You’re a small business owner getting ready to talk to agencies about your internet marketing. So what is this conversation going to entail? What questions will the consultant ask you, and what questions should you ask them? How can you make sure you don’t get lost in details you don’t understand?
Also, how can you make sure get a sense of the value the agency offers so the strategy, execution, and budgeting are aligned?
Below are some of the questions you should be prepared to answer in an initial conversation with a marketing agency, as well as question you can ask them. Prepare for this conversation. Because – in many ways – it’s the start of your marketing effort.
Questions the Marketing Consultant Will Ask You
What can you tell me about your business?
This question is used as an icebreaker where you relay basic facts about your business.
This can be just basic info or you can start to dig in – depending on your answer. Instead of just providing backstory, start talking about your vision. Where do you hope to take your business, and how do you see marketing playing a role in your growth?
Talk about why you are in business – beyond just making money. What do you believe about business, customer service, and success? Why will your customers recommend you to friends? What gets you up every morning, eager to out-hustle the competition?
Your answer to this question lays the necessary groundwork, but can also inspire with a vision that motivates everything you do.
What kind of marketing have you done for your business so far, and how much do you know about online marketing?
This question can be more problematic than you’d think. Often prospects are reluctant to admit what they don’t know or talk about past mistakes, while others who’ve dabbled in digital marketing tactics act like they are the expert. But most of this is just negotiation tactics.
Tell the truth here. This question is a chance for you to establish honesty in the conversation, which affects everything moving forward. It’s also important that the agency understands your actual position with regard to the complexities of digital marketing.
Admit what you don’t know. Admit the mistakes you made yourself or with other agencies. If you have genuine insight share it. Be specific about what you need. The goal is to establish an approach in-line with your level of marketing experience.
Who is your competition – and what do they do better than you?
A lot of consultants will ask about competition and let you ramble about how they suck compared to you.
But savvy consultants will confront you with the reality that you’ll face difficult competition. A strategic look at who’s doing well in your market space is essential. After all, you can’t differentiate your value if you don’t acknowledge the competition’s accomplishments.
Before your call, study your competition. Note what they do well, and what you can do better.
You should also be prepared to answer:
What makes you think you’re better than you main competition?
What does your ideal customer look like?
Experienced business owners usually have a good answer for this question. Start-up ventures, on the other hand, often have no answer at all.
For this initial consultation, it’s okay to make assumptions. Who do you think will love your offer? Why will they love it? How will you reach them?
Try to be a specific as you can. Consider demographics like age, gender, interests, and location. Picture this person in your mind. Who are they, what are they doing, and what is motivating them the moment they convert for you? What leads them to that moment?
The worst answer to this question is “everybody”. Business ventures that try to sell to everybody usually end up selling to nobody. Start to create a vision that narrows down your target audience.
What does success look like to you, and how will you measure it?
How will you judge the success of a marketing campaign? What metrics do you want to see?
For the typical SMB, success is measured in revenue generating conversions.
But keep in mind that marketing does involve risk and assumptions. Sometimes an individual campaign that fails is a win because you’ve gained valuable data that lets you modify your next effort.
Digital marketing lets you measure a wide range of KPIs – more than you’ll want to discuss initially. But try to have a generally feel for what you’ll be looking for a month, 6 months, and a year into the campaigns. This will help you and the consultant start to set expectations.
What is your expected timeframe for achieving your main goals?
This is an important question with digital marketing because the timeframes are often longer than novices realize.
If you expect tons of sales and nationwide brand recognition in a matter of weeks, an experienced consultant will decline to work with you. With all of the different channels involved in online marketing, immediate results are rare.
Typical benchmarks for online marketing campaigns are 6, 18, and 24 months. Start thinking in those terms if you want to use this type of marketing.
What’s the story behind your offer/brand?
This may seem like a strange question, but it ties into the content creation strategy that is the foundation of a lot of online marketing.
Some online content marketing relies on having an underlying story that goes beyond just the benefits and features of your offer. It’s what gives your brand a voice that you can use across channels like blogs and social media. It links how people research and interact online to how you solve your customer’s problems.
How can you educate and entertain prospective customers? How can you show interest in their lifestyles?
Don’t think of this as “once upon a time” type of story. Rather, think of it as the way you communicate and connect with people beyond just creating an advertising message.
Remember, of course, that your business creates the context for your answers to all the above questions. An eCommerce business trying to sell nationally will have very different answers from a plumber marketing in a mid-size city. An entrepreneur new to business marketing will have different answers than an established company with 20 years of marketing experience and data.
Questions You Should Ask Your Consultant
How does your agency communicate with clients?
Communication breakdowns actually cause more client/agency splits than any other problem. It’s worth it for you to get a sense of who’ll you be working with and how you’ll communicate with them.
Is there someone you can contact whenever you need them? Do you have one main point of contact you get to know, or do they move you around depending on who’s available?
Do you get to speak on the phone with your rep? Is it mainly email? How do they bill for consultation time?
Try to get a sense of how the agency communicates with clients. If they value strong communication, that’s a good sign.
How do you report metrics and results?
Listen carefully to this answer. A lot of marketing companies still piecemeal their reporting from multiple resources, creating reports that are more confusing than clarifying.
Then they email these in massive PDFs at whatever interval matches their ability to pull together the data.
Marketing 360® loves to answer this question because we have our own reporting and management software that has all your campaign planning and metrics in one place. We highlight key performance indicators so they are central to the reports. And you can view it whenever you want, so it becomes a real-time report you can access 24x7x365.
The best marketing companies will be excited to show how accurate and transparent their reporting is. The worst will be just the opposite.
What makes a client a great fit for your agency, and what makes one a poor fit?
Many people talking to a marketing agency ask for referrals from happy clients. But – even if the firm gives them – you’re not likely to glean much from referrals because (surprise) the firm is going cherry-pick from their very best clients and probably coach them on what to say.
Likewise, you can check online reviews, but the anonymity and lack of context for these can make it difficult to discern the quality of work you’re likely to receive.
Instead, get your consultant to offer some clear details on the types of businesses that do well with their firm, as well as the types that don’t. And yes, every marketing firm will have had some failures (If they say their record is perfect that’s actually a red flag. Either they’re lying or they have minimal experience.).
What you’ll gather is both the type of client (as individuals) and the types of business verticals the company has had the most success with.
Pay particular attention to the client types. For example, a firm might note that they are really good at working with business owners who are totally new to digital marketing because their execs are great at explaining things in layman’s terms. Another might note they’ve best at working with marketing managers in mid-size companies.
Does the agency sound like they’re a fit for you?
Budget
You’re probably thinking we forgot something. What about this question:
How much do your services cost?
This question is based on the biggest fallacy in business marketing: that marketing is a cost. It is not a cost, it’s an investment.
Your marketing consultant’s job is to understand your needs and expectations, then explain what you should expect to invest to meet those goals.
For your business, in your market space, against your competition, your budget is what it is. And it’s never enough. There is always another tactic you could try. Always another resource it would be helpful to have.
You’ll get some initial estimates. Hourly rates for project work, base rates for platforms. But in the end, either your get ROI from your dime or you don’t. The best the consultant can do is help you make the right call initially then adjust as campaigns develop.
If you cover most these questions in an initial call with a marketing company, you should be able to make an informed decision about working with them.
The post How to Prepare for a Consultation With a Marketing Company appeared first on Marketing 360®.