I’m hearing the same story over and over again from business owners and marketing directors. Let me know if this sounds familiar:
A business needs to get more leads. It asks a marketing firm for help with what they need.
Customer: “We need to boost traffic to our website. So, we need some help with our SEO.”
Marketing Firm: “Great, we’re amazing at SEO. We can drive lots of traffic to your website, but it will take some time. We usually see results in the first 6-8 months.”
End scene. Can you tell where things went wrong? It all comes down to one word… need. The customer asked for help with what they “need.”
How do they know that traffic to their website is what they need? How do they know that SEO is the solution to their problem? They are jumping ahead, and it happens all the time.
And it’s not just SEO. It could be social media, ads, content, etc. The issue is not the tactic, it’s the fact that everyone is jumping ahead to the one tactic that they believe they need.
The biggest marketing issue today is that everyone is in a big hurry. No one wants to do the prep work.
It’s like painting your living room. Sure, you can skip the prep and just start painting, but you will end up with a big mess. Paint on the couch, paint on the carpet, bad edges.
And who has time for bad edges???
Marketing is the same. If you skip the prep work, you will end up with bad messaging, ineffective campaigns, and a mess of a website. And who has time for a bad website???
So, when you reach out to a marketing agency and tell them you need SEO or social media, or whatever, you are missing out on the most valuable thing they offer—their experience and expertise.
If they are any good at what they do, they should be the ones helping you determine what you actually need.
I don’t know when this happened. But somewhere along the line, marketing agencies have turned into order takers.
Marketing Agency: “How can I help you?”
Customer: “I need more website traffic.”
Marketing Agency: “OK, great. Your order will be ready in 6-8 months.”
Six to eight months later…
Marketing Agency: “Order up!”
Customer: “This isn’t what I ordered!”
Marketing Agency: “You asked for more traffic, and we got you more traffic.”
Customer: “Yeah, but I’m not getting any sales.”
Marketing Agency: “Sounds like you have a sales problem, not a marketing problem.”
End scene. This isn’t how marketing is supposed to work. Where was the discussion? Where’s the strategy? Where’s the research and planning?
What about brand, ICP (ideal customer profile), story, outcomes, conversion optimization, user experience, and so forth?
So, why do we all keep doing this? Here are my theories:
I started with Brand3 in April. It is hands-down the best company I have ever been a part of. Why? Because we insist on doing things differently. And we think you should, too.
I have been networking and talking to lots of business owners. The stories I hear all sound like some version of the ones I outlined above.
You might think it’s not that simple. After the 30th version of that same basic story, I’m not so sure it isn’t. Everyone seems intent on skipping the prep work.
This is where brand comes in. Brand is perception…
If the answers to these questions aren’t the answers you want, you have a problem that tactical marketing efforts alone will not fix.
Your brand is your business’s foundation. And without a solid foundation, you are building on very shaky ground.
What is the state of your brand today? What does your website traffic look like? How about online conversions? What is your NPS (net promoter score)? What’s the user experience? How does it all look and feel?
Lots of marketing firms will be able to tell you the numbers, but they will often skip the context of those numbers. What story is the data trying to tell you?
Don’t just look at the data. Work out the story. If you’ve ever watched any crime dramas, it’s like those corkboards that all the cops stand and stare at.
There are pictures of suspects. Strings connect the dots. And you’ll even see pieces of paper with questions on them.
What’s the connection? Why is this happening? What does it mean?
A list of suspects isn’t enough to solve a crime. You need to figure out the story of what happened. This is how you solve the crime that is the state of marketing today. You have to work out the story.
If any of this rings true, try a little exercise. This is from a worksheet offered as part of the Before You Market book experience.
Do a quick marketing self-assessment, and be brutally honest.
This is the outline for your story. This is the beginning of developing a solid marketing strategy.
Most businesses, as we’ve established, think you need marketing as some machine to run tactical exercises. Marketing, to most, is a plug and play exercise.
That’s not why you need marketing. You need marketing to solve a brand problem. You need marketing to tell you if you are known and in what way.
And then you need marketing to amplify what is working and fix what isn’t. This takes thinking, problem solving, and hard work. We want you to rethink marketing. Are you in? Let’s talk!
