Tips on How to Prepare for a Marketing Consultation

Key Takeaways

hi everybody my name is Scott I'm here with them bat and Matt is one of the marketing consultants here at marketing 360 and we're going to talk a little bit about how to for yourself to prepare yourself for an initial phone call and initial conversation with somebody like Matt and some tips on how you can get the most out of that phone call so you can understand whether or not the the marketing consultant and the agency you're talking to is going to be a fit for you and whether it's going to be worth going forward with them so Matt let's just kind of start right in here and what are some of the the big questions we'll just kind of take them one at a time that you ask and the things that you really need to know from a client initially really well we want to start with is we really want to have an understanding of the overall business and ultimately what our clients are trying to achieve if we can start to narrow down you know and really start to dive towards what the current situation is and and what we want it to be we can really work with the clients to ultimately come work together on a strategy going forward but it's important to have some key fundamentals down what the business is who the who the primary and the target audience is for each client and what they're doing right now to reach that audience and how that's working oftentimes we want to there's things that the clients are doing really well and there's things that we can work on we want to be able to know both so we can move forward together okay so obviously you need to be prepared to discuss some of the obvious things about the makeup of your business what you do where you're located what your kind of marketing space is how long you've been in business right those basic things are coming along then let's start taking some of these other things kind of one by one so your a lot of the times you're going to want to be able to get a feel for what their experience with kind of online marketing website marketing is right what are some of the things you look for there as far as experience yeah so I mean how do you move forward when you've got somebody who you realise has really almost no background in this versus somebody who may have already worked with an agency before sure I think the first part is really helping them understand really what the three key I think the best place we start is is identifying the the three key variables by which we're measuring all of our work and that's the visibility clickability and convertibility and how that relates to really not just our approach to things but really that's the the approach any digital marketing efforts should be measured against and really breaking those down for a client and in walking through how they currently are measured against those three variables okay so you're gonna kind of you want to be able to get a big picture in this initial consultation you're you're not really attempting necessarily to explain in detail what SEO is right or what pay-per-click advertising is you might get into that but it's not this initial phone call you don't have to drill into all of that you kind of want to get the the picture right of what they're gonna be able to do right yeah any digital you know building a business successful business doesn't happen overnight and the clients that we're working with have poured a lot of time and a lot of blood and sweat and sweat equity into you know building their business to where it is thus far we're looking to help them expand upon that and that's certainly you know as you alluded to is not a conversation a strategy moving forward it's not gonna happen overnight or in one phone call so what we're really looking to do is build the foundation of this relationship that we hope will turn into a long standing relationship down the road to work with this partner okay that's a big part of the dis initially for sure do you look probably look at an existing website you kind of do an analysis of an existing website if they have one absolutely the website for any digital marketing campaign is really the the keystone of the entire strategy if you know you're gonna we talked with clients all the time myself in particular that if we're gonna spend a lot of time and effort trying to drive more and more relevant visitors to a site we want to make sure we're where those efforts are getting them to a site that is most representative of our clients brand and really captures that audience the first time we get them there for sure yeah that's that's a big tool for this what about the competition that somebody's facing up what should a person who's coming into this call expect to be able to tell you about the competition they're going up against number one they should know who their competition is in the marketplace oftentimes we talk to clients that just really aren't aware they get in which is understandable they get so focused on the day-to-day operations of running a business it's tough to pick your head up sometimes and look around to see what's going on but if you can understand what the competition or who the competition is and what they're doing that's really it really is the competition in the market that's setting the price yeah that's for sure so we'll get into a little bit about budget and so forth later but this is it is always gonna be a competitive environment you're right so as you're coming into this and you're thinking about starting up a marketing plan or refining a marketing plan you really do need to take a look at who you're going up against and I think people need to consider you know not not just kind of the basics but what what is your competition even doing better than you what do they excel at and where do you need to try to catch up with them right and it's the same part of that what do you think you can do better how can you be the best which kind of drives into why customers in your area are gonna be choosing you right first place well in custody yeah I think you nailed it customers always have a choice whether somebody's going online to search for a product or a service even if we can make sure that you are visible that customer still has an option and we need to help our clients identify really what differentiates them in the market because that's where we're gonna start there are certainly there has to be a reason why a client is going to choose your product or service over the other options that they