Just like with girls, there are red flags and green flags. You most probably have your own when it comes to business.
Based on that, you choose your employees, partners, deals… everything really.
If you're planning on working with a marketing agency, here is the biggest red flag you must avoid.
If you fall for this trick they use, you can say goodbye to your money. Might as well burn it.
And trust me, it’s easier to miss than you might think.
The Parasite That Kills Every Ad
Branding or brand building has kept marketing in the dark ages forever, and it's embarrassing.
One of the greatest marketers, Claude Hopkins, said:
"We are fast approaching a time when everything will be measurable. We will be able to measure everything. We won’t be throwing the money away at BS anymore. Now, we can run an ad, and know if it works or not… it’s amazing."
What happened?
A hundred years go by… yes, a century and most ads are still unmeasurable.
Why?
Because of brand building.
Brand building is the perfect excuse for an ad doing nothing.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not against branding. I think branding is important. I think having a solid, coherent brand is an extremely important metric. But, we do not use branding as the goal for advertising.
Why? Because it’s impossible to measure. Not only that, you don’t have the budget to do it.
Trust me. If that is your only goal, it will cost a lot to saturate a market so people recognize your name.
You won’t keep up if that’s the only goal. Branding should always be a byproduct.
The only goal of marketing is to SELL first.
Many marketers mislead clients about the benefits of brand building. They show examples like Coca-Cola, Heineken, and McDonald's.
Sure, their brand means something now. But if you look at the past, when they first started, you will see that all of them started by SELLING.
They had actually measurable ads, not this garbage with 2 M&M’s speaking on a couch. How can you measure that, really?
Coca-Cola actually started by selling coupons.
Why?
Because it’s measurable. You can see how many coupons were used.
If you want to waste hundreds of millions like Uber for years, then do it. Just remember that they had unlimited capital. You don’t.
The Biggest Red Flag In Marketing
If one of those marketing morons tells you:
“You are not sophisticated enough; our brand building is amazing, and we can measure it because 100,000 people saw it, and now our brand has this top-of-mind awareness…”
Ask them if they pay the rent in brand awareness or top-of-mind awareness.
As far as I know, we still pay with money.
Money is made by selling.
So, let’s have selling as the #1 priority and have brand-building as a side mission.
Talk soon,
Darius
P.S. Want to know how I’d make your landing page?
Get in touch with my agency today. If we’re a good fit I will personally take a look at your company and your marketing, come up with a strategy of what I’d do differently and discuss it with you in depth on a call.
No cost, no obligation.
If you want to work together I’ll tell you exactly how that works, if you don’t want to work together that’s fine too. No hard selling, no pressure, no annoying sales tactics.
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