Recently I was on a call with the owner of an SMB.
This man–we’ll call him Ralph–is a call tracking client and was frustrated with his marketing company. Ralph said he was paying nearly $1000 to this marketing company each month and he wasn’t satisfied with his results.
In Ralph’s words: “I’m not even sure what they’re doing.”
Ralph is not impressed with his marketing firm. So, how can marketing firms impress there clients? After working closely with Ralph and asking him this question, here’s what we came up with.
One of Ralph’s main frustrations was that he couldn’t ever get his marketing firm (you know, that company he’s paying $1000 each month) to tell him exactly what they were trying to accomplish. He could never get them to commit to a specific goal or objective. They never said they would get him to the front page of Google. They never said they would generate x number of calls or x number of leads. They just couldn’t or wouldn’t definitively state what their goal was.
This is silly.
If you want to impress your clients, tell them exactly what your objective is and make sure you have a roadmap–a very clearly defined roadmap–that leads to that objective.
Depending on the types of clients you serve, you may need to provide analytics tools for them to use. Local SEO firms, for instance, may have clients that don’t know how to use Google Analytics. In this case, you should sign up for them and give them login access. Or, at the very least, send them reports regularly.
Additionally, many of the marketing firms we work with provide call tracking to their clients. They either provide a log in to a white labeled dashboard with their logo and color scheme, or they send their clients reports from Convirza.
Think about how impressed your clients will be when you provide ways for them to hold you accountable.
Awesome.
We got into a mini-Twitter war the other day because we implied that SEO firms should be fired if results happen too slowly. Now, we never said what ‘too slowly’ meant. Certainly you shouldn’t fire your SEO firm if they fail to demonstrated success in 3 weeks, 6 weeks or even, perhaps, 8 weeks. However, at some point you need to demonstrate results to your clients.
Think about how impressed your clients will be if you can deliver a certain number of phone calls, leads or web visitors in a short period of time. Quick results impress.
This is hard for marketers to do. It is like asking McDonald’s to share their secret sauce or asking Google to share their algorithm. Marketers like to be relatively clandestine about their tactics.
Why?
Do you think your clients will steal your tactics?
Don’t be worried. Your clients have neither the expertise nor the time to replicate what you can do. Make your clients sign an NDA so they can’t share your tactics with your competitors.
Nothing is more frustrating for Ralph, or any other SMB owner, than when a marketing firm that you’re paying $1000/month won’t tell you exactly what they’re doing. Think about how infuriating that would be!
Imagine going to a restaurant, ordering your food and then waiting for 2 hours before it comes out. Then imagine asking the waitress what is going on and she says she can’t tell you. The methods of the restaurant, she says, are secret and proprietary.
Now imagine that you were spending $1000 on that dinner.
You’d be frustrated right?
If you aren’t getting results for your clients you should TELL THEM. Don’t lead them along by saying ‘We’re so close to getting results,’ or ‘This just takes time. Be patient.’
If you aren’t seeing results, be honest. This will impress your clients
