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How long does it take you to train an employee with no prior experience in the industry? Recognize that almost all of the marketeers have the same level of ignorance regarding the industry and your agency. Recognize this and get ready to shell out $50–$100 per hour to educate them if you decide to work with them. Add to that the value of your time that you’ll spend teaching them and you very quickly hit diminishing returns. Nothing, dear friends, is as easy as the marketeers make it sound. Be leery of statements like—“our model is easily adaptable” or, “business is business”. These comments are made to disguise their inadequacies while making you feel like a marketing infant. Trust your instincts here—what they don’t know will hurt you.
We do suggest that you work with a marketing partner (not a marketeer) that knows the industry, has experience at the agency level and across multiple product lines. Such a partner will recognize that you cannot blanket the entire market with the junk that everyone else is saturating the market with and they will spend fruitful time with you, up front and for a nominal charge, to identify your position, specialty, target market segment, and true opportunity. They will design a marketing strategy that attracts desirable clients rather than intrudes upon them. They will educate you. Not to overwhelm you, diminish you, or sell you; but to share their wisdom and experience and to provide you with enough information to make an educated decision regarding “the spend” of your marketing investment. Yes, investment, not expense. The difference between the two is also the difference between the marketeer and the marketing partner. The marketeer will talk expense and… be expensive. The marketing partner will talk investment and show you a return for your time, attention, and spend.
Know the difference and… demand the best.
Another ad, mailer, call campaign or cheesy gimmick will only cost and never generate the return that you deserve. Additionally, your reputation and integrity suffers immeasurably. No matter how good you are, you are automatically grouped with all of the others that follow the same legacy marketing strategy. Doing what everyone else does, thinking that it worked for them, is an erroneous and dangerous assumption. Unfortunately it is one perpetuated by the marketeers in their tireless scramble for your marketing buck. It is an easy and effortless strategy, that of a copycat, and a worthless one for you. Don’t let it happen to you. Understand that to differentiate you must do things differently. This starts with your identity, your message, and your value-proposition and extends deeply into the core of your culture and operation. It is not “another way” to do business; it is the way, it is your way.
Effective differentiation does not take place over night, but over time. It cannot be communicated in a once and done event but instead must be messaged, reinforced, demonstrated, and then restated creatively and uniquely in the context of a strategic environment. Such a strategy takes a knowledgeable pro, not a pretender.
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