Not All That Glitters Is Gold - Especially When It Comes to Marketing

We’ve all heard the saying, “Not all that glitters is gold.” Having been in the marketing game for a while, I have seen this first hand. I am the Chief Strategy Officer for an online marketing firm. Yes, we do SEO, PPC, content marketing, web design and development, conversion rate optimization and a bunch of other things. But at the core, what I feel all marketing firms should do is develop strategy.

You may not realize it, but this is actually a huge distinction. In fact, I really don’t like the terms SEO, PPC, content marketing, online marketing or even web design. Truthfully, I try to use them as little as possible. Why? Because in our industry, these marketing solutions are too often sold as singular products... and unfortunately, that’s usually to the detriment of many businesses.

Simply put, every business can benefit from marketing themselves online — however, that also means they need to invest time, energy and resources into succeeding online. But what happens far too often is that marketing firms neglect unified, coherent strategy in order to sell singular products. 

When I meet with potential clients and ask them what they are doing to attract customers and clients online, they usually say something like “We signed up for an SEO package”, “We have an SEO optimized website”, or “We are doing content marketing and link building”. However, when I dig deeper and ask what they are getting from those services they usually have no idea. Over time, what we often come to realize is that they’ve actually just bought a marketing product. In most cases, it’s the same product that the same sales rep tried to sell to the guy down the street and the guy next door. In effect, they’ve invested in resources that lack any sound strategy behind them. 

No business needs a new product named after a trendy buzzword — they need a strategy carefully designed to meet their specific needs and goals. They need a plan that clearly lays out how the products and services they’re investing in are actually going to work together to achieve something. Does this mean that you don’t need SEO, PPC, content marketing, authority management, keyword research or a new website? Maybe, maybe not. What you need is a measurable, scalable goal and a firm that can create a detailed plan to help you achieve that goal. It may very well include a few of the services above, but then again it may include just one.

In any case, before you sign on the dotted line, you’ll need to know what each of those services is going to accomplish, how to measure the success of each of them, and what kind of return on investment potential is associated with each service. How do you know if you are working with a firm that is actually focused on strategy and not on selling products? Following are some things you can use as a checklist: 

1. Did you ever talk about measurable and scalable goals? 

2. Were you told what you need before you were asked what you want to achieve? 

3. Do you know what you are actually paying for?

4. Do you know how to measure the success of what you are paying for? 

5. Did you sign a time-based contract? 

6. Is your strategy agile?

I think the last item on that list is an extremely important one that’s often overlooked. The lack of agile strategizing can clearly demonstrate if you are working with a company that is selling products disguised as services. When you buy a product, you are stuck with that product. When you are working with strategy however, you are actually investing in an end result. Within a strategy the end result is always the focus, and the path to get there must remain agile. That means if a process isn’t working, or if the market or audience shifts behaviors, then your strategy can change in an attempt to continue moving forward. 

Time, money and resources should not be invested in something that is clearly not working or which changes in the market have rendered obsolete. Rather time, money and resources should be reinvested into a re-evaluated strategy that is still focused on the end result. 

I think it’s shameful for marketers to take advantage of a lack of knowledge in their clients, focusing on selling products rather than evaluating the actual needs and goals of each individual client. As an industry, we should be developing sound strategy designed to meet the needs and goals of our respective clients. We should put agile plans in place that always keeps the end result at the forefront and we need to be willing to be transparent and honest about why we are recommending certain things. Yes, this approach takes more time and energy, but it allows clients to evaluate whether they actually see the value in what we are offering, and makes it possible for them to make an informed decision on where to invest their marketing resources.