Marketing is not a business accessory. It’s not like the pictures hanging in your waiting room or like the subscription to the magazine you never read.
You must have clearly defined goals.
Your online marketing campaign is as essential as the person who answers your office phone. It’s a part of the work you do. Every day I receive several emails from people asking me for information and advice. I try to respond to everyone, compatibly with work commitments. I ask everyone to be patient and try to better formulate their requests. It applies to a question you ask me, but it also applies when you seek help in a marketing agency, in a professional in the sector.
Do you think that whoever does this work is not a street artist and does not unleash ideas and creativity and then go on to ask for a donation? Don’t let yourself be enchanted by disco lights and impossible performance and fireworks.
Better yet: take the initiative.
Speak clearly and tell me how you plan to make more cash this year. Maybe you want to improve the organic positioning of your site for different keywords, or you want to generate a 10% increase in online sales month over month.
Or you are looking for new touch points on sales channeling, so that the sales team works with more qualified prospects…
1 – Make a list of goals.
Exit the generic and make a list of goals that includes numbers and percentages. Good advice starts from reasonable data and proposes a targeted strategy. And don’t be offended if I ask for concrete goals, budget availability, adequate financial resources. Being offended by reasonable demands only shows that it’s easy to catch yourself by showing you a show of lights and colors.
2 – Clear your expectations well.
You decide together how often and in what form your company and those who follow you will communicate with one another. You both need to agree on frequency, controls and responsibilities if you want to work methodically and successfully. A bi-weekly conference call, a weekly report via email or a face-to-face meeting when it is decided to serve. The important thing is the clarity on the times and the means if you want to take a road to success.
3 – Understand the difference between an outsourced job and an employee.
If an employee works exclusively for your company during his schedule, one of your consultants could serve multiple clients at the same time. And while everything is done to offer a high level of responses, he also thinks that it is not realistic to ask for and get an immediate answer in every question or for every request. Defining communication and response time expectations well avoids a frustrating experience for everyone.
4 – A good consultant works with you, not you.
A good consultant does not just take orders and executes. A good consultant is a partner in your work, puts ideas on the table, suggests new ideas and proposes new ways of doing things, brings information and analysis useful for making decisions and promotes ideas when they are appropriate, or even archives one’s own if not they were. This creates a long-term and successful relationship.
5 – Choose a leader for your marketing team.
A team is a collaborative whole, with different people putting their talent, their ideas and insights. But there clearly needs to be a designated leader, a recognized and valued commander in chief who makes the decisions and has the responsibility to move the car in the right direction. It is a question of authoritativeness and credibility, as well as confidence gained, given that important decisions must be made for the company.
6 – Share your experience.
A successful relationship based on an open dialogue and a constant flow of information in order to use your knowledge of the sector to create relevant content for the main recipients.
Bonus – Take advantage of creative differences.
Online marketing also involves a creative process. Sometimes a lot is in a text written with a persuasive copy or in a very significant image. And if it is important to have honest feedback from the people you work with, it is essential to ensure that the creative team continues to work serenely. A fundamental part is to continue writing, redesigning, questioning every part of the process.
You will be pleasantly surprised to see how your feedback can turn any part into something that works best.