Why Business People Get Mad About Marketing

Are you mad about marketing or something else?

Ask any marketer worth her salt if she’s good and she’ll be armed with countless use cases, stories and happy, customer testimonials to convince you that she is the solution to your marketing problem. But how come so many of you find me every week, schedule a time to talk with me and start by complaining how mad you are about marketing?

What exactly is the problem most of the time? It’s lack of marketing results that makes people mad, not so much marketing itself. The bottom line is marketing is a game of failure. Most landing pages fail. Most ads don’t convert. Most direct mail doesn’t get opened. Emails either.

But marketers won’t often tell you this flat out because they want you to hire them to do what they do best; design, programming, traffic, content, integration, analytics or all of the above found in the rare professional among the ranks of mere, marketing consulting professionals. Is your website designer or programmer concerned or even asking about your desired marketing results?

No, the SEO guy will convince you need SEO. The King of Branding will assure you it’s your brand that needs love. Same with the Social Media Queen. And your website designer simply wants to make the website pretty. After all designers design. Programmers code. Few humans do both exceptionally well. Which is reason #498 that people get mad about marketing. We can’t or don’t find the right people. Paying the wrong people gets expensive, fast.

Also, think about what the seminar guys are really doing. They sell INFORMATION. Information is not advice. Or they are motivating you. If you are lucky and set a strong intention, you could get some useful input, education, possibly even some advice about getting better marketing results for your business. Not in a general way. But a specific enough way you leave that seminar knowing exactly what and how to get the marketing result you want. Hardly ever happens.

Information is not advice. You can’t teach a kid to ride a bike in a seminar. (Same title as a famous sales book by David Sandler.) With information the burden is always on you to make sense of it. You must climb that new, steep learning curve. Why? For example, is it really in your best interest or your company’s best interest for you to learn how to run your own marketing automation software? Probably not. But somehow you must attain a positive marketing result.

There is NO silver bullet in marketing so whenever we put our faith, limited budget and trust into the SEO wizard ready to deliver his bag of Ninja marketing tricks to please you, never. You need to surround yourself with the person or people who do know and have proven to get a marketing result that is RELEVANT to your business. And you need to know they know this stuff before you hire them!

You know the story …

You finally find someone who can build your website, fix your website, integrate your website, get more and better traffic to your website and do all this amazing stuff that costs money except get you new customers. You get a quote. You listen to their convincing story about how great this is going to be by next Tuesday and you sign off on it.

You pay up front because that’s how it works for the best of the best. They don’t trust you. You don’t trust them. It’s a great place to start a relationship. Not. We’ve all been burned. This is reason #297 that we are mad about marketing.

Then they miss deadlines. Instead of 90 days it’s 120. The budget goes up when they start asking for money. After all, they’ve got bills too.

But what are really mad about? Is it truly the “marketing?” Or is it something else?

In the end it’s the sheer LACK OF MARKETING RESULTS that makes you mad. If you are careful to measure results you will not be happy because no matter how much money you pour into this bucket there are never enough new leads, prospects, customers or revenue to justify the marketing expense. This is why you are mad.

If you’re like most people in smaller companies, you wait. You keep the faith. This happens often because the person you hired is someone you know. Perhaps it’s your wife or husband or life partner working with you in marketing or designing the new website. Or a friend. Perhaps it was someone at a past company you knew and trusted. And you have them running your marketing or a big project because it’s the path of least resistance to hire someone you know. It’s hard work, talent, time and money to properly recruit, attract, interview, screen, hire, train, manage and possibly fire a friend or family member.

But this happens all the time. And you wait too long with that SEO thing. You wait six months at $3,000 a pop and you don’t get squat for it. This is why you’re mad. Big money. No result.

This is the primary reason people get mad about marketing. It costs money. When you get nothing back, you lose money and time. That hurts. In fact, in hurts so much that it often takes many smaller companies right out of the game. Then it’s back to a day job for the owner. Rats.

Another element of the insanity that takes place in marketing, and it’s a huge reason small business owners are especially unhappy when they find me, is the technology. The technologies we rely on to market these days simple confound even the brightest of human beings. But just because someone is great at molecular biology or air conditioning repair does make them a software or marketing maven. This is why you don’t make your own paper clips. It’s not your highest and most productive use of time or talent.

Marketing doesn’t have to make you mad. What if you never had to worry again about NOT KNOWING WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW?

Think about this for a minute. If you didn’t have the issue of NOT knowing what you don’t know in marketing, could and would you avoid making many of the same mistakes that made you mad in the past?

What if you had someone you could send every marketing sales pitch or proposal to so they could vet it for you, dissect it and come back to you with the bottom line? This could only be possible if the person you trust with this responsibility KNOWS what you do NOT know. And they are paid to advice you instead of deliver the silver bullet solution that never exists.

Then you are protected. It’s like having an instant defense or shield against making poor, uninformed marketing decisions. This also frees you to do what you do best because there will never be enough time in a day. Time is money so the more wisely you allocate your time the better your business results will be because you no longer have to WORRY about marketing or the lack of results that really pains you.

What if you never had to get mad about marketing again because you have a trusted adviser to help you, guide you, protect you from making all the mistakes you could make not knowing what you don’t know about marketing or technology or hiring the people we need to get the tech and creative work done well, on time, on budget? How much would that be worth you? Hard to tell until you try.

I love my job because I’m in the trenches of small business sales, marketing, team and tech all day long, each and every day. It’s a blast. But it’s maddening for me sometimes because I see the mayhem. I see the big bucks flushed down the tubes. I see the people get fired. I watch the business owner cry. I feel their fear. I do my very best to bring sound advice, planning and sanity.

You nor I could ever possibly know all there is to know about sales, marketing, team and technology. Same with taxes and law. That’s why we hire and pay people to help us build our businesses. The better the talent the better the execution, in theory.

Bigger companies have the capital and talent to manage through these obstacles. But small companies do not have the same luxury. Not knowing what you need to know in any one of these disciplines can take you out of business at the small company level. Many have failed this way.

Good reason to get mad about marketing? Not really. Getting mad never helps.

Surrounding yourself with the right advisers does. A great marketing adviser, like your tax, investment or legal adviser, will take the time to get to know you, your business, your goals, your skill set and where you need the most help from them. They will not be selling you tactics. They are paid to advise you!

When a great adviser goes to work on your behalf you are then free of the burden to know what you do not or cannot know. You are protected from yourself and the many sharks out to get into your wallet. You can then avoid unnecessary losses assuming the advice you are given is accurate. And this will be a function or your adviser’s experience and track record, as well as your ability to lead them and provide them the resources they need.

As an added point of reference on this check out another article I wrote about finding talent.

Considering this, is there really any good reason to get mad about marketing any longer?

I always appreciate your comments, questions and suggestions on the CME blog. (Just type them in below!)

Want to reach me personally?

Click here now to connect with me.

About the Author