Beware the Pettiness of Marketing Agencies

Photo by Kev Seto on Unsplash
One of my staff just spent the weekend rebuilding a new clients’ AdWords campaign that was “mysteriously” deleted without notice or cause.
What happened?
Traditional Media is expensive, therefore must be treated carefully. Split testing your ad copy is key, for that will in turn optimize conversion rates.
Photo by Kev Seto on Unsplash
One of my staff just spent the weekend rebuilding a new clients’ AdWords campaign that was “mysteriously” deleted without notice or cause.
What happened?
We usually run this exercise one-to-one, but we thought it would be fun to ask listening schools to try it live.
Check out our Podcast #36 “Is it Time to Fire your Marketing Company?” to learn helpful education marketing strategies. With 1 click you’ll have access to over 30 podcasts featuring industry insiders sharing their wisdom to you – for free!
Is your promotional information written in selfish ‘feature language’? Consumers are like selfish six-year-old kids and hate reading other people’s selfish language. It’s all about what’s in it for the consumer when parting with their dollars.
Write in benefit language, become an empathetic organization.
Seventy percent of companies within the Fortune 1000 did not exist 10 years ago. The disruption and consumption of 100-year-old enterprises are now commonplace. EDU is like the Telecomm industry 15 years ago. The natural lifeforce of Western Commerce is many companies looking to take advantage of inefficiencies (ie: Uber, Craigslist, Udacity).
Embrace this disruption by doing an do an ‘amazing’ job of filling needs. There are many ways to do this: competency-based learning, blended learning, flipping classrooms, day 1 externships, employer-funded training, etc. Put safety nets in place, then attack with aggressive split-testing.
One of the outcomes of mobile phone adoption is we have the ‘entire’ world available to us sitting within this little rectangle box, which in turn is constantly attached to our person. ‘Content’ is being dumped into the internet slipstream landing in the little smartphone boxes. Professional branding and PR types compete intensely for your attention. The bi-product is an incredibly pervasive stream of unfiltered media content: cute kittens followed immediately by cops killing people. We as consumers chew on what is mostly crap, each and every day, whether we like it or not.
The dawning of 2.0 actually came pre-internet, when TV started channeling horrendous footing of war atrocities from the Vietnam War. This jarring violent footage of freaked out miserable villagers, soldiers, mutilated bodies, etc. helped to kick start the Vietnam War protests in the 70’s, catalyzing social change. The Korean War was just as hideous, but its documented footage was not pushed into the living rooms of the masses while eating their TV dinners.
Now 2.0 is firmly entrenched; with thousands of Clickbait sites feeding content to massive information addiction portals such as Facebook. We as consumers have sort of become our own photo editors plus consumers of this massive surge of content engulfs us; most of it salacious, violent or negative in nature.
We have direct daily access to massive amounts of footage that often elicits negative feelings. It is pervasive. Facebook paying over 150 Clickbait companies hundreds of millions a year to generate footage is a ‘small’ example of how big this trend has become. We are being pounded and pounded with amateur and professionally produced news footage everywhere, every day. Much of the footage has an agenda. SUGGING – ‘selling under the guise of’ – is a staple of the PR industry.
In my opinion, this phenomenon is generating a palpable angst with many folks within society, more negative crap than any average person ever needs to know. Marketers need to deal with this collective angst like never before. Salespeople now often have to unspool partially or totally false information previously gleaned online. But mostly marketing and sales types must now fold into their marketing plans the new reality of dealing with the collective and individual fear pulsing within their target market.
If you are asking me how to deal with this societal angst within the context of marketing our stuff, heck, I don’t totally know. I am thinking that perhaps the day of marketers just ‘selling stuff’ is over. Marketing now shapes opinion and self-esteem, in turn shaping our society. Is it our duty now to market in such a way that we leave society in better shape along the way?
I will say, that having awareness and an intention around this question, will in turn, allow ideas and solutions to bubble to the surface…
I’m curious about your thoughts….
Namaste, Gregg Meiklejohn
I was leafing through Douglas Magazine, an excellent tome on local business issues. I came across an excellent article written by an old friend Mike Wicks, a reputable dude who has made his living in sales training, writing, etc… Mike’s article was about the value of a reputation from an empirical perspective. In other words, one can attach a financial score to a weak reputation and it’s not pretty. Mike’s article got me thinking about a few things on this topic;
Product Delivery is the premix for Reputation
My partner Shane Sparks and I are fond of saying “Nothing can destroy a crappy business like a great Ad Campaign.” The outcome of a branding effort is to leave the consumer with kind of a buyer’s insurance policy that they are making good choices. If a business is delivering crap, the branding efforts will not grab, and it will simply accelerate negative word-of-mouth. Read more
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An online lead generation and qualification tool that helps prospective customers understand their personal strengths, explore their motivations and match with your school. It is delivered through a simple and fun online questionnaire that guides prospects to request a meeting with your sales team. The comprehensive Career Training Readiness Report generated by the pathway gives your sales teams deep insights about your prospects. In addition to creating high-quality leads, sales staff gain valuable information on each prospect’s perceived strengths, support network, perception of key features of your business, and much more.
This is a survey delivered to your enrolled students to determine their marketing habits. Learn marketing demographic and psychographic information including their content delivery preferences and habits (TV, internet, radio, etc.) to aid your school in determining marketing direction and opportunities.
This is a key tool for capturing those highly interested website visitors who want more than just “Requesting Information”, they are ready for the next step… a virtual or in-person appointment. Use this tool to engage more appointments for your admissions team that will convert higher than your standard organic website leads.
Truth be told, this isn’t a true application, but is very useful for pulling out your highest intent website visitors (typically about 7% of inquiries). Use it to high-grade your top prospects and put these at the top of your contact list.
So much more than a typical “Request Info” form, our website form is a conversion powerhouse that has been tested and perfected with numerous clients. It features a number of subtle but important conversion magnets and “in-the-code” enhancements. Widely copied by competitors, they never capture the beauty and conversion-power of our original.
As young people near the end of high school they face an enormous amount of change and what to do after high school can become a looming question. This 2-part pathway starts with providing a lead gen interface for gathering leads from presentations, then helps high school students and parents to identify goals, articulate strengths and explore their options in a low-pressure survey. Utilizing a variety of question types including sliders, multiple choice and open-ended, the High School Recruitment Pathway allows students to feel empowered and gets parents involved.
Provides an entry point to re-engage old “stale” leads and a reason to reach out to those prospects who may have dropped off of the radar, but who are potentially still interested in going to school. Not only will you increase your ROI by re-engaging existing leads, you’ll also have the opportunity to potentially improve your admissions process by identifying possible barriers that may have held prospects back from initially enrolling.