The marketing agency you hire should not need to be reminded that they are working for YOU and owe you their best effort to achieve your goals. Why, then, do they sometimes act like they are working against you? What goes through your head when you face one of the situations listed below? Eternal patience, resignation or homicidal thoughts? Depending on how bad things are, the latter two reactions are understandable (but don’t act on the last one!).
Scenario #1 – You hire them, and they develop a design or copy that is . . . BORING! You sit there and stare at it and want to cry. Even if you manage to catch the attention of the terminally nerdy, they will quickly figure that there’s nothing interesting there. Where’s the WOW factor? Did it die on the way to the homepage? Can they actually make it through the technical specs they spew out day-in and day-out to actually create something that might interest ANYBODY? You should get outstanding, knock-your-socks-off web design, enthralling video, eye-catching special effects (see #6 below), edgy logos, and outstanding, grabby taglines that stick like peanut butter to your pancakes instead of gravy on a wall.
Scenario #2 – You spend more time holding their hand than you do taking care of your customers. Sigh . . . . How did you get so lucky? Hey, we all start somewhere. Fact of life, can’t get around it, and shouldn’t be a problem so long as there is someone experienced to run the show. However, if your “project manager” still has acne, and has your phone on speed dial, using it every hour or so to “check in” and ask questions, call the person in charge and ask if you can have a (well)-seasoned project manager that can answer his or her own questions.
Scenario #3 – They don’t track metrics. Say what? If your marketing agency is not tracking your hits, visits, sales, then you better get used to the idea that the flushing sound you hear is not the commode – it’s your marketing dollars leaving the planet. Bluntly, there is no excuse for not tracking marketing campaigns with the number inexpensive analytics tools available today. Custom web landing pages and dedicated phone lines also make it possible to track almost any campaign – offline or online. And most importantly, if your website isn’t generating the traffic you expect, or the web bots aren’t reporting back to the mother ship and kicking you up to page one on the search pages, SOMETHING IS WRONG! Get on them and get them to track the stats. Otherwise, make them a statistical casualty and find a marketing agency that will give you metrics.
Scenario #4 – Campaign overkill. The phrase “target market” isn’t in the lingo for nothing. Your marketing firm should think both strategically and tactically. Adjustment in your marketing campaign(s) should be made based on quality feedback. The shotgun approach – multiple campaigns in every conceivable venue and format – will eat through your marketing dollars like a herd of cats through buttermilk. One or two approaches ought to work. Don’t pay for their experiments.
Scenario #5 – Campaign life support when the patient is dead. The campaign is sitting there like a quivering bowl of Jell-o and getting about the same sales results. It’s a dead horse and the bones have been scattered. If they can’t show you how it is magically going to come to life and produce visits and paying customers, tell them to give it last rites and move on with something more effective.
Scenario #6 – You get all “flash” and no “action.” They give all the “bells and whistles” without any substance. Pretty Flash animations mean nothing if the content doesn’t compel your prospects to act. Glitz without “call to action” is meaningless. No one going to spend more than 2.3 seconds on your website because there is nothing there to grab them. If your Flash animation is entertaining your visitors, but they don’t go beyond the insipid marketing message on the homepage, you get a gold star for effort and nothing else.
Is your marketing agency guilty of any of the above? If so and you’re fed up – we’d love to chat. You can have it all, if you can find the right marketing agency that knows how to blend sparkle with results.
