First - make sure you forget the jargon, like the word 'entrepreneur'; the word 'marketing' has been widely adopted and now everyone and their mothers are 'marketers' when in reality maybe they are 'sales persons' or 'advertisers' or 'network marketers' (sales people technically but relying heavily on connections or pyramids)
Being able to orchestrate a a high ROI paid Google Ad or Facebook Ad makes you an advertiser not a marketer. This important because if you happen to fit in this category, internally you need to operate and think as an advertiser (madmen type of approach right with images, captions, fonts, PPC, making pretty and effective ads) and that means that in your own advertising assets you speak to your customers offering them the ad value proposition and not the generic marketing proposition, which can dilute interest, confuse potential clients and lose you a client.
Even if you use the work marketing on your own ads - internally you speak as an advertiser, focusing on what people think is marketing which is advertising on social media, uploading pics, creating PPC campaigns.
I'm mentioning all this because, an experienced and or well trained (educated) marketing expert probably wouldn't have this lead generation problem. At Unthink, I think we have helped about 5 or 6 other marketing agencies with their own work - we stopped doing this a few years back unless we got some sort of ongoing retainer from the agency. But even Tuesday, I gave a presentation to local (older) business men and women and amongst them was a self titled "Business Success Strategist For Online Growth" - before presentations each introduced themselves and gave their pitch.
Hers was something like: I help small business owners get more leads online and close more sales through growth strategies and social media marketing" I'm paraphrasing because she mentioned a few other things but this is the jist of it.
After my presentation on "Digital Inbound Marketing Is Not Magic, And How It Really Works" - I talked about bounce rate, management level efforts, SEO, blogging, vlogging, customer facing efforts, good Google preferred website design best practices, etc. she approached me and says:
- "I would love to speak with you because I have a website that has 'good ranking' I come up on the 'first page of Google' but I haven't gotten any leads in a while..."
!?!?!?
So yeah, this is common. Amazing sales person but not a marketer.
Now, if you are a good social media 'marketer' and can generate amazing PPC campaigns, show them off! Take screen shots, and showcase them in your website, show them off in your own facebook page, maybe create a facebook group and use that group to share content with key business individuals who might end up hiring you eventually. - nurture them by providing them with the DIY approach and you will see that many will actually just hire you instead because you are the expert.
I get this a lot - I'm a guest speaker somewhere and share my insights and literally teach individuals on clever simple marketing tricks and they still come up to me asking me for a quote or those more sophisticated ask me for a proposal for something specific.
People will hire you not because of your so called expertise, but for demonstrating that you care enough to be an industry leader, on-going learning, caring about them, and for saving them the time from having to do it themselves.
If you do full management level marketing where you actually develop sales systems for their teams, design and create websites that are so effective they actually make the owner money, generate landing pages, create CTAs, work with them for in person 'customer facing' efforts, you manage all their lead generation, customer nurturing, cross promote with other relevant sources and industry leaders, you create the graphics, the copy, the paid campaigns, study their analytics and improve, run A/B tests on as many things as possible, etc. etc. etc. - they're going to hire for only one of those thing plus being able to save them the time of having to learn and do it themselves.
It's your job to also think as a sales person, knowing what is it that ticks your customer and how can you be of the greatest value and then only speaking about that (asking questions and making them talk about that only!!) Most clients pretty much sell themselves if you let them do the talking.
As a marketer - you think of this before you get the lead and create funnels addressing their possible FUDs before they even reach you so that when they do you are already addressing them and converting them quicker.
At www.Unthink.me - we focus on creating these funnels so that by the time a client gets a lead is pretty much sold and just needs to be confirmed. That's regardless of the organization's size. Right now we are working to improve a large custom software development agency in New Jersey, www.betabulls.com, with such funnels so that they can truly showcase their expertise, answer questions before they arise, and get better qualified and ready to go leads for software contracts.
If your problem is generating leads to begin with well that's just as much homework to get to the point where you know what to put in an ad, website, flyer, banner, card, etc. You need to know who your customer is, you need to understand inbound marketing.
Here's a related article: http://blog.unthink.me/what-is-inbound-marketing-and-can-it-really-help-my-business
- create buyers persona for your product, assimilate a potential client's situation, their lifestyle, their point in life with the business 'What are they looking for now to grow?" - how can you fit in that possible answer?
- create value for them on that specific problem, use their relevant keywords and make the content or value whatever you create - available to them through your fb groups, page, twitter, etc. add it to your website, send out emails, run a PPC campaign addressing this one specific problem and linking the ad to a 'continued reading' page (landing page) instead of directly to a sales/purchase page - people need to be babied and nurtured first and fully trust you and that goes away if you straight for their wallet.
If you have any further or more specific questions, because I wrote this with a very broad assumption of your situation, please feel free to message me. Also if you would prefer to hire me and my team at www.Unthink.me - check us out, send me a message and I will answer any question you may have. We are dedicated to remaining the most affordable agency for new and small businesses and work with budgets as low as $100/month!
As a thank you, I would appreciate a like to our facebook page: http://facebook.com/iwillunthink
- Humberto Valle, CoFounder of Unthink Digital Marketing.
