In this day and age of online and offline marketing, many small business owners don’t understand how to market themselves online let alone offline with traditional media.
Marketing agencies seem to be popping up everywhere, with copywriters and graphic designers even, hanging out shingles saying that thou art a marketing or advertising agency.
It’s quite the tragedy and yet more and more freelancers continue to make this transition, thinking that they can offer a soup-to-nuts service and contract out the work that they themselves are not able to do.
Now before you get your blood pressure up, let me say that this process works for a lot of great freelancers who have years of experience in all aspects of advertising and marketing. There’s a ton of talent available on the market right now. Just check out any of the freelance sites and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I thought it would be interesting to compile a short list of the various combinations that I’ve run across over the years. See which category you fall into and are you really satisfied with the results you are getting from your advertising and marketing efforts?
Here goes….
2.) You don’t do any outside advertising and maybe just have signage or minimal internal marketing.
3.) You have an in-house agency, maybe just one person who creates and places your advertising and marketing.
4.) You have an advertising and or marketing agency that you pay to create and place your advertising.
5.) You create your own ads but have an outside media buyer place them for you.
6.) You work with a graphic designer who thinks they know it all and is attempting to service your business on all fronts.
You see how many possible combinations there are to this mix? If you have one I missed, feel free to contact us and I’ll add it on the end.
Now, here’s some commentary about the agency side of the coin….
I’ve seen more outside agencies blow it with accounts. One ad agent I had contact with referred to himself as ‘a media pimp.’ Another ad firm figured they had it made with their branding strategy. Little did they know that the door was open and they would soon be asked to leave! What a tragedy. They could have made huge inroads and helped this small business grow by leaps and bounds. Did they really understand the business? No. Did they ever work on online marketing for this business? None that I ever saw. Did they attempt to come up with anything creative and out of the box to drive traffic? Not! They stayed with traditional methods thinking everything was just fine.
Do you see a pattern here? I hope you do, because many businesses go through similar scenarios with their agencies; and freelancers for that matter. You know, they fire one and go in house. Hire another then fire them and contract pieces of the pie. And then fire them and go back to another agency thus the vicious cycle repeats itself.
The funny thing is that I don’t even work at or with an agency anymore. If anything, I’ve taken an unbiased approach as I travel and come across small businesses, freelancers, agencies and those that think of themselves as sharp marketing tools in the shed.
By the way, are you looking for that extra edge and want to develop new business and increase your sales? Then I suggest you: Check out my New Guide .
Stay tuned – we’ll be right back…
Dave Krygier
Publisher