If you've never done marketing, doing ONE THING won't save you
A few hours ago, as I was stretching my right arm, recovering from an arthroscopy surgery on the elbow, my phone rings.
Unknown number but I was feeling generous. I answered.
It was a potential client, a small business owner.
"I need to publicise my website", he said.
He has built his product, over the past 5 years, with no marketing.
The business runs on referrals.
"What's the one thing I can do to get clients?"
Here's where freelancers and agencies smell blood. Like a pack of hyenas upon a fresh kill.
"SEO is what you need. I can rank your website on Google in 3 months"
"I can create 30 posts for you to post on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn."
"I will write two blog posts/month for you."
"Your website has this, this and this issue. I can rebuild it for you and you'll see immediate results."
All of these are suggestions that they claim will help the business owner.
The poor guy, without an inkling of an idea, starts forking over his hard-earned dollars to these service providers.
A few months down the line...
Crickets.
Each freelancer or agency says, "I did ABC. But you also need XYZ. That's why you didn't get clients".
The conveniently pass blame to the other agency or the area of marketing the business owner did not have money to focus on. E.g. After shamelessly taking $10,000 for a website rebuild, the agency will say, you need SEO to drive traffic to the website.
Now, 6 months down the line, with a few thousand dollars spent, the business owner is back at square one.
All these imbeciles have left a terrible taste in his mouth regarding marketing.
Here's what I tell these business owners whenever they've reached out to me.
"You've not done any marketing at all. There is no one sure-fire, ONE method that can help you. What you need is a cohesive marketing effort, where your website, content strategy, copy, social media, SEO and everything in between work together.
It requires a significant investment.
If you pick and choose, you're certainly not going to get results.
Alternatively, you may pick all of it and go at it on a small scale. You may stand a better chance of succeeding."
Here's an even better way of looking at it.
Ask, "What is your biggest challenge?"
It always is some version of , "No one knows about my business. I need more customers".
To let people know about you, you need two things - a place and a method. Let me explain.
- A "place" where your ideal customer may find out what you do. This can be a store, an office, or your website.
- A "method" to get people there. While there are several ways to achieve this, I'd say, start with one method to generate traffic and solid copywriting to help them understand how you can help. This can be broken down into:
- Traffic generated by paid traffic (Google and Meta ads)
- Engage + Convert using a well-written landing page
Everything else can wait.
Here's the thing.
Gary Vee wasn't lying when he said, "Marketers ruin everything".
Here's another thing - "Marketers also love to complicate everything".
It makes us feel important.
An aside... sometimes, you need to get real deep, to help your boss or colleagues understand what it is that you do. Unfortunately, everyone thinks they know marketing just because they watched a cool ad". That's a story for another day.
Back to our situation.
Think in simple terms.
Define: Who are you serving?
Traffic: Where do these people hang out?
Engagement: How can you get them to look at you?
Conversion: What will get them to try you.
That's it. Marketing 101.
The CPC and the CTR and the ROAS can come later.
Ok. My arm is sore after keeping it in the same position. Another delightful, painful round of stretching awaits.