It’s been plaguing me for a while and its becoming increasingly more alarming. Why do agencies keep failing their clients? They try to deliver but they fail.
Yesterday a call tracking service was pitching for our business – they proudly showed me how it integrates with AdWords. What do I see? That they are spending over £1000 for a £50 per month sale! Another agency failure, but why do they fail?
Agencies have funky, glossy websites with videos on their home pages, they have a pet dog running around the office, macs everywhere, bare brick walls, they promise to get you more sales and all of their staff are a hipster looking bunch of dudes.
That’s great! Plus I see the irony in this, I have an office with a giant space invader in the carpet.
Agencies in truth often don’t understand their own unique sales proposition and hence the dependence on funky websites. I often feel many agencies are really designers and uncomfortable with marketing. Marketing is a bit of a mystery to them – they will never admit this.
Many websites are designed without any consideration for where a new site fits into the marketing strategy. Marketing (really sales to many) is only considered once the site is built. Few consider the path customers will have to travel from awareness, evaluation and conversion.
I know this sounds like agency bashing, it is not. I and my team encounter new clients with a need for increased sales and a key issue is the website wasn’t designed to convert. In fact the only aspect of their marketing that was designed was the website nothing else was considered.
My opinion is that many in our industry don’t understand marketing – they are confused by it. Yes, they can tell you about technologies, new advances and channels but they struggle to help you solve the key issue.
I could string you out on this one for blog after blog, but I will cut straight to it.
Think of it this way, a manufacturing business has a system for manufacturing products, they have a system to collect money, they have a system to deliver the goods, and a system to recruit new staff.
Marketing is no different but only a few businesses realize this and systematize their marketing so that it delivers consistent repeatable results. Brands such as McDonalds and Nike know this. Their MBA arrangement teams are taught this as a basic truth.
I need to restate this – you need to create a marketing system that delivers consistent repeatable results
The challenge is that is that you don’t find agencies promising that they’ll help you build a marketing system that considers where you are, where you want to be, what resources are available, customers, the market, products, time frame, marketing channels and changing technology. If this did this then more new websites would convert.
To most agencies marketing in reality is a mystery. They get bits of it such as SEO but they cannot create what is really needed – systemised marketing
The truth is that most internet marketing doesn’t work because agencies and businesses rely on pure luck and just wing it. There is no system in place for internet marketing.
Few sit down and works out where they are now and where they want to get to. How they can marshal the available resources to get them from A to B.
If every other area of the business needs a working system, how come when it comes to internet marketing nobody sets one up?
Not just that, but it needs to be a system that has proven to work time, after time to produce consistent repeatable results.
Click Convert started with a three step system for AdWords in 2010 and by mentoring clients through the years we have built out to create a system for marketing that works.
I would like to you answer to some simple questions:
Do you know where you are?
Do you know where you want to be?
What resources do you have to get there?
Do you know what your marketing plan for the year is?
Do you know what your target audience looks like?
Do you know monthly demand?
Have you researched your market – simply do you know how big it is?
Is there a demand for your products/services?
Are you competitively priced?
I hope you understand what I’m talking about? Now you may see that it’s not as easy as it might have seemed at first.
This is why we are different.
Perhaps we are not the hippest type of people and we don’t have a happy pooch running around the office.
What we do have is the ability to help you build a marketing system that delivers consistent repeatable results. I know its boring but at least you get to sleep at night, pay the VAT bill without using the overdraft and get the bank manager off your back.
Give us a call today on 08444 780 999 or fill out the form below and we will be in touch with you. Today could be the first day of your online success – repeatable and consistent success.