Marketing 101: Hiring an Agency
Running a few ads in the paper? No problem. Coming up with new messaging, cool ads, radio, TV, easy. No problem. Create and manage a digital ad campaign? Search engine marketing? Search engine optimization? Social Media Marketing? Google analytics? It’s either an in-house marketing specialist or marketing agency, pick your poison. I’ve had a few agencies over the years, some good, some not so much, but either way all the lessons I’ve learned have been expensive!
There have always been advertising agencies. Companies that specialized in creating brand. Companies that have consolidated talent and creativity, to support your brand and be a partner in your marketing plan. Mostly it was larger companies that could afford their services. The small or medium sized businesses, like car dealerships, usually lived and died on their ability to self-market. If you were a good marketer, you could sell some cars. Often, the size and success of a car dealership were almost entirely dependent on how strong they were on the marketing side.
The size and success of a car dealership was almost entirely dependent on how strong they were on the marketing side.
Fast forward to today, and you need a translator just to understand how the digital marketing universe works. SEO, SEM, SMM, digital display, the top of the funnel, re-targeting, geo-targeting, demographic targeting, pre-roll ads for media, clicks, time on site, landing pages, site quality score, form fills, calls, leads, and conversions. You need a friggin’ degree, maybe a few, to figure all that shit out.
Enter the digital marketing agency. The solver of all your problems. Just throw us a bunch of your money, we’ll show you a crap load of spreadsheets to make us look good, and you still won’t know why you’re not selling cars. Because you don’t have a degree in digital marketing.
I have had a few runs at this. Almost a decade ago I was starting a new used car brand. I talked to a few marketing partners, and one stuck out to me. They were pretty slick. Had a ton of great reviews, which of course I have now come to understand, were probably created by them, but I digress. They talked a great game. They would build me an amazing website, optimize the crap out of it, run a bunch of digital ad campaigns and then provide me reports on the results. I was sold. About three months and forty grand later, nothing. Lots of shiny reports. Clicks. Time on site. Yada yada. But no lead volume, no sales. Swing and a miss. We would have monthly meetings in their big fancy office. Large wooden meeting table, big screen TV to show reports. But no volume of deals to justify what we were doing. Luckily the ad agency had the answer! That’s right, more money!
Since then, I’ve partnered with a few agencies. Big and small. Good and bad. If I had to pick the best, I guess it was the big ones. They, at least, had layers of accountability in the form of management and salespeople, but you paid for those layers of accountability. The more people involved, the more margin you paid. The one thing in common they all had, the answer was always “spend more money.” “This is working really well, you should up your spend!” “Your results could be better if you invested more here.” “We recommend this great new product; it would really drive your sales!” More, more, more. Always more. But are you getting more leads, more sales? No. But you are spending more money. And guess what happens when you stop spending more? Those marketing agencies forget about you and start focusing on those clients that they can get to spend more. Your results decline, as that marketing agency get focused on the new shiny client. But the good news is when you complain, they will have the answer! That's right. Spend more money.
If I had to pick, the big agencies were the best.
In all seriousness, I'm certain there are some quality digital marketing agencies out there. But if you're a small to midsize business, like a car dealership, they are tough to find. Let's face it, they are in business to make money. They make money when you spend money, and a great deal of their attention is spent on getting you, and other businesses to spend more money. Not only that, as experience may tell you, there is always a learning curve. A quantity, sometimes never-ending quantity of time and money spent to learn about your business. Money you're spending while they learn about your business.
That's the bottom line. You hire a digital ad agency and spend a ton of money while they learn your business. Maybe, you get lucky and the results are good. Maybe, they are not so good. But either way, they are not accountable. If the results are good, it's them. if the results are bad, it's you. If you move, all that money you spent while they learned your business is gone, and probably the cycle repeats itself with some other agency. The real question is, how can you manage an effective digital marketing plan and understand it correctly? How can you avoid the risk of a marketing agency that only cares about their bottom line? Maybe it's an in-house marketing manager, but what happens when they leave? It's a conundrum, that's for sure. Good luck and good selling.
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