Thanks for the comment.

I am either not reading your comment correctly, or you are saying that the reason some businesses refuse to invest in professional help, is that every professional they come into contact with, has ‘crap’ marketing?

But those same professional providers have other clients, who responded to the same marketing messages and are happy to pay for professional help. If it’s down to bad marketing, they wouldn’t have paying clients. Instead, they do have paying clients; but they also have people who will never become clients, because they refuse to pay for professional help.

What about those small businesses, who refuse to pay for professional marketing help? Most marketing companies are extremely good at marketing their services, so why do these same people refuse to hire professional marketing help?

In fact, within professional marketing, there’s a name for people with this approach; Serial Freebie Hunters!

If you speak with the various agencies that provide free business development advice, (like Business Link here in the UK), they will tell you that the same small businesses apply for all the free stuff. They will do anything to avoid paying. They want the help, they just won’t pay for it.

They see all professional help, no matter how effective it is, as a cost rather than an investment.

An alternative interpretation of the reason they don’t get professional help is that the professional hasn’t proved to them that the value they add is worth the cost.

I’ve seen plenty of professionals do crap websites and poor marketing letters too. If the business owner doesn’t perceive the professional to be capable of doing a much better job than they could do themselves then they’re going to say they can’t afford it.

I exaggerate for impact, of course, but I think my point is valid. Buying professional help is really scary – how do you know how good it’s going to be? They all tell you they’re great, and they all have great testimonials. Professionals are often quite bad at reducing this perceived risk for potential clients.

Ian

Thanks for the comment. Google offers a wide range of services, which are deliver to users like yourself free of charge. The ‘horrid’ groups you refer to are usually places where unpaid, fellow users help one another.

I disagree with your point, that the biggest companies do not get away with offering poor service. Thanks to Twitter, FaceBook, blogs etc, it’s possible for a disgruntled customer to tell a large number of people when they are getting a bad service. In fact, the customer has never had so much influence over the companies they use, because they have never had such a huge audience.