Marketing Agencies and Corporate Growth Strategies Will Destroy Your Business

Marketing today is an absolute mess.

But

It depends who you speak to.

Agencies, admen and women, marketing teams, social media companies, SEO guys and some others will push it as a save all salvation for your business.

Yet for someone like myself who sees this on a daily basis with real clients in real-time I can tell you I see a very different picture that mostly involves nothing measurable and small if any results.

That’s a massive problem.

It’s a problem so huge that many times over the years I have seen entrepreneurs just like yourself lose everything due to the bad advice offered by these guys.

So why does this happen - The 4Ps Are Dead!

Most marketing agencies or marketing guys will offer their advice on the famous ‘4Ps’ of marketing. I won’t go into them here because frankly, I don’t believe in them.

However, this way to take any business to marketing no longer has a place in the world of today.

Agencies will meet you.

They will pull out the pads and laptops

They will ask you questions that talk about brand, presence and more fluff designed to make you understand less so they appear to be more expert than the average expert.

Then eventually they leave and put together your plan based on what they do for everyone else.

It’s a system

It’s a blueprint

It’s a top drawer offering based on ancient texts from ancient marketing men.

And it takes time and effort and a ton of cash and I mean for most new businesses.

They will arrange endless weekly meetings for six people to discuss a brand design

They will have call after call and meeting after meeting with long gaps left in between so you feel it's taking a long time to put your bespoke campaign together.

Yet the reality everything is built around a top-drawer solution that rarely involves any form of tracking, measuring or even results or numbers.

And when the results don’t show they will say…’lets redesign, rebuild or try something else’

Why am I telling you this?

It’s a merry go round at your expense.

It’s a merry go round at the loss of some businesses.

And now the push for more social media without even attempting to truly understand what social media is actually for.

What I find very interesting is how some businesses approach this lack of results scenario. It seems although frustrated they tale a course that they feel is less risk by simply stocking with the agencies, marketing men or failing teams. They work on the basis of they are all busy so at some point eventually, some results should pour in.

I don’t get that. I can’t accept that.

Yes, of course, it takes time and effort yet once a campaign is masterfully put together based on the real thoughts and actions of buyers rather than a top-drawer solution based on the 4Ps of marketing.

Today marketing has become less and less about marketing and more and more about understanding. This is where the results truly are.

Understand the path a buyer will take from the first thought to the moment they part with their hard-earned cash.

Marketing has changed. I would go as far as saying everything agencies teach about marketing is absolutely dead.

The old formula for corporate growth strategies are well and truly dead.

These are new exciting times in a period where everything can be tracked, measured and refined according to the true needs and wants of your buyers.

It is no accident that the new Artisan is on the rise and on the rise fast. New Artisan entrepreneurs building businesses with no marketing, no agencies and sometimes just a smart phone and a smart mind.

Smart – fast – measurable and data-driven at it’s most simple.

Unlike marketing men, agencies that tickle the ears of entrepreneurs like you.

Honestly – it’s all marketing bullshit!

You know every client I work with, advice, consult with gets everything tracked, measured to the penny! Even my AFS METHOD leverage creator not only gets tracked but is built around sales the simplest but fastest way possible – like Kevin who generated £42,000 in new sales in under 24-hours.

I have never once in 32-years of marketing seen an agency, a marketing suite or team deliver numbers like this that re-tracked and measured to the penny.

Anyway …

Below I reposted an older article.

Marketing As You Know It In Your Corporation IS DEAD

Is your marketing team or marketing agency killing - LITERALLY - your business?

Over the past couple of decades, I have seen more businesses destroyed by inadequate, ill-informed, ego seeking marketing executives than you could ever believe.

I watched money wasted, campaigns thrown away, experts being fired for being expert and even more corporate marketing chaos than I could ever spend a day writing about here.

(A quick way to test that is to look, track, measure and demand results from your marketing experts)

This is a true story that led to an eventual corporate destruction of one company.

