I want to share the story of a friend of mine that has hired and fired many marketing companies of various disciplines. His rationale was simple: they weren’t producing results. And while that sounds like it makes sense, the problem was that my friend was not giving anyone enough time to actually achieve results.
Here’s a story that will demonstrate why you need to take time to let your strategy unfold.
The title says it all. Today’s conversation starts with a question posted to a Facebook group by someone who said…. to paraphrase… “I’m taking over as internet manager for my company and I know nothing about websites, design, etc. Where do I start?”
Wow! Nothing like getting thrown into the deep end of the pool. So on this episode we throw out a lifeboat and talk about exactly that – where to start. And it’s not with a website. Or with pay per click. Or SEO.
Listen in – and check out the show notes – for some “where to start” goodness, whether you’re on your own or planning to hire help.
Even the simplest of sites can take weeks of dedicated effort and even then the creation process never really ends. You’ll forever be perfecting and learning, adding and growing.
But to destroy a website and take a business’s lifeblood with it? Well, as one of our newest clients learned, that only takes a few hours in between firing an unethical developer one night and waking up the next morning to scorched earth.
In this podcast episode we talk with Mike Ash, the business owner who lived through this scenario, and we get his take on the experience, from hiring to firing his developer and how he dealt with the aftermath. We also have an accompanying article with a slew of red flags that should make you think twice about hiring your own developer or marketing company.
SEO sends shivers down many spines and when it comes to search optimization, lots of small business people have one of two reactions: they either obsessively chase down the latest Google rule or they put their heads in the sand and opt out entirely. Well, we’re here to say that you don’t have to do either! Listen as we talk to Pam Aungst of Pam Ann Marketing about what you need to know to make good SEO decisions.
This is part of the “Don’t Make The Same Mistake Twice” series, in which I discuss topics that have fouled up my small business (and some even not-so-small-business) clients before. But more importantly, they’re mistakes that I have seen people repeat.
Today I tackle the topic of social media marketing managers who can do some serious damage to your business if you don’t vet and hire them carefully.
With a new crop of “social media experts” cropping up every day, these are some mistakes that can really cost you. Use the tips here to hire well the first time. Or definitely the second.
It’s Word Carnival time, that once-a-month gathering of my colleagues and some pretty smart business folks when we all write on the same topic. This month’s topic is “selling based on VALUE and not based on PRICE”. But sometimes, dear customer, we have to sell on price.
So this post is for you – the person who may one day hire me or even hire a marketing company that isn’t me. It’s to help you think about your approach to budgeting, hiring, and ultimately working with someone. And it’s not about my value. It’s not even about my pricing. It’s about how those things work together – and sometimes don’t play nicely together – and what that means for your business.
You can add “expert” to a long list of words that perhaps meant something once but have been appropriated by business folks looking to sound a whole lot more interesting and important than they are. If you hire someone on the grounds that they’re an expert – especially if it’s a self-designated entitlement – you could be setting yourself up for disappointment and loss. You don’t want to hire an expert any more than you want to be one. Here’s why.
Flaky. Unreliable. Arrogant. Incompetent. Long-winded. Unresponsive. Disheveled. These are just a few words I’ve heard people use to describe copywriters who didn’t live up to expectations. To be fair, most of these words could be used to describe any number of service providers who don’t cut the mustard, but especially creative professionals. Here are some real red flags that you should be able to spot early in the process of choosing a copywriter. If you notice these red flags, do yourself a favor and choose someone else. The aggravation – and the content – likely won’t be worth it.
This post was inspired by the countless nightmare stories I hear from prospects about how they hired a designer or developer, spent money and were left in the lurch. Either their site was never delivered, or it was delivered in horrific condition, or the cost spiraled out of control or about a hundred other variations that ended badly. This post is a bit tongue-in-cheek but the consequences are serious. So if you’re in the market to build a site (or need a do-over), take this to heart and be careful about how you vet and hire a developer.
Every time Facebook makes a change, the marketers come out in droves to tell you what to do about it and “what it means for your business”. I’m here to tell you that it means nothing! Too many people are too quick to hop on the bandwagon of whatever comes next without thinking about whether it makes good business sense. Today I share my thoughts on marketers-turned-Facebook-PR-machine and what you might want to think about instead.
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