Marketing Agencies Promising ROI | Get Fact Up #71

Chris Hogan: Good day world, Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from MeMedia studio here from Burleigh Heads for episode 71 of Get Fact Up woo! How you going Andrew?

Andrew Groat: Yeah, pretty good, I'm not quite that excited but I'm fairly excited about this episode.

Chris Hogan: I'm gonna do the rest of the podcast in one breath. No.

Andrew Groat: So what are we talking about today?

Chris Hogan: Well you ...

Andrew Groat: You don't even have a laptop in front of you. Today we're talking about guarantees of ROI.

Chris Hogan: Yeah!

Andrew Groat: Marketing agencies making guarantees of ROI.

Chris Hogan: Yeah, we seen a bit of that. We see that in emails sent from all corners of the globe into our clients inboxes, our own inboxes and recently we were seeing a lot of Facebook advertising around ...

Andrew Groat: Yeah, there's some crazy stuff being said on Facebook, like for example, 300% increase in leads, we'll get you on the first page of Google. For what?

Chris Hogan: Yeah.

Andrew Groat: Yeah, it's insane, like for starters, how can you possibly guarantee ROI when you haven't done background research on a company, a marketplace, industry, a client base. There's so many ... Even objectives is different in each campaign. There's so many variables that you can't ... How can you possibly guarantee absolute claims like that?

Chris Hogan: Yeah. So why do you think they're doing it first of all? Why do you think those agencies are doing that?

Andrew Groat: Well, I think if I'm being honest, they understand the lifecycle of the client and they know that they can get a client in on these claims maybe for three to six months until they realise that the claims are bogus and then they've at least got them for that long.

Chris Hogan: So they're definitely gonna be churning clients then and then refunding.

Andrew Groat: Refunding potentially, yeah.

Chris Hogan: Being a marketing agency, actually churning clients and giving refunds.

Andrew Groat: I would hope they're refunding, but I know a lot that don't. It just fades out, kind of the relationship fades out.

Chris Hogan: Well it'd be a big massive killer to a business anyway if you had to churn a heap of clients and give out a heap of refunds.

Andrew Groat: Well, everybody I know is a little bit jaded about some SEO agency or something at some point, so yeah, there's a lot of it out there. But I was talking with someone about this yesterday. Imagine if doctors made these sorts of claims.

Chris Hogan: Woo!

Andrew Groat: Said "I 100% guarantee I will cure whatever you have. Don't need to tell me your symptoms."

Chris Hogan: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Andrew Groat: That'd be shut down in flames.

Chris Hogan: Yeah, everything. Every ailment.

Andrew Groat: And it's kind of the same thing, there's like a thousand reasons why that's not possible and it's the same in marketing, there's 1000 reasons why you can't guarantee 300% increase in leads or something like that.

Chris Hogan: Yeah. So what can we do? What do we do here that maybe I guess clients should expect from an agency or a marketing partnership?

Andrew Groat: Well, if we're talking about things you can promise, I think it's everything around the integrity, you can promise integrity around all of your marketing practices, you can promise that you'll be transparent when doing your marketing campaigns, you'll be transparent and communicate the entire marketing process to clients, teach them a long the way. You can guarantee that you'll do everything in your power to find a solution.

Chris Hogan: Yeah, on that one, on that one, so I like that one because we don't like to be exacerbating the problem by highlighting that that problem means that we can't give a solution for that problem 'cause of this problem. So always giving a solution is really important, and that might mean making some tough calls or being quite nimble and changing up the strategy slightly.

Andrew Groat: Potentially putting on different hats and just marketing. So for example, we've seen a lot where the marketing might be great, but the sales are still not getting through because the post sale follow up process is no good, and sometimes we have to advise on that, and that's outside of our marketing obligations but if overall, we're not getting success, then you should talk about that with the client.

Chris Hogan: Absolutely, and that's obviously for service based businesses. Excuse me, my voice went a bit weird then. And then for the eCommerce businesses, it's important to highlight well "Hey, your website's not actually generating sales because the add to cart page cannot be found, the add to cart button's the wrong colour, the checkout process is clunky, so we do actually need to look at that side of things, and in our case, we've had to pivot away from "hey, we need to hold off on the marketing until such time as those that that sales funnel is fixed.

Andrew Groat: Yeah, and even outside of that, doing the background research to see if there's actually a viable opportunity there, 'cause some people will think "Oh great, I'm gonna market this product." But is there a demand for that product? Is there a marketplace for that product? Is the product any good?

Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Groat: So there's a certain obligation there for a marketing company to actually do that research as well, rather than just going straight in with the marketing campaign that falls over then maybe the research should have been done before hand to see if there really is an opportunity there. And I think accountability is something else that should be guaranteed. You can say "Well we're not gonna guarantee a 300% success rate, we'll guarantee that we'll stay the entire way through this campaign to ensure success.