I advised them.

Their team fought my advice.

They felt it was safer to keep their team (marketing director) happy.

It really could have been prevented.

It’s all too common in the world of marketing.

No wonder 8-10 new businesses fail.

This is one big reason for failure.

Names have been changed to protect the marketing idiots!

This is a corporate client (marketing executive) and me in conversation after spending months putting together corporate growth strategies for his company.

I wanted him to send the first email I had created to their vast email list. This was no ordinary email. This was a very carefully research, worded part of a series that had been loaded with trigger words, buzz words, mind-set words and also carried an irresistible lead-generation offer.

'So here is everything you need to make things this planned strategy happen but the first thing I need you to do is this.'

'OK, I will pass over to be actioned.'

'Actioned?'

'Yes actioned by John on the 3rd floor.'

'OK, so once John actions it will it be done?'

'No, he has to send over the details to Kate on the 3rd floor also to be actioned and then her team will start the process of action.'

'So will they all be able to action the sending of the email quickly - today?'

'I have no idea all I do is send over the list to be actioned.'

This was the marketing director of company marketing I was speaking with.

'Ok, how long will it take?'

'It should be actioned by tomorrow.'

Tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes.

The next week comes and the next week goes.

Seven long weeks later the email series had no been sent due to the lack of time to have a meeting about auctioning the email series.

Corporate Marketing Team State of Chaos

In fact 7-weeks later I get no email back to let me know if any action has been actioned by anyone so I again send over an email to the group of action takers which is actually a group of nine people in total. At least five of them are in the same room all day but they all email each other actions and rarely speak to each other. Once when I met, three of them had a conversation whilst all being in the same room over an advert to be run. And no one in this corporate marketing team chaos of nine replies to my emails.

I again send over more emails followed up by 4 phone calls to the phone numbers I have access to. No one picks up, no one replies and time is ticking fast for a strategic campaign that was labeled as very urgent at the very first meeting we had!

Finally, I manage to get hold of the big boss. He asks me how it is all the marketing campaign going? I say apparently everything is being actioned but no one has got back to me in 7 weeks. He asked what is it I need to be actioned or done? I told him I need them to copy and paste this first letter (a series of 10 emails) and send over to their in-house email list. He tells me he will kick some ass and get it done.

EIGHT WEEKS PASS AND STILL NOT DONE

8-weeks later I receive a phone call from the very first person in the line that promised to action everything. He then tells me how bad his team are and how he thought it was being actioned but clearly never done by anyone he is now blaming.

He then asks me if I can log into their data and send the email to the list? I tell him I cannot because their company won’t allow me to log in, as it is a security rule that cannot be broken. He tells me a top secret password - which I swear this is the truth - password1 – and gives me access. I log in but am unable to make the changes or send the email.

This is a problem now and takes yet another week to get ‘actioned’. Don’t forget this action was always urgent and always desperate to be done.

Finally, I get a call from a new kid on the company that I haven’t heard of. He's been there two days! He asks for a copy of the email to be copied and asks for directions. I tell him what he needs to do. He does exactly as I ask and send the email. Back at the call centre, the phones light up with a success rate from an email like they have never seen before.

That simple action of copy & pasting one email took almost 10 weeks to ... ACTION!

This is Corporate Marketing Chaos In It's Most Gloriously Revealing Moment

In total, it took nine weeks and two days to copy, paste and then send this now damned email. That email pulled in tens of thousands of pounds in sales in the first week of running it. I was desperate to run it, to send it. It was different, it was direct response driven and it was written and created with the mind triggers of the buyer well thought through so as to increase response rates. it worked but it still took ten weeks for the company to send it.

Again this whole shambolic corporate marketing story is true. It is common. It is outrageous. The sad part – it seems to be acceptable.

I don’t accept. I refuse to accept this. I have seen far too much greatness from great marketing to accept 10-weeks as OK. It isn’t ok and will never be OK!

