How do I appoint a marketing agency that will work for me? If there ever was a million-dollar question, this is probably it.
To get to the answer I’m going to flip things on their head by focussing on what doesn’t work:
- Marketing agencies that don’t understand your market: This is a basic point but one that is frequently overlooked. If you don’t understand who you are trying to reach, where they ‘hang out’ and what they care about, you can’t possibly develop a campaign or channel strategy to reach and engage with them.
It doesn’t matter how viral their TikTok went for that consumer cosmetics campaign. You can’t possibly hope to replicate that success in any other sector if you don’t understand it to the same degree.
Non-specialist marketing consultancies don’t understand the construction and building products sectors – including the window and door industry – and they don’t make time to, because it takes years!
Without that market background you can’t navigate often turbulent waters, see the threats and more importantly, identify the opportunities.
- Without strategy your campaign is a waste of your time and money: Strategies are important. They identify where you are and where you are going, plus the timelines, key milestones and the KPIs, that will help you to get there.
Marketing strategies are effective if the business or organisation has a strong sense of direction, if it understands the market in which it is operating and the influences upon it.
In summary, point two is really an expansion of the first. The agency delivering your campaign needs to understand the market and influences upon it to help you achieve your business goals – and you have to set them and be clear about what your objectives are.
- Marketing channels don’t work in isolation: If you don’t set clear goals and your marketing agency doesn’t understand the market, your marketing strategy won’t be effective. The same goes for your channel strategy. How can you possibly know who to target and where, if you don’t understand who you are trying to reach or what will make them sit up and take notice?
If you put your faith in one media – digital vs print, direct channels, or third-party – your return on those other channels will be diminished. The right channel isn’t the right channel because it serves up neat metrics. The right channels are the ones which support you in telling your brand story and which collectively contribute to increased sales.
- Your content is boring (probably)!: What you want to say and how you want to say it, is not always what your customers want to hear. They want solutions and opportunities – and they want to see evidence to support it.
AI generated content is clearly topical. It has its place, accelerating research and supporting the creation of content.
However, AI can’t deliver what your prospects want. They want to see evidence that someone who looks like them or their business, has used your service or bought your products, and has sold more or made more money as a consequence.
- Your marketing agency is passive: If your marketing agency doesn’t understand the market, doesn’t have a strategy, and doesn’t know how to reach your audience, it will slip into a passive role.
They won’t steer you on the channels that you use, or how they should be used together. They won’t advise you on the content that resonates with your audience because it won’t be measuring it, or want to share those measurements with you, if something isn’t working.
It won’t drive things.
If you want to work with a ‘wallflower agency’ that passively does what you tell it to do, Lasco is probably not the marketing consultancy for you.
Don’t get us wrong, we listen, and we work with you to support your goals.
However, we believe that strategy delivers results.
AI generated social posts regurgitating something that has been said a million times before, or a rambling video because the MD loves the sound of their own voice, doesn’t fall into this camp. I mean, would you want to listen?
