Never Fall For These Dirty Little Marketing Secrets That Are Costing You Money

Never Fall For These Dirty Little Marketing Secrets That Are Costing You Money

I'm going to share some dirty little secrets of marketing with you today. There are some critically important elements that most marketing providers neglect to share with their clients. But you need to know about them so they don't impact your marketing results or your revenue growth.

Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with RialtovMarketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate revenue growth. So if that's something that you're looking to accomplish, we can help.

Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I'm excited to dig into this with you today. Now, most of us have watched great magicians like David Copperfield or Lance Burton. What happens? We watch in amazement. But we're always left thinking about how they did it. What are they hiding from us? Right? What secrets do they have? How do they actually do this? Right?

What You May Not Want to Hear, but Need to Know

Now, marketing is the same way. But what your marketing providers aren't telling you or sharing with you could be costing you money and impacting your results. So what I'm about to share with you will help you know what to look out for so that you can hold your marketing providers accountable. Super important. So there are seven things I'm going to share with you.

First one is most of your marketing efforts won't work. Very few marketing marketers will actually tell you that. Marketing is all about testing. There's nothing that works over and over again across the board without tweaks happening. It just doesn't happen. But most people don't tell you that marketing is about testing over and over again and quickly to find out what works and what doesn't. Okay, most of the things you try aren't going to work, but the things that do are going to make up for all of the things that you've invested in that didn't work. So our goal really is to test frequently and quickly so that we can identify those things that work and invest the dollars in what's working and drop what's not. Most marketers will not tell you that.

Second thing, most marketing tactics take time. So many people get into marketing and think about, oh, I need to do X, I need to do Facebook ads or I need to be on Facebook or I need to have a blog, whatever it is, to generate leads quickly. And the reality is, most things in marketing takes time. You've got to think long term, not short term. If you come into marketing making short term decisions, I can almost guarantee you that inevitably they will negatively impact you in the long run. So you've got to have realistic expectations. Even things like paid ads that can typically work fairly quickly take time to optimize. They're not going to be fully optimized right out of the gate. Again, there's testing that needs to take place before you're going to really feel like you're at a place where they're optimized. And even once they're optimized, it's not set it and forget it. So most marketing tactics take time, and a lot of marketers will not tell you that. Frankly, the marketing industry as a whole is notorious for this, making promises, over promising, and under delivering. Okay? So you need to come into marketing with a long term viewpoint, not short term, super important.

The Marketing Metrics Trap

Third thing, most marketing metrics don't matter. They don't matter. I see this all the time. Clients that are working with providers and they're getting these monthly reports that make everything look great. But Dang, things don't feel great. I'm not generating as much leads as I should. And that's because the marketing metrics that are being reported don't matter. They don't necessarily translate to higher quality leads that are converting and growing your company. How many visitors you have or the increase in site visitors you have to your website, doesn't matter if those aren't converting to leads. How many people are following you on Facebook, how many people are on your email list, none of that crap matters. Are you generating leads that are converting to clients or customers? That's what matters. So don't be fooled by smoke and mirrors about, hey, these marketing metrics look great if they're not converting to customers and leads, that's what really matters. I don't care if you rank for these five keywords. If those five keywords have a total of 100 searches a month, who cares? It's not going to amount to any business. So you got to dig below the surface on metrics to make sure that you're focused on the right metrics and you're tracking the right metrics. Most metrics don't matter, and most people will not tell you that.

Why Guarantees In Marketing Might Not Be As Great As You Think

Number four, your results are not guaranteed. I've seen marketers that have guarantees seen this SEO. You talk to an SEO, a search engine optimization provider, who's guaranteeing that they're going to put you on the first page in search results. Hate to break it to you, but they don't control that. They have ideas of some of the things that they can do to help improve the potential that you're going to show up in search results, but they don't control Google. As marketers, there are so many things beyond our control that are going to impact your results. So I would be really leery of somebody that's guaranteeing these wild outlandish results because the reality is they really can't. And you're going to go down that path. And I think there's a very high likelihood that if you fall for that in one month, two months, three months, it could be six months, you're going to realize that they made all these promises that they could not deliver on. Okay? So there are so many things beyond our control as marketers. Anybody that has a crazy, wild guarantee, I don't think they can meet it, because there are things that they can't control that are going to impact that. So really important to keep that in mind.

