Marketing is essential for all businesses and brands.
You need a good marketer and a great strategy to help bring out the best of your brand, product or services to all your potential clients out there.
But when there are so many professional marketers all around locally and globally, which one would be the right pick for you?
This topic came into my mind after meeting with several potential clients of mine recently.
Many of these potential clients have been going around asking for advice from multiple marketing consultants, yet, they still struggle to hire one due to many reasons.
Some of the reasons are, fear of hiring someone that cannot perform, the budget is too ‘tiny’ for them to handle, the vision of the client and marketer doesn’t seem aligned and many more.
So here I am today sharing with you this topic. If you’re keen on hiring a marketer for your business, here are a few ways that might help you to identify whether that particular marketer is right for you or otherwise.
First, filter out the nonsense!
Yes, you read it right, filter out the nonsense. While there are many great marketers out there, there are also a bunch of bad apples laying around. Hence, knowing which one to filter out will help you narrow down your list of choices.
I’m sure the next question would be which are the bad apples?
The best example that I can give is this, “Sign up with us and we will definitely bring you the conversion needed and boost your business in no time!”
First off, here’s the bubble I want to break. No professional marketers would give such promise to you. Because executing a marketing campaign is never a 100% sure thing. In fact, a recent lesson I had when it comes to this despite having proper systems and structured campaign in place, is that the conversion rate is only about 2/10.
That is only a 20% conversion. And that takes long hours of A/B Testing and tons of email/messaging campaigns to see the outcome. In other words, it’s a continuous effort of trial and error.
There is no such thing as one-time bullseye marketing strategy that works across the board. None. In fact, you’d need consistency all the way in terms of innovating and improving the original strategy until it works.
Do a proper background check
This point upsets me a lot and annoys me like crazy!
Remember those days where job titles really meant something to everyone? Like if you’re a CEO, you are really a CEO.
I’ve seen too many people on various social media platforms claiming themselves to be professionals, Strategists, CEOs and so on. I’ve talked to some of them and to my surprise they are not as per what they claimed. In fact, some of them even approached me trying to hard sell their services as if they are just a salesperson. Personally, this is beyond my imagination and not acceptable at all.
I have nothing against these people, yet what annoys me is that some of these so-called professionals aren’t even professionals at all.
They claimed to be a C-suite executive and yet via the way they talk, how they present themselves and the type of questions they ask, you’ll be extremely doubtful about them and their intentions.
I know some friends of mine who fell into these traps, despite my advice. By claiming that they have the right solution that enables the customers to build their brands at a very affordable cost which at the end of the day, literary messes up the entire situation and forcing the affected customers to re-branding their company altogether is totally beyond words.
This upsets me a lot because irresponsible acts like this leave a bad taste for other professional marketers out there who are working hard to earn a living. People are starting to doubt each and every marketer, including the ones who are really doing their job and producing results.
So if you’re keen to look for a real-deal marketer for your business, here are some pointers;
- Usually, professional marketers would have a decent company page or personal profile that you can refer to for credibility checking.
- Majority of them would at least own a publication or blog.
- They would definitely have a LinkedIn profile with a decent number of connections.
- They are active on social media platforms, sharing useful and beneficial content for their audience.
Basically, if they are a good marketer, they would know how to market themselves. And they would have a lot of great content and distributing them well via a number of platforms to support their credibility.
So before you jump into any courses or sign up for any of marketing services from anyone, be sure to look into these things. Personally, I think that if a marketer doesn’t know how to market themselves, they are definitely not ready to help anyone to market anything.
Learn up the basics of marketing
As a consultant, I will never fail to remind all my clients about this. You need to know the marketing fundamentals before hiring a marketer.
You might think that this is contradicting to the idea of hiring a marketer, but it doesn’t. Here’s why.
The brand belongs to you. You and your team would know what the direction you want the brand to go. A marketing consultant or a marketer is there to guide you in executing the best method to reach your vision efficiently and effectively.
Due to this, I would always advise my clients that they need to understand how the basics of marketing work.
For instance, should you plan to hire a marketer to run their social media marketing; you should first pick up the basics of how-to and why of all-things social media marketing. It is better to have an idea of the subject to ease the discussion with the potential marketer.
By understanding some of these basics, you’ll be able to also gauge the effectiveness of your marketer. At the same time, you’ll also have more confidence in trusting the work being done and not constantly thinking whether they are really doing their job or otherwise.
Here are some sources you may want to check them out. Have a look at Neil Patel, Amy Porterfield, Brendon Burchard, and Facebook Blueprint, the information within these sites will assist you accordingly.
My business mentor Patsy Lim constantly reminds me that if I want to lead, first, I need to know all the ins and outs of the job. By gaining a good understanding of the job flow only that time I will be able to manage the whole process properly. And knowing how to troubleshoot when issues occur is also critical.
And that advice helped me and my clients significantly as it brings each and every marketing journey I undertake clarity especially on the strategy crafted.
Take time to talk to your potential marketer.
A good marketer always listens, then acts later.
If you were to hand your brand over to someone to market, it is most important that they are able to grasp your brand well.
Take some time to talk with the potential marketer that you want to work with. Allow them to check out your brand, then hear out their honest opinion about it.
As a marketer, there is no better way than to be honest when sharing my perspective with the clients. If I don’t like what I see, then I’m not able to work on it. Hence, I would normally take a week or so to really study the brand further and find the sweet angle to focus on for strategic implementations.
Talking with them always helps me to gauge whether the client is really a perfect match for me to work with or not. I remember when I first started as a freelance marketer, I constantly went head-to-head arguments with some of my clients due to the fact that both sides have a different set of expectations altogether.
Since then, I would spend at least a couple of hours with the potential client to talk things through. By having a decent conversation to further understand them, their brand, the nature of business and the expectations, I would be able to grasp the situation better and eventually share more accurate ideas to him or her to counter the situation.
This method worked very well as it helped eliminating a lot of miscommunication between both parties. Should I find that we are not a good fit to work together, I would decline the work professionally or assign it to my associate to follow through.
A good understanding indeed ensures a good working relationship.
My personal take towards the marketing culture today…
I noticed that a significant number of marketers are using the ‘fake it till I make it’ way of living. They didn’t realise that the game they are playing causes people to lose faith in marketers, affecting those marketers who are working their asses off professionally and delivering results.
I’m not here to bad mouth anyone nor to start a war. I am here instead, to advocate.
I might not be the best marketer around, yet, I do believe in upholding integrity while executing my assignment.
I see this as a big issue in this industry and I don’t like it one bit. When I see there is an issue especially when I am affected, I’d prefer to stand up and voice out my opinion. I hope to bring the awareness so that brands would stay away from such marketers and avoid hiring these people altogether for their own good.
I hope that you enjoyed my 2 cents here. If you have any input on how to help choose the right marketer for your business, do share it with me.
