We’ve all been there: we talk to a marketing agency that promises the moon, but once you hand over your credit card information, you’re lucky if you get a couple of rocks.
You end up feeling like Hansel and Gretel: lured from the dark woods of trying to do your own marketing to a house made of high-quality leads ready to work with you.
It’s not until you get inside the house that you realize you’ve walked right into a trap. Now you’re locked into a contract with the marketing agency that is, at best, getting you a few leads here and there; at worst, only attracting low-quality leads who were never going to be good prospects for you.
Getting stuck in a contract you’re not benefiting from is bad enough, but there are many more reasons to be afraid of bad marketing.
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1) Wasted Budget
Your marketing budget isn’t disposable income. It’s money you allocate for services and resources that will help your business grow.
When marketing fails to get you the high-quality leads it promised, it can feel a lot like you’re just throwing away the money you set aside to invest in marketing your business.
Just think of all the other things you could have used that money for, and you’ll understand why people are hesitant to invest in marketing when they’re not sure they’ll get results from it.
2) Wasted Time
It takes time to get results from any marketing campaign, but if it’s been a few months and you’re not getting quality leads from your marketing agency, at the very least you have to spend time reviewing with them why the marketing they’re doing isn’t getting results.
At worst, you might end up terminating the relationship, and now you have to spend time and energy looking for and vetting a new marketing agency.
Then you’ll have to go through the same process you went through with the last marketing agency so they can get all the information from you they need to restart your marketing campaigns.
All that is time you could have spent focusing on other areas of the business.
3) Lost Revenue
Remember the Pepé Le Pew cartoon where a black cat accidentally gets a white stripe painted down her back, leading Pepé Le Pew to think she’s a skunk?
She is not a skunk and she certainly doesn’t want to be seduced by a skunk, but the white stripe literally painted her as something she was not. The result is cats that thought she was a skunk were repelled and the skunk she didn’t want to attract wouldn’t leave her alone.
Marketing that’s not aligned with what you do and the people you serve leaves you in the same position as the painted cat: it repels your ideal clients while attracting the people you don’t want to work with.
Now you have to deal with low-quality prospects calling you because they think you’re something you’re not, and it’s unlikely the high-quality leads you want to be talking to will ever come back. That’s because it’s much harder to win back lost trust than it is to earn someone’s trust the first time around.
4) Frustrated Sales Team
When done right, Marketing and Sales should be best friends.
Marketing should bring in the leads, warm them up, then hand them off to Sales like a hot potato.
But when marketing fails to do its job, Sales has to pick up the slack. They end up wasting their time talking to unqualified leads who might never be qualified.
They have to spend more time talking to leads about the value the company provides and the benefits of working with them.
All that wasted time and effort makes it harder for the Sales team to meet its goals, which leaves them frustrated because they’re working harder for worse results.
And it leaves you frustrated, because you’re wondering why Sales isn’t meeting its goals and getting you more clients.
5) Lost Opportunities for Growth
Running a successful business requires everything to run like a well-oiled machine, and that’s just to maintain the status quo.
If you want to grow the business, everyone needs to be on their A-game, with Marketing and Sales bringing in new clients and a team that’s ready to take on the extra work.
That flow starts with Marketing, and if they’re not holding up their end, everything else falls apart.
Simply put, you can’t grow a business without a comprehensive marketing strategy that takes into account, where you are, where you want to go, and how to attract, engage, and convert the high-quality leads that will help you get there.
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If you’re ready for Big Kid Marketing that’s aligned with your brand so you can attract, engage, and convert high-quality leads, let’s talk.
