I don’t want to admit this. I feel like I’m outing my besties, but unfortunately, this is what I’m hearing time and time again. We’re living and working in a time when marketing agencies are needed more now than ever, as the pressure of digital marketing coupled with keeping our traditional marketing efforts alive continues to demand more expert skills. Marketers require more skills than they can possibly handle on their own. However, as more people reach for assistance from a marketing agency, why are they coming away dissatisfied?
Rick Mulready did a podcast recently where he interviewed a business client who had more than one dissatisfying experience with an agency. The crux of the interview is that the customer felt the agencies were great at performing their sales pitch but not so great at delivering the results they promised. The customer felt he needed to be educated better through the process to better understand where his money was being spent.
I’ve worked with other customers who left agencies because they invested a lot of money upfront and didn’t get results as quickly as they thought they would. They were expecting to make more than they put in within a short space of time. They also felt that some of the work that was done on their behalf e.g. graphics was something a high school kid could do.
Here are the issues I struggle with from this kind of feedback.
1. Promised results
The unfortunate fact is that marketing is not an exact science. In the digital age especially, we have a much better way of tracking our results, however, it isn’t all as simple as we want it to be. For one thing, the more tracking you do, the more time it takes and therefore the more it costs. I mostly encourage people to have very simple reports to keep costs down but also so you’ll actually read them and understand them.
Secondly, tracking only happens on some levels. For example, we can’t know who saw your ad, didn’t click on it, but then decided to go and visit your display home because they’d seen your ad a few times and it peaked their interest.
Thirdly, results don’t happen overnight, but they might happen. We have the science to tell us what is working and what is not. When it’s not working sometimes, and most of the time, it takes some tweaking to get the offer and the messaging right. To make sure your targeting, your offer, your messaging, your images, and your platform are producing results we need time. Facebook also needs time to test their algorithm before delivering accurate results, so you’ve already spent some money before the results become clear. Mmmmm this is starting to sound complicated.
Yes, it is complicated, but with experience, we tend to nail things down pretty quickly. This is why you hire an agency; because you’ll get there faster and you’ll get there eventually with expert help.
So anyone who is promising you results is either really experienced and can stand firmly by their numbers (I’m hoping to be this person one day), or it’s someone who is not telling you the full truth. Would you still buy services from someone who said you should spend this amount money to maybe make a return?
2. High-school kids can do it
Damn straight. The sophistication of website themes, graphic design programmes and the like have made this skill accessible to all kinds of people, even you, dare I say :). Not only can high-school kids do it, but so can a lot of overseas workers who’ll do it for a song compared with our Australian employers. What a high-school kid, or receptionist, or unskilled marketer can’t do is put it all together. A lackey might be able to use a graphic design programme, but will they have the skills to keep it on brand, write a message with a great hook, know where to put it, who to target it to and how much to spend on it?
Summary
The way I work around the problem of promised results is to encourage my customers to start small and build up. This gives me time to educate you through the process so you understand the complexity and how the process works. It gives me time to get a thorough understanding of your business and its best selling points, and you don’t blow too much money in the beginning on something that may or may not work. We test a few things first on a low budget and then work our way up. The downside of this process is that results take longer. The upside is that you don’t get disenchanted by something that doesn’t work, we build a relationship of trust, and we develop a long-term plan that works.
When it comes to dealing with services that are hired from overseas and inexperienced people who are good with a computer, I’ve made my decision not to follow through with these options. I’m more than happy to work with people who are part of your team in this way, but I don’t use them myself. I’ve tried them and it works wonderfully sometimes, but when it doesn’t it does too much harm. I end up spending more time in the briefing process and the language barriers often cause confusion, leading to longer lead times, more expense and work that misses the mark. I’ve already worked out where it’s worth spending your money and saving your money, and I’ll advise you accordingly.
Furthermore, as much as the information age has improved our ability to communicate online, I’ve learned that you just can’t replace good old-fashioned face-to-face. When the shit hits the fan, you need to be able to sit someone down and get the project back on track.
I’m concerned about the way that marketing agencies are getting a bad rap. I’m concerned about the customers who feel like they’re being ripped off, and I’m concerned for the agencies who aren’t delivering the results that customers want. There’s a disconnect. I think the disconnect is only going to get bigger, as the cost of achieving in this competitive space of advertising increases, because what customers want to pay and what they have to pay to see results is not aligned. Is it the customer who needs to adjust their expectations or is it the marketing agency who needs to perform better? Probably a bit of both.
