Are You Falling For B2B Marketing Hype?

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Many small business owners who want to outsource their marketing, end up feeling like idiots…

They run into sales people who speak a language beyond their understanding, and end up assuming they don’t know anything, so the marketing agency or freelance marketer that they are talking to must be good.

They rely on an old expression: “BS baffles brains.”

It works – most of the time. But it doesn’t have to work on YOU. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

How to spot marketing hype.

 

1. Are they able to explain what they do?

Albert Einstein, who seems to have been a smart guy, was quoted saying:

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, then you don’t understand it yourself.

So, if the freelancer or marketing agency you want to work with keep throwing buzzwords and industry jargon at you, there are two possibilities:

a. They don’t really know what they are doing, and they just want to make themselves seem very smart.

b. They know what they are doing, but they want to keep you in the dark, and “compliant”.

After all, you won’t bother them if they are so smart, right? You will let them do as they please.

And in both cases, if you complain about their lack of results, they just throw another load of industry jargon at you.

It could, of course, also be that they engage in questionable online marketing practices, and they don’t want you to know that your domain may be blacklisted or even de-indexed as a result of it.

And this is indicative of two more problems you may experience when you do decide to work with them:

2. Potential communication problems:

If everything they say flies above your head, what will it be like when you try to communicate with them, and try to figure something out?

We have seen emails from companies talking to clients as if they were children.

It’s an attitude of “you wouldn’t understand”. It’s way above your pay grade.

This attitude makes it difficult not only to get answers, but also to hold your freelancer or marketing agency accountable.

If at any point you feel as if your chosen service provider has a patronizing or condescending attitude, walk away.

3. Will your voice be heard?

They may know marketing, but YOU know your business. You know your customers or clients. You know what matters to them. And above all, if your marketing service provider puts out messages that don’t resonate with your target market, you will know.

However, when you raise any concern or question, is it taken seriously? Do they work through the issue with you, or are you just brushed off, as if you are interrupting an already overloaded support person?

You will be able to pick up signs of this during the initial interview.

4. How many questions do they ask?

The fewer questions they ask, the bigger the red flag should be. Fair enough, these questions might not be raised at the initial interview, unless it is a long one.

In most cases, they would ask some basic questions, and once they had a chance to look at your website and social presence, and did some digging into your industry and local competitors, they would have more questions.

But the fewer questions they ask, the bigger the red flag becomes. Because it means they assume they know everything they need to know, which is a very stupid thing to do.

The only exception, of course, is if the freelancer or marketing agency specializes in providing services to a very specific, narrow niche.

For instance, if someone ONLY offers marketing services to say, dentists or plumbers, they will have learned a lot about the industry and the ideal customer profile already.

But even in that case, they should still be asking about your business, to find out if anything makes it unique – because in marketing, positioning and differentiation can make the difference between success and failure.

In conclusion:

When a marketing freelancer or agency does a pitch to a large company or corporation, those sitting in on the presentation usually have knowledge of marketing themselves.

Industry jargon becomes part of the conversation, because everybody at the table (or on the Zoom call) understands it.

However, most small business owners are not marketers. Yes, it is advised that you try to educate yourself as much as possible, even if you never do your own marketing online.

But if someone starts using big words that don’t mean a thing to you, you have to ask yourself this question:

If you choose to work with them, and this is how they talk to you, where does that leave YOU?