have and what we want to do is help you highlight that and really make that be a standout point for you sure that's one of the things that you dial in and that affects a lot of the content that you end up creating correct course what is your value proposition a big part of a value proposition is really to inform people why they should choose you instead of somebody else right if you can't communicate that clearly then people just aren't going to know and that's going to be a problem let's talk a little bit about the target audience kind of the ideal client how much does a person coming into this phone call need to have a kind of vision of who they feel like they're trying to reach and they're trying to sell to well you should you should definitely have at least a fundamental understanding of who is going to be interested in your service or product who that audience is going to be and then through that conversation we can ultimately the better the better we can understand who that audience is and oftentimes that's why I knit products or services do so well with us because it's a very targeted audience which is actually oftentimes easier to approach once you identify where they're at but through the process we can start to narrow that down and really start to winnow down who did who to target to and and then ultimately we let the data data dictate where we go next okay good so the idea of having a niche something that you can kind of specialize on it tends to be pretty big with digital marketing right I know what I've talked to people in the past the one answer I never want to hear if I say well who's your audience who are you trying to sell to and the person says to me everybody everybody anybody is interested in who will paint right that's the worst answer you can possibly give to this that's businesses that try to sell that everybody online basically you end up selling to nobody because they don't have a specific enough message to really capture people's attention right so that's that's a very important thing to be thinking when you're coming into this right and the the better you know who you're trying to sell to or provide service to the the better your marketing budget is actually spent and utilized there's a tremendous amount of wasteful spending done by a lot of small business owners who you know quite simply can't afford to be wasteful what they're spending but unknowingly by trying to reach everybody they're they're really getting very little traction with their marketing budget what we do through processing each ad and through our strategies and running it through our software in the combination of our services we really help small business owners identify where their dollar is best spent but consequently we're also helping them identify areas that there's wasteful spending going on and we can help them we can literally help them visualize that and see the data that says if we stop spending this money over here and spend it over here we're gonna get a much larger return for our marketing budget and at the end of the day that's really what drives and grows businesses is quite simply doing more of what's working and less of what's not right that's a simple way of putting it but a really important part of a strategy overall for sure let's take a little bit in terms of the questions that the prospective client might ask you so let me kind of play that role a little bit say I am in a prospective client here for marketing 360 these are a few questions that you might consider asking so and just kind of answer these in a general way of how you would approaches so communication I want to know how marketing 360 is gonna communicate with me and let me know what's going on who I'm gonna be dealing with very openly and transparently and frequently a big part one of the big benefits of digital marketing is that everything is trackable and that you can make decisions on it literally daily but that being said there also has to be that level of communication and it takes for us to be successful in helping you grow a business there has to be that consistent communication and that's where the the service part of our program comes in with the marketing exec is that they are consistently communicating what we're seeing from the data that's being run through the software this is working this is not but communicated at minimum once a week with our clients to let them know what's going on and keeping them in the loop because on the on the side of it from us all the work that we're doing we also want to be able to communicate all of the work that we're doing and we we want the client to be able to see where their marketing budget is going how it's being spend and most importantly what they're getting to return ok so a couple of things are you mentioned a marketing executive that means I got one person I got a point of contact that's kind of my guy correct that's then that's not the case with every agency you might deal different agencies where you're going to be kind of bounced around the different departments we focus in on we want to make sure you have one person that you know right and they're out there on the phone all the time here and if I want to call in I can call them right directly at least during business hours and the writers gonna be somebody there to help me we believe personally very strongly in verbal communication with our clients so I think we really accept that other agencies it may just be more emailing and it's something to look out for when you're looking into marketing agencies because communication breakdowns are one of the things that that kind of ruin efforts you just don't know what's going on and then everything becomes suspicious right so we pride ourselves greatly on that here marketing 360 for sure another thing you kind of mentioned so the reports I know in the past I had some experience with this myself where I'm getting kind of random reports from people like PDFs through email of these long reports sporadically coming to me difficult time trying to figure out what they're actually telling me how do you how does marketing 360 tell me what's going on in terms of all this data you're talking about yeah it's there's a learning curve for certain there's a lot of aspects to digital marketing but the benefit of having a single point of contact that is not only breaking this data down for they're an expert and looking at this because this is literally what they're pouring over every day and what about