The message behind this post can save you from years of frustration and help you dramatically improve your future sales results!
I received an email yesterday, from someone who has occasionally emailed me for marketing advice over the past couple of years. This person (who will remain nameless for obvious reasons), is one of my newsletter subscribers and has been in business for years as a trainer and author. She emailed me, asking for some free marketing advice – Before explaining that she was still unable to afford professional marketing help.
By the way, her work is very good and people seem to love her courses, as the feedback she gets is excellent. She also works extremely hard.
So, we are talking about a hard working person, with a great product – Yet after years of trying, they are still making so little progress that they are unable to even afford a basic, inexpensive business service.
Here’s why:
Hard work is NOT the secret of business success
If it was, our grandparents would have been millionaires!
By working hard marketing her business incorrectly, this lady is like the rower; rowing their boat as hard as they can in the wrong direction. The harder they work, the further they go from where they want to be.
I have to admit, even after 15 years of running a successful marketing business, I’m still amazed whenever I hear an intelligent person say that they have been conducting their own marketing for years with no success; yet they persist in carrying on with no professional help.
Now, I can understand a relatively new business forgetting to put a budget in place for their marketing. However, when a business has been trading for years, never making any real money because it’s determined not to invest in professional marketing help, that’s just something that makes zero sense to me.
Ironically, these businesses often spend MORE on marketing, than those that have their marketing looked after professionally.
How come?
Because they waste so much money on ineffective marketing:
- They send out mail shots that cost money, but no one reads.
- They buy costly brochures, which achieve nothing for them and in many cases will LOSE them sales because of how they are used and how they are worded.
- The send email marketing to people, which contains ‘pedestrian’ copy and thus fails to inspire people to call them or buy from them.
- They attend dead-end networking events.
- They market haphazardly, with no idea of how to leverage what they are doing so it’s massively more effective.
- They get websites built that fail to convert readers into customers.
- They waste massive amounts of their valuable time building online networks via; Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc – with little if anything financially to show for it.
- They buy advertising, which contains the wrong message, so no one takes any notice of it.
- They make short-term marketing decisions – rather than work from a simple but powerful marketing strategy.
…. and they keep on repeating these mistakes for years; until they either go broke or become too demotivated to continue.
Conclusion
Here’s what I have found: Many businesspeople confuse having the tools to do the job, with having the experience and expertise. They think that because they have a; computer, Internet access, a car and a phone, that they can market their services. They just need that ‘lucky break.’
This is like suggesting that owning a surgeon’s operating theatre, means you can perform heart or brain surgery; so long as your luck’s in!
Thankfully, sales and marketing results are extremely easy to measure. If you are getting the sales and profits you want, change nothing. If not, I strongly suggest you speak with a marketing professional.
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The saying “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” holds true, but at the same time, it’s hard to admit when it is broken, and even harder to admit that you need help.
I’m often guilty of this. You see, instead of just bringing in the professionals, I’ll spend a fair bit of time trying to fix whatever it is. Then, after I’ve done everything but start pulling my hair out, I’ll bite the bullet and do what I should have done in the first place: call in someone who’s better at dealing with the issue than I am. For me, it’s not the money. It’s a need to tinker, pride, and having to admit that I can’t do it. Ok, and asking for help is never a nice thing to do either.
You see, I know that bringing in someone who knows what they’re doing is faster, more efficient, and better all around, but I don’t remember that part until after the fact. It’s odd because asking someone a question is essentially the same, but there’s something about handing over the cash that makes your inadequacies…tangible…it’s admitting to yourself that you can’t do it, and making that fact sorta public i.e. someone else besides you knows you can’t do it.
Angie Haggstrom
Senior Copywriter, Angie’s Copywriting
Jim my man, great post if I must say!!! I couldn’t agree more with you. The #1 concept behind effective marketing strategies is so simple yet soo very powerful to use when you actually get it. Understanding that concept will not only save you money but it will also save you alot of time!
Excellent post, which I hope everyone in buisniess reads.
Ya know what though Jim? The people who need to take this advice the most are the ones who will ignore it.
@Angie
Surely you would not let your business die because you feel awkward admiting you need help. That’s insane – no?
Some great points here.
One thing that has been touched upon here, which I have found to be true, is that although people CLAIM that it’s the cost of expert help that stops them using a professional marketer, it isn’t.
Every marketing person I know, has clients who started using their services when they had very little funds. They made sure they found the funds to market their business, because it mattered to them.
Equally, I have personally heard from people with comfortable access to the funds required for professional marketing, who have later gone broke because of a lack of marketing and thus sales!
Ya nailed it again Jim.
I have never understood people who scrimp on professional help.
Are they really dumb enouigh to believe they are saving money?
So, maybe its like the survival of the fittest in business. Maybe these guys need to be there, so people with a business and a brain can own the competition.
great post Jim!! People spend huge amount in email marketing, brochures and other marketing tactics rather than hiring a marketing professional. I would prefer to invest my money in hiring a professional rather than becoming a professional myself. A professional marketer can make better decisions and implement something fresh new to take a business to peak.
@Greg Of course not, but it’s still the idea that I have to try myself first. Whereas, if I’d have just hired someone in the first place, it would have taken me far less time lol. And that isn’t just marketing…tech stuff, administrative duties, accounting… it all works the same.
Of course, sorting out the good providers from the bad ones isn’t always easy either, and has caused me a great deal of distress in the past.
I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment – a lot of people know what to do but they don’t know how to do it. Personally, I would not have this person as a client even if they wanted to pay. Some people are destined by their limited outlook to run lifestyle microbusinesses.
Jim:
Another good post. It’s especially true in the REal Estate arena.
I see brokerage after brokerage holding onto old fashioned ineffective and expensive marketing techniques all the time.
I mean, mailing postcards, calling FSBOs, bothering recently expireds, holding open houses, etc., etc.
How about attracting some NEW motivated prospects via the www, where 99% of them are shopping!
RM
Great post. Many inevitable facts.
It is the mindset that marketing budget is for spending, not generating; wasting, not investing
And people think they could be professional designer as long as they install they install Photoshop.