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.

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

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 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.

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 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?

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