They went bust because marketing guys played a game with investors cash! Marketing should always been as an essential ingredient to business but should always be tracked, measured and accountable at every step.

The Problem and The Lesson For You

Corporate layers built on corporate structures that no longer work in today's world. The speed of everything has changed and changed fast. Delivery and expectations for corporate growth strategies are higher and faster than ever before.

Can you imagine how many sales were lost during that period of nine weeks and three days of everyone telling everyone else to action one marketing act??

I worked out this based on what I had seen so far and remembered - I am simply hired here as a strategic marketing consultant so I cannot force anyone to do anything here. I advice at this stage for this client.

To employ the in-house team the wages alone per annum is £259,000
To house them in office space and fill that space with equipment lets guess at £100,000
At least four of them had company cars at a cost of £28,800
All have companies phones and leased equipment
There are bonuses and shares for these staff also

At a guess but a close guess, the cost of the staffing comes to around £500,000 plus per annum.

That isn’t the biggest problem though it is this.

Staff in corporations loves two things.

They love to be higher than the people below them and want to be as high or higher than the people in front of them. This is more important than results.
They want to be able to always tell someone else to do what they have been told to do because this removes all responsibility from them when it isn’t done or done badly.
They hate to measure what counts in any corporate growth strategies - response, conversions, and sales but love to measure facts that make no difference to the bottom line.

Why?

Most marketing that takes place by in-house teams or corporate marketers is done by marketers that are mostly out of touch (not all but mostly). Even worse in my experience marketers are getting lazier and lazier with their lack of ideas. The marketing done by these teams is marketing that was designed as a system for training new marketing people fifty years ago. Believe me, the world has changed since then dramatically as you know.

For example, teams now employ people to simply copy and paste into a Facebook page. The Facebook page almost provides no sales that can be measured yet these marketers do it because its easy and because everyone else is doing it. The problem is most Facebook pages simply don’t work as a sales tool especially in the corporate world. LinkedIn the same, Twitter the very same. Yes, they get your name out there and into the community but rarely account for direct sales. Yet they still do the same old thing as always.

You are up against a gang of marketing teenagers

The other problem, of course, is if it takes over 9-weeks to send a single email, corporates are up against new corporations run by teenagers in some cases that are getting what needs to be done in a day or less. I did say a day or less. These kids are smart. They know how to find a need and fill the problem with the perfect solution. I personally would hire a group of smart kids than anyone from corporate marketing that's for sure if - I had to get the job done fast!

Do you have the ancient unworkable layered system that takes weeks or months to do a simple thing? Do you have a corporate marketing team that just don’t deliver? Does your corporate team take day’s weeks or even months to get a job done for you?

To survive this brave newer world you have to make changes or you will go extinct

Unless corporations wake up to the reality of a newer, faster direct marketing in today's new world they are screwed and eventually at some point will vanish without a trace only to be replaced by a new much smarter kid.

Unless corporations get creative, hire brilliant minds and get things done fast without endless needless layers… some will find it as good as impossible to build a global brand doing things the old way.

You can hire a marketing executive for £50-75k that does the same old thing and brings you nothing. That makes no sense in the new world of marketing.

If you are struggling from corporate marketing chaos, corporate growth strategies and need solid advice on where to go next… contact me here.

I promise I can turn your marketing upside down, inside out and rebuild everything so you get results fast!

My AFS METHOD for leveraging is in the words of one client… AWESOME’!

Less talk less actioning and more results.

Alan Forrest Smith

Let’s talk with no obligation and see if we are a fi for true corporate growth strategies. If we are we can start working out a deal that suits us both as well as strategy, tactics and a way forward to fix your results, conversions and your business.

Tele: 00 44 (0) 1619296902
Text: 00 44 (0) 7793069486 With the word TALK
What’sApp: 07793069486
Viber: 07793069486
Email: alan@orangebeetle.com
Skype: orangebeetle

Blog, Direct Marketing, General, MENTORTamara Forrest-Smith26 June 2017Comment