Scott's Musings

large digital marketing companies don’t provide detail work

Pain Number 1- LACK OF TRANSPARENCY

When we bring on a new client to our local agency, we often spend a lot of time educating or apprising our client of things he or she SHOULD know about digital marketing.

Consider the following information Your Digital Marketing Client Bill Of Rights…

For example,

• You have a right to know what SEO rankings mean.
• You have a right to know that making you rank for a particular keyword phrase is meaningless if your best prospects don’t search that keyword phrase.
• You have a right to know why you are paying a certain monthly amount and what was done to justify that amount.
• You have a right to know the connection between your marketing strategy and the digital marketing utilized to achieve it.
• You have a right to know if investing in Google Adwords makes sense for you. Or not.
• You have a right to know that your website is the KEY hub for all of your digital marketing to funnel in and out of. And that your website should NOT be a simple cookie cutter website that resembles everyone else’s website. 

You should not be forced into a cloud of mystery by the very company you are paying money to. (I told you I was passionate about this stuff.)

Pain Number 2- NO PARTNERSHIP MENTALITY

Let me explain.

The formula for LARGE “local digital marketing companies” goes something like this:

•         Hire a LOT of salespeople.
•         Quickly train them on selling and some basic digital marketing terms.
•         Have them lock up as many sales as possible.
•         Turn the paperwork into the home office quickly.
•         Rinse and repeat.

Rather than a “sales dance”, what a small business owner really needs is a marketing partner. (And I really mean partner). 

A partner shares risk. A partner shares good times. A partner shares bad times. A partner shares experiences. A partner shares ideas.

A partner is sitting on your side of the negotiating table, not across from you.

MADER MARKETING is based on a true partnership mentality. If we speak to a prospective client and we do not feel a great partnership is likely, we turn down the opportunity.

But when that person engages us as a client- we are in the trenches with them!

Pain Number 3- YOUR MARKETING MUST SELL YOUR STUFF

Otherwise, what’s the point?

When you get right down to it, marketing is simply salesmanship in a printed or digital form.

Ask yourself if your current digital marketing company is working with you on your sales message. 

Now, I’m not suggesting that your current large digital marketing company doesn’t have the ability to sell. Far from it.

In fact, most of their staff are great at selling…TO YOU! 

When it comes to selling more digital marketing plans or selling more bright shiny objects to you, for example.

When I speak of selling- I’m talking about creating marketing for you that sells your stuff, to your prospects and customers.

(This is one of the big differences between our digital agency of record, and a large digital marketing company).

You and your business need marketing that sells. If your marketing stuff isn’t causing someone to pull their wallet out and place an order, then something is broken.  

At MADER MARKETING our success is measured directly by the effectiveness of increased sales for our clients.

Pain Number 4- NO LOCAL MARKETING STRATEGY IS DEVELOPED FOR YOU

You’ve probably heard the term “guerilla marketing” used.

Guerilla marketing describes the ability to utilize creativity and ingenuity to find new customers in the place of just spending more money and hoping it works.

Seems a little counter-intuitive for me to suggest that a large digital marketing company isn’t able to provide real, street-smart local marketing for you.

Let me explain.

Obviously your small business has much different needs than a large corporation, which already has a battle tested marketing strategy in place. Large companies may only need a tweak here and there to keep their marketing machine humming along. 

But your current large digital marketing company does not have the structure or time to learn about the ins and outs of your small business. It’s simply not how their business model is setup.

Please correct me if I’m wrong here- but I’m willing to wager that your current digital marketing company hasn’t developed your USP.

They haven’t done an intensive 6-10 mile local market analysis of your competition and they haven’t done a local SWOT analysis either. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats).

Am I correct? 

And without this local intelligence gathering how could anyone develop a targeted digital marketing strategy for you?

How could they develop the critically important keywords that you need to separate your business?

Your small business needs the hands-on attention that only a focused, local grassroots agency can provide.

Pain Number 5- POOR (OR NO) COMMUNICATION

Our 5th big pain is the propensity for large digital marketing companies to provide poor (or no) communication. This subject could have easily topped this list at number one.

As of this writing we have 29 “ex-vivial” clients that came over to us. They all came to us for various reasons, but the common denominator they all had was poor communication.

Communication is the cornerstone of any successful relationship. It could be your parents, your girlfriend, a wife or your kids.

Real, two-way communication is crucial for success. I’ll repeat that… Real, two-way communication is crucial for success.

And for a small business and their marketing agency, communication should usually be initiated by the agency first.

The reason for this is simple, you have a million and one things to occupy your time each day. It’s up to us to keep the communication lines going. 

And that’s exactly what we do.

For example, one system in our agency is called Momentum Emails, and they do exactly what you think they would do. They create and keep momentum going.

Here’s the thing, things change in your business and in your life every month or so. And things change in my digital marketing world every minute or so. We both need to be on the same page for this client agent thing to benefit you.

And are agency has systems in place to get that done. We keep the ball moving. 

Pain Number 6- THEY DON’T SPEND ENOUGH TIME WITH YOUR DETAILS

Large digital marketing companies are very good at sending email status reports, keeping you on a quarterly phone call list, or rotating different representatives to “handle” your account so you get a fresh look.

Things like that.

Where they tend to drop off, is with actual, in the trenches, behind the counter, experiences. You know, the day to day stuff in your world that really matters.

Large digital marketing companies don’t factor these types of real-world shared experiences in with their clients because they can’t.

They don’t have time. Their business model isn’t wired that way. They are busy upselling and adding new accounts.

I am NOT saying they don’t take care of their clients digital marketing, I am saying they do not and cannot do it to the personal, micro level that we do.

Remember, they are in the volume business. They sell more digital packages to more small businesses and grab more market share as quickly as possible. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just completely different than our approach.

Not only do we prefer, but we must get to know the inner workings of your business as soon as possible.

We need to understand the demographics and psychographics of your ideal customer. We need to know what a “bad” customer looks like for you.

Your success is the only metric used to judge our performance at MADER MARKETING.

Pain Number 7- THE ROTATING REPS

Why does your large digital marketing company assign you with an account rep, only to yank them just as you are gaining traction?

As soon as you get comfortable with a rep., BAM… they’re M.I.A, and you’re forced to start over with someone completely new. 

These are normally very nice company employees hired to move your account along. Or sell you the new bright shiny object of the week. They do not have the amount time you need for them to really learn your business, because they need to open a new account somewhere else.

That is the business model of a large digital marketing company. They are in the volume business. Mader Marketing is in the detail business.

So why are you involved with these middlemen and women? Frankly, I’m not sure.

My best guess is that these people are there to play Good Cop, Bad Cop for the company and be your shoulder to cry on.

I know that every time we bring on a new account to our local agency, I end up talking to 5 different people to get the information I need to close out the old account. 

One person has the username and password to your domain. Another person has the control of your Google Maps Gmail account and password, another individual is managing your pay per click Ad-words campaign, yada, yada.

You need one point of contact for consistency, communication and clarity.

You and your business have one core USP. One core message deep down that separates you from the others. All marketing functions must have the same look and feel and tone.

That can’t occur in different silos. It takes time for an agency to learn and understand their clients.

A revolving merry-go-round of reps cannot accomplish this.