you for the lack of results. You didn’t approve things in a timely manner, you didn’t respond to their last email, etc. 

Here’s the reality of what’s happening behind the scenes: 

No one in the agency was an expert in what they sold you. 

Meaning, that expensive SEO package you bought from them? Well, that’s being executed by an offshore team. The ad management package they sold you? That was thrown to a freelancer who does their ad work. 

There is no quality control of the work of that agency, because there’s no expertise to oversee it. And they’re keeping large margins of profit all along the way. 

Please don’t think I’m trying to scare you from using a marketing agency. There are some amazing agencies out there, I know many. Our mission is to help you avoid choosing the wrong agency and all the headaches and costs that come with it. Growing your business and Matching Your Mission To Marketing Mastery is the goal.

Imagine this scenario:

“We just fired our marketing person because they just weren’t performing. We’re thinking of hiring someone else, and maybe outsourcing some pieces of our marketing”. 

What’s really going on here?

For companies who tell me this, it’s usually true that they’ve had several “marketing people”, one at a time, and none for longer than about 2 years. The “marketing person” is often managed by a VP of Sales, or a VP of Sales and Marketing, or a President. None of which have particularly heavy strengths in marketing or managing marketers.

What we often find is that this “marketing person’s” journey at their company was quite literally doomed from the start. It all started with the job description, which usually sounds something like this: “Seeking a detail-oriented, organized and self led marketing professional who will handle social media marketing, SEO, Google Ads, website maintenance, copywriting, sales deck creation, email marketing and events marketing”.

The position is offered at 60k/yr. And a junior marketer is identified and hired. It’s no wonder this “marketing person” left or was fired, the job description is completely unrealistic for one person to execute.

The reality is, as the field of marketing becomes more and more technologically advanced, each of the “to do’s” in your list, or, areas of marketing specialty, become more and more deep.

Take a look at the best marketing agencies in the world, their SEO team doesn’t touch graphic design or social media management. And conversely, their graphic designer is not handling SEO or advertising. This is not simply because the agency  wants an “assembly line” for increased billable dollars, although that is a byproduct. This is because the skillset of one does not overlap with the other.

Expecting one “marketing person” to have the skills and the time to accomplish your total marketing strategy would be like going to a cardiologist for brain surgery.

When we develop your strategy first, before writing job descriptions or hiring agencies, we’re able to build your Dream Team around your goals, not the other way around.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

You might think I’m going to say the most common mistake among B2B businesses, when it comes to their marketing, would be things like lack of digital marketing (SEO, Website improvements, Digital Advertising, poor social media management) and those things are definitely common.

However, the most common mistake I see right now starts way before the marketing tactics are implemented (or not implemented). Businesses, especially those with B2B sales cycles, often begin and initially grow, organically. The business owner leverages his or her connections to gain those first clients and customers, referrals start to come in, and in a few years you have a solid book of business and are profitable (hopefully).

If you’ve started and grown a business, you know that the means by which you grew to say, 5 mil in annual revenue, is not the means that will be required to grow to 10, 15 or 20 mil. Those who do succeed in scaling know the importance of Brand Positioning.

What is Brand Positioning (and why does it matter)?

Your brand’s position in the market is your differentiator. Typically, a brand’s position is the expression of ‘what you do, and who you do it for’.

It’s quite literally the opposite of “All Things To All People”

Why do so few B2B business owners want to claim their brand position? One word, Fear.

When we claim our Brand Position, we’re not only shouting to the market who we are, who we work for and what we do. We’re also clearly communicating who we are NOT, who we do NOT work for and what we do NOT do.

For instance, I recently spoke with a business owner who mentioned they “sometimes do government work, but we don’t like it and it’s not very profitable”. My question to them, “so, why are we marketing to a vertical you don’t want to win?” Another common conversation is with the business owner who says “90% of our work is B2B, but we do a little B2C here and there”. Why? Are you “winning” those B2C jobs because your market is confused about who you work with? And are you losing potentially far more revenue than the 10% represents in your preferred B2B market because of that confusion?

The fear of doubling, or tripling down on our niche and possibly alienating people outside of our Ideal Client Profile keeps companies ‘stuck’ doing work they don’t want to do and sometimes aren’t even equipped to fulfill. This can lead to dissatisfied customers and bad reviews.

I get it, sometimes we have to take on work that is not “ideal” to keep the lights on, especially in economic upheaval. But positioning your brand and your marketing to only attract the clients you want to work with, based on your organization’s “superpowers” will be the answer to making every customer a happy one, every job a success, winning jobs you’re best equipped to deliver, and – scaling.

So, unless your company is aiming to be the next Yamaha (The world’s best piano / motorcycle company), a brand positioning exercise may be in order!

I work with companies every day who have blind spots in their marketing. This has led me to put together some thoughts on how and why blind spots develop, how to know if there are blind spots in your marketing, and most importantly- how to address those blind spots.

Most marketing professionals have one or two areas in which they excel above all others. Maybe your team has some kicka$$ writers, website designers, graphic designers- but their SEO knowledge and advertising prowess isn’t what it could be. If your team is made up of only creative people, there’s a good chance that the analytics side of your marketing could be neglected. Here’s a couple of tell-tale signs that your companies’ marketing has blind spots.

1. Spending massive amounts on advertising. This is a popular course of action when your marketing isn’t working. Example: I recently saw a company that was spending 60k per month on GoogleAdwords/ PPC. This spend might be reasonable if you’re a huge company with a huge ad budget- but for most middle market companies, this ad spend is completely unreasonable. Upon further inspection, their SEO was nonexistent. Meaning they literally had to pay for each and every site visit. This would be like owning a restaurant and giving a free meal to each table, just for walking in the door. This campaign can be beneficial, but isn’t sustainable long term.
2. Lots of turnover in your marketing department. Turnover creates gaps in thoughts, ideas and implementation. What the last marketer began may or may not be followed through, this inconsistency is a breeding ground for blind spots as the team is always in “catch-up” mode.
3. Lack of knowledge on trends. Marketing in our age is a quickly evolving art. Knowing what Google likes today in terms of your SEO and ads is key to a successful marketing strategy. If your marketers have been in the game for many years and are on “cruise control” they are likely missing many marketing opportunities that have emerged in recent years/ months/days.
4. Lack of data. If your marketing team isn’t able to easily show ROI, they are almost certainly misusing funds somewhere along the line. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. If you can’t see your return, the chances that you have huge blind spots in your marketing are high.
5. Miscommunication between leadership and marketers. It’s not uncommon that I hear from marketers that getting in front of their leadership is difficult and sometimes impossible. This disconnect means the marketing team isn’t aware of the high level goals of the company. If you’re a leader, you likely have 12, 18, 24 month goals for your company- if these aren’t clearly communicated to the marketer, they could be marketing yesterday’s message and missing an opportunity to communicate your heart in their message. Keeping your marketing team engaged in the dream can go a long way in preventing blind spots. Maybe you have plans to reach other verticals- this info is key for the marketer to know ahead of time, preparing for that campaign in advance.

How to prevent or solve blind spots:

If you and your marketing team can’t see the forest for the trees, it could be a great time to bring me into the conversation. Having a fresh perspective on your brand and your companies’ growth strategy will not only give you new ideas, but will help to implement those ideas on an ongoing basis.