what about the tool itself though because we we have a software tool that helps kind of go into I know I'm talking to my marketing executive right what are we talking about what am I looking at on my computer the software I guess in short what the software is essentially doing is highlighting different areas for the marketing exec and for the client as well because the client has full access to the software as well so there is no there's no hidden work everything that we're doing is being documented the client has 24/7 access to log in from their phone or their laptop to literally see the real-time results of each individual ad that we're running whether that is on Google Google shopping on Yahoo Bing Facebook YouTube wherever we're doing work we're tracking the real-time results and measuring that for performance so all of that is in one place correct the Google stuff the social media correct being if I'm doing now these other areas like and I can look at it when I'm not waiting for a report to come out on a win I'll just log in and look at right yeah yeah and that's a great thing too is we don't ask anyone to take our word for it we sit down on a weekly basis with the marketing exec and as a client you get to sit down on a weekly basis with your marketing exec and go over what's working what's not in the strategy going forward okay so the key performance indicators the metrics are all there in terms of the traffic sources their engagement with your content and ultimately of course whether or not they're converting whether or not you're reaching the critical goal all of that stuff is really easy to to view and understand on marketing 360 and if you've worked in other platforms or even a lot of the Google stuff I mean Google Analytics is great but it's a big tool for a novice business owner who doesn't have much time it's gonna be pretty hard to go through and figure out what all that really means right marketing 360 boils that down into something understandable so that's another thing we're extremely proud of and when you're dealing with agencies you want to know how are they going to formu that come comes back to transparency it comes back to understanding and it comes back to being able to discuss the strategy right with your marketing executive so you really know what's going on important stuff let's just kind of go ahead and go to this last part here and there's there's one question that often comes up really early right and it's gonna be what is this cost right what is what is the marketing cost how much do you guys charge right how do we address that question it's a big question right but it's one that needs to be covered right away because that's well I've got 400 bucks month that's what I want to spend right can you can you do it for me the first thing I would ask is what are your expectations with $400 right you tell me all right you know going into it's there needs to be a transition in the way think about marketing marketing at the end of the day is a tool it's a tool to help you grow your business and if you're looking at it if you look at it as a tool then it becomes okay which tool is gonna be the best fit and to understand that you really have to understand what is the job that I'm trying to get done what is the objective here you know we were joking before we started here about the analogy of going into Home Depot right generally speaking people don't go into Home Depot and walk up to the first person that greets them and say what's this gonna cost me the the Home Depot rep would look at you go what are you here what are you looking for it depends on what you're trying to accomplish what is the project I'm trying to complete what's the timeframe I'm looking to complete it in what's gonna be the best tool for that you know if I move if I go in there and tell them I'm looking for a hammer there's a there's still a number of options available right and if I'm looking just to buy the cheapest hammer which might be a small little tack hammer but the project I'm trying to complete is I'm trying to knock down walls that representative at Home Depot would be crazy to sell you that tack hammer knowing what you're trying to get done right but to understand where to direct you or what aisle are to what tool that representative at Home Depot really needs to understand what what are we trying to get done what are we trying to build most importantly if as a marketing consultant what we're really trying to understand is what is it that we're trying to build and how are you going to determine success okay good so there's a couple things that I think are important to consider with this one that we talk a lot about is that the fact that matter is that what is marketing going to cost is the wrong question right because marketing is not an expense correct it's an investment where you put in to this as a resource and you're expecting to be able to get something back out of it for your business ultimately in terms of revenue so the real question is given your actual business the market space that you're in the competition that you're going up against what you're trying to achieve your budget is what it is it will Matt's job initially is to try to give you a good starting point and to set realistic expectations right and then to modify it as you go to make sure those expectations can be met right good if you think you know buying a truck is an expense it's a cost marketing is really better thought of as an investment how much can you invest and how much do you need to invest in order to have this grow your business in the way that it must right the age of cell phones and digital technology and all of the ever-changing ways that we communicate with ourselves and have to try to reach people right thanks Matt this is very enlightening for me really too and I hope that it helped you guys out there too you can talk to Matt or some of our other marketing consultants you can get a demo of the marketing 360 platform it's also a CRM so you can look at how it works for customer relationship management you can get a tour of some of the website templates that we do that are conversion based templates you can get a mock up for free so you can see what your business content and branding would look like on one of these when we find a business that we know we can help we we really want to work with you and so give us a call it's worth your time to talk to our guys here and check out this stuff thanks so much thanks nut thank you pretty