Number five, most of our advice as marketers is biased towards what we sell. If you approach an agency that specializes in search engine optimization or content marketing, whatever it may be, maybe they have multiple services, they are biased. They are naturally going to say that you need what they offer. Okay? So you need to keep that in mind. If you approach a marketer saying, hey, this is what we want to accomplish, what do we need to do to get there? They're naturally going to say that what they do is going to help you get there. So I think if you're approaching a marketer from a standpoint of, hey, we're here and we want to accomplish that, what do we need to do? I think it's really important to make sure that the person that's giving you that advice doesn't have an incentive in the recommendations that they're making. Really important. So you need to make sure that you're getting unbiased advice when you're talking to a marketer, because the reality is we're all biased towards what we sell.

Number six, two more. You need help in other areas of your marketing. That's the reality. I see this all the time. We specialize in three areas of marketing strategy, planning, and leadership. Running your marketing. If you approach an agency that is doing more implementation work. Like maybe they're doing SEO or social media management or content marketing. If you approach them telling them. Hey. We need this and we need your help to do this. Odds are if you haven't spent time dialing in your website where it needs to be. Because all of those efforts are going to help drive traffic back to your website. If your website is not where it needs to be, a lot of your other marketing efforts are going to be negatively impacted. But if the agency you approach doesn't do website design, in most cases, they're really not going to be concerned about it. If you're doing more tactical work, but you don't have the information, the fuel that's going to really help your marketing provider drive the vehicles, that's a problem, right? What's the fuel? Your target market, your messaging? Are your services and your offers really dialed in? And do they match the ideal clients you intend to attract? If you're not providing that information to the marketing agency or the marketing provider that you're working with, the vehicles they're going to use lack fuel, but a lot of them aren't going to tell you that they're just going to start doing the work. So the reality is, in a lot of cases, you need other marketing help outside of the help that you're already receiving, but people aren't telling you that. You don't have the full picture or the information that you need. And that is really going to negatively impact the efforts that you're investing in from a marketing standpoint.

Last one, we're not great at everything we do or offer. Especially if you approach a provider that is one size fits. Hey, we can work with everybody. We're a one stop shop. I'm sorry, but marketing is far too broad to be great at everything. It's impossible. So if you're approaching somebody thinking that they can do everything that you need under one roof, I think you are going to be sadly mistaken. Because even marketing companies or agencies that offer a wide variety of services, the reality is they really excel at one or two of those and that's what they really lead with. And the rest of it they offer because clients ask for it, but it's not really their forte and they may not be great at it. Don't you want to work with people that are great at what they do? If you do, odds are you're really going to have to focus on bringing in specialists that are excellent and specialized in what they do and they know it cold. So you may have to work with more people than you would really like to get the best providers and get the best results. So really important to keep that in mind.

Conclusion: Never Fall For These Dirty Little Marketing Secrets That Are Costing You Money

So I hope you found this helpful, these seven things, just having visibility to them so that as you talk to marketing providers, you're aware of them and you know what to look for is half the battle. Okay, it really is half the battle. But how can you really make sure that you avoid these dirty little marketing secrets I've shared with you today? There are two ways I think you can do it.

One, if you're an owner of a business and you're managing your marketing efforts, the reality is, if it's not your thing, you're going to have to level up your skills. You got to educate yourself and become a marketer so that you know enough and you have enough expertise to manage and direct the providers that you're working with, whether they're in house or they're outsourced. That's the first thing.

The second way is you can hire a marketing consultant or an in house. If you're hiring in house, you need an executive level marketer, somebody that's got really strong strategy skills to drive your entire plan because that type of person is going to have the expertise. They're not going to know everything about all the tactics. And remember what I said, we can't be great at everything. But people that have executive level and strategic experience are going to have the expertise to know how to manage your implementers and keep them accountable and on the right track so that everybody is working towards the same goal. So the second way to do it is to hire a consultant or an in house executive level marketer that's going to sit on your side of the table. You need somebody that's going to sit on your side of the table, look out for your interest, and hold your entire team accountable and driving towards the same goal. So there are two ways that you can help avoid these, but just being aware of these is going to help you in and of itself.

So I hope you found this helpful. Couple of things. If you need help with this, please head on over to our website, Rialtomarketing.com. R-I-A-L-T-O marketing.com, and book a free GPS call. I would be happy to chat with you and give you some outside eyes based on where you are and give you some direction on where you should be heading to get where you want to go. The other thing that I think would be super helpful for you is over at RevenueRoadblockScorecard.com. At revenueroadblockscorecard.com, you can get visibility to your Revenue Roadblocks. The Revenue Roadblock Scorecard helps you discover and assess which of the nine Revenue Roadblocks are slowing down your business growth. Takes less than five minutes to get your personalized results. Tone of value there. So head on over there if that's something that you're interested in.

So thanks so much for tuning in. Till next time, take care.