Chris Hogan: Yeah.

Andrew Groat: There's a guarantee.

Chris Hogan: A guarantee that will do all of these tasks, which we know and from previous case studies, work, works, and we're going to undertake all these tykes, so in our case we'll do ... That's some crazy hair you got there. You're on camera. That will undertake all of this content creation and that we'll distribute it through social and then we'll put an advertising spend associated with that and drive traffic back to the website. We'll guarantee we'll do all those things.

Andrew Groat: Take responsibility every step of the way.

Chris Hogan: And guarantee we'll do the research around before even creating that content, so we know exactly who we're targeting, what we're targeting 'em about or for, why they're actually gonna be interested in this content and that's a good guarantee, I guess provides.

Andrew Groat: I was thinking about this though. If you can make these guarantees, can you actually guarantee improvement for a client?

Chris Hogan: Absolutely.

Andrew Groat: Not saying specific improvement, not we'll get you 110% ...

Chris Hogan: Absolutely.

Andrew Groat: Return on investment. I think you can guarantee improvement.

Chris Hogan: Everybody needs to keep an open mind here, don't they? 'cause like we just said, X client might come to you for "Hey, I want all this marketing and advertising services, but we need to keep an open mind." And say "Well no, we can't do that until we do this." So everybody has to keep an open mind, but yes, guaranteed improvement.

Andrew Groat: But I think, yeah, if you've done all the background research and you're accountable and responsible, then yeah, you can guarantee improvements.

Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Groat: It might be a hard battle sometimes, but yeah, you can guarantee improvements, and something that people often say to that is "What about big industry changes?" And we were talking about this last week with Facebook just turning itself on it's head. So what do you do there?

Chris Hogan: Yeah.

Andrew Groat: If you're making guarantees, what if the industry just turns upside down overnight? And then like, last year, we had mobilegeddon, the Google algorithm updates and penguin and panda just taking people off the map.

Chris Hogan: Yeah.

Andrew Groat: Can you still guarantee improvements around that?

Chris Hogan: We'll guarantee that yes, you can, because you can guarantee that when dealing with the correct agency that you pivot, you will be nimble, and therefore your strategy, because it's so nimble, that it's capable of jumping onto another channel or distributing that content through a different channel, so yes.

Andrew Groat: Yeah, I agree I think if you're a smart marketer, you realise that these setbacks are also opportunities. I mean if the entire marketplace has been flattened then there's an opportunity there as well to find another way of doing it.

Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Groat: So yeah, these big industries set back. Big industry changes are setbacks and opportunities and I think if you're accountable, then you'll say "Alright, we've just taken a hit but we're gonna figure out what to do next." Whereas I think some agencies may just hang up their hats when these things happen.

Chris Hogan: Sure. So what's the benefit for everybody out there listening to this? I guess it's that be benefit is that they, in the content that we've just shared right now, they need to ... When they're being offered these exciting offers, they look fantastic on paper. They need to really question them, right? So the benefits for everybody out there is we've offered you plenty of fodder for questions.

Andrew Groat: Yeah, so it's like if someone's making an absolute guarantee, but they know nothing about your company, I'd be asking questions then. If I say "Yeah, we can get you a 200% increase in sales." Or "We can get you an X increase in leads." But they actually haven't asked you any questions or done any research in our business, how can they actually say that? There's too many variables and if you really think about it, there's a million reasons why your own company's gonna be different to a previous thing that they've done, so yeah, I think that's when you need to ask the questions is when there's absolute claims like exact figures of improvements and things like that, and when they haven't done the background research on you.

Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And of course, all the marketing in the world can bring in all the traffic in the world and all of this fantastic social engagement, but unless you're capable of selling ...

Andrew Groat: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Hogan: Your business is gonna be kaput. SO bare in mind that sales training for your team members or improvements to your eCommerce platform, imperative.

Andrew Groat: Yeah, that's true, and that comes back to that first page of Google claim. Someone might be able to get you on the first page of Google, does that mean you're gonna get more sales? Not necessarily. There's a whole lot more that needs to be thought of.

Chris Hogan: Yeah, for what keyword?

Andrew Groat: Like for what keyword and can your website convert? All of this sort of stuff, so if someone's not gonna commit to the entire process to a sale, be weary of any claims there as well.

Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Interesting. Well, I've certainly been enlightened by this conversation Andrew and you're listening to MeMedia's Get Fact Up. There's heaps of episodes on our website, this is episode 71, anything else to add Andrew?

Andrew Groat: No, I think I'm all talked out.

Chris Hogan: Good. Alright, good. Thanks, goodbye.

Andrew Groat: Thanks guys.