Consultant Becomes Whistleblower For Coaches and Exposes Digital Marketers.
Marketers ruin everything, some people say...
Using rhetoric, persuasion, and copywriting techniques to influence people to take action, form an opinion, or polarise them. Heck I'm doing it right now aren't I?
But I'm not so sure if that's the real problem for those that engage with marketing /advertising services...
From talking with coaches, specifically, those specialising in mindset, human behavior, and business. The common thread seems to be that they either get burnt by marketers and agencies or the marketer provides their service but the coach gets stuck with the next step in the process because they struggle to sell over the phone...
But do these marketers set up false expectations or is it the coach not being empowered enough within marketing, therefore not knowing the right questions to ask a marketer or agency before hiring them?...
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Insider Tip
It's highly likely that if you talk to any modern-day marketer, they are both focused on direct response marketing in the digital realm (online). Direct response marketing is based on the premise that you can see exactly what worked and what didn't when it comes to your messaging and offer etc. Therefore a marketer should be able to tell you or give you a calculated ROI.
So, (one question) to ask a marketer is:
Q) Are you able to show me how I can get a tangible ROI with your service?
It would be wise not to accept these answers, without further questioning
- It's too hard to give you a direct ROI as there are too many variables.
- No, but here are the results we have gotten our clients in the past.
These would be a couple of common answers to the question above, which are neither correct or incorrect. But in my experience, there is a reason behind each of these answers.
- As a "disempowered" coach in regards to marketing knowledge, you may accept the answers above as "fact" and enter into a service agreement or relationship with unrealistic expectations.
- As an "empowered" coach in regards to marketing knowledge, you may ask further questions to the responses above, so you can enter into an agreement on clear expectations.
A possible reason behind answer (1) - This may need more fleshing out, as a marketer might be referring to, "I can get you leads, but I can't make the sales call" this is understandable. However, they should be able to provide you with more confidence by explaining their processes and how exactly they reverse engineer their results.
A possible reason behind answer (2) - This is a "blanket statement" for any marketer. Meaning it's possibly a diversion to escape the question. This may lead a "disempowered coach" into a false sense of security, believing that just because they have gotten results for others in the past, that they will be the same which may not be the case. Don't get me wrong, showing past results and success stories are helpful I do it myself, as it builds some trust and credibility but I don't leverage those results when asked about getting an ROI for clients.
Either way, at the very least it would be wise for a marketer/advertiser to explain their process in vivid detail, identifying the cause and effect of how they aim to get the results.
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Ok, back to where we left off. I think we can all agree that the internet has become a vastly saturated place, essentially becoming a parallel universe to our offline world with a great number of the population spending a third of their day online, or "plugged in".
And as marketers, they can only persuade or influence people when they have people's attention. That's why you will see social platforms start out pretty relaxed with rules and then become more and more strict because marketers come to these platforms and saturate the market with their messages, copywriting, ads, offers, and often just hyped up noise.
So what's my key message in all this?
I believe it's both the responsibility of the marketer to deliver a service with clear expectations and the coach making the marketer accountable by asking the right questions before engaging with their services. however remember when engaging with services, it's a two-way street, the marketer is there to help set expectations, but as the coach, it would be at least wise to empower yourself in the area of advertising or marketing so you at least have an understanding of what's going on so you are not being lead astray.
Just as it wouldn't be wise to outsource the process of investing in stocks or trading without first acquiring some knowledge, the same goes in any area of life.