In this week’s episode, we will be discussing some misconceptions about marketing and why most small businesses dislike marketing services.
What’s up, guys? This is Alex Iglesias, and I’m here with another week of The Entrepreneur Expedition.
This week I’m going to be talking about something, you know, that it’s not my specialty, by any means. But, I feel like it’s something important enough to cover as is, and that is marketing. Now, I’m not here to talk about new marketing techniques, or theories or whatever, because I don’t know. I am a money guy. But what I do know is I know small business, and one of the things that always makes me, you know, it always interests me the most compared to other things — is hearing the things that small business owners don’t like, and small business owners pretty much inherently don’t like a lot of things. But one of the things I hate more than anything, most of the time, is paying money. And specifically, according to surveys paying for bookkeeping, and for marketing — so I already covered bookkeeping in a previous episode so I just wanted to kind of talk about marketing a little bit — because marketing is one of those things that I can totally see why someone would hate paying for it.
But again, it’s just like bookkeeping and accounting finance-type services — you don’t have to hate paying for marketing. The reason that people hate paying for marketing is because they hate the marketing services that they’re getting, and part of that might be on the business owner, part of that might be on the firm that they’re paying. So let’s cover both of those thoughts.
Right now — so first off — why do smart why do small business owners hate paying for marketing? Easy, because, they typically feel dissatisfied with the services, and they don’t consider it to be adding value or generating revenue, which is almost pure irony. But why might they feel that way… So like I said, the first reason that one of the reasons might be totally on the business owner or the business administrators who are making the executive decisions about who to pay all those types of things. So I feel like marketing as a term is kind of the umbrella term — it’s kind of the catch-all phrase, but people don’t really understand the different specific types of services that are actually captured under that umbrella term.
When someone says marketing what are they referring to typically really what they’re talking about is advertisement, so there’s three kind of pieces, typically, that I think, you know, just generally — there’s three types of services that small businesses are seeking. They’re either seeking through marketing advertisement, or sales, but again people think that all of them are the same, so I’m just going to run through a quick definition (if you’re a small business owner or small business administrator listening to this, maybe you’ve never thought about this, I’m going to start with alphabetical order): Advertisement is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the creation of and distribution of advertisements, you know, print ads, digital ads, commercials, radio, you know, TV commercials, radio commercials, all that stuff. That is all advertising. Then marketing specifically is long-term implementation. Plans to kind of decide how you’re going to roll things out what should your next steps be and analyzing the successes of your sales and advertisements that’s important. And then, lastly, since I said we’ll go in alphabetical order, sales is typically the short-term sales acquisition, client acquisition, product, you know, pushing new product, getting new revenues, sales revolve around. That sales as a service is all about closing the deal, per se, so if you’re getting into marketing — if you’re a small business owner and you want to get into and you’re saying, you know, what we need something — we’re not performing as expected, and you determined that marketing’s related or you know those types of services — if you determine that that’s the way, you need to go the first thing that small business owners need to do.
Determine which piece of that pie they need do you need new advertisements do you need sales or do you need marketing like the more analytical and you know marketing is kind of the cut the consulting piece of all those things sales and specifically advertisements our advertisement is typically tangible sales services are a little bit more they’re a little bit more direct and like I said short-term and marketing is the the consulting role which one do you need is a small business before you make that decision or make that determination don’t pay and you know don’t seek out your services this is the biggest reason I think that most small businesses are unsatisfied with with the services they they want because you know maybe your company needs help with sales and closing the deal per se and all this stuff but you’re paying a digital and print media company to do advertisements for you that’s not necessarily it’s not necessarily the route that should be taken right there you would probably want to consult with a sales expert and or work with potential sales men as much as no one likes a fuss men sometimes but you know maybe that’s a route that should be better so that might definitely be one reason that small business owners hate pain marketing and like I said they don’t this the general idea is that those services are not value-added or don’t help you generate revenue which is literal irony at its core because the whole purpose first off the whole fundamental purpose of all of those things is to help you generate more revenues and gain new clients but especially when you look at actual sales services they would early exist to generate you more revenue you’ve got to spend money to make money right well that’s the pretty much most fundamental way to spend money in order to make money you spend money on sales services and then those sales services bring you work it’s ironic it’s kind of frustrating again people see the lack of value in marketing of small businesses see the lack of value in those services because they’re subscribed to the wrong services and then though on the other hand so like I said earlier all businesses and the marketing related companies are both reasons that the small businesses don’t just like paying so why might the actual companies be the reason that these small businesses don’t like paying so those companies being the marketing companies what is it that they’re doing getting crappy service that’s it I’ve worked with a few different marketing companies on my own and I’ve worked with a lot of clients working with a lot of other marketing services here’s the thing I guess I’ll just leave it at this I don’t want to go on a rant about how bad those companies were the smaller the better especially if you’re a small business and that concept kind of holds true across the board whether you were looking for accounting services legal services you know anything like that marketing for sure the smaller the company are the smaller the vendor rather the better your experience is going to be you’re going to get a much more intimate much more customized feel working with a small firm and with marketing or advertisement or sales that is extremely important it’s much more important to have those type that type of you know like I said intimacy and togetherness and that kind of feeling that the firm you’re working with as part of your team it’s way more important in marketing than it is for other things in my opinion because marketing is so it’s definitely the abstract art of the business world you don’t want cookie cutter types of things you want to try to work with people who are creative who can really push your sales advertising marketing stuff to the next level and you want people who are going to be able to work with you and give exactly what you want you might not get that with a larger firm and with a larger firm you might also be risking a lot of those types of creative factors whereas smaller firms will probably typically be able to because they’ll be able to give you more time the outcome might be better I mean look at now granted these companies obviously have their own marketing teams in-house they don’t outsource their marketing but if you look at GEICO’s commercials those are magical like they’re right they’re funny they even though radio ads their radio ads I’ll be listening in the car and I hear a GEICO commercial and it’s funny you know it gives me a good chuckle the TV commercials give me a good chuckle you look at companies I always talk about Apple but apples freaking marketing is phenomenal you know but the creativity behind those two companies alone I mean there’s creative ads all over the place but the creativity in those ads for those companies are will pretty much what drive their whole success as companies so if you’re working with so if you’re a small business working with some big firm and you’re probably paying a pretty good amount of money you’re they’re paying a lot of money and you’re not getting as much attention or creativity or success as you want or you’re paying a little bit of money and because you’re paying a little bit of money you truly do get what you pay for especially in marketing you pay two hundred bucks a month and you know nothing’s happening it’s time to look at the smaller companies there are a lot of boutique two to three maybe four or five person marketing companies that will do an absolutely killer job for you you know just keep that in mind for sure the two big takeaways from this are really know what you need marketing sales are advertisement and go with the smaller companies really the smaller the better I mean there’s a million reasons I can rattle off to for that concept that are completely unrelated you know growing your local economy right or like helping the small businesses but that doesn’t matter at this point you want to help your small business and the best way to do that in my opinion is to stick with the smaller marketing firms but that’s all I’ve got for you guys this week.
Once again this is The Entrepreneur Expedition thank you for listening and I will talk to you all next week