By Ben Pettit
CEO of STORY
Let’s say you have been growing your company at a strong clip for the past few years, but now you want to take it to the next level.
You’ve read countless blogs on how simple and effective marketing plans can generate new leads and sales. So, you take those tips and utilize them for your company. Six months later, nothing has happened. You start to worry. You decide to hire a marketing firm such as STORY to create and implement a plan.
Then what? Well, your work isn’t over just because you hired a firm. A good marketing firm engages you throughout the process, and in turn, you need to engage them.
Here are five ways to best engage a marketing firm:
Keep them in the loop. If something changes on a production schedule or development timeline, make sure they know about it. The marketing team serves as your gatekeeper for information, if they don’t know something has changed, they can’t answer people correctly. And if they can’t answer people correctly, things get bad quickly.
Define their role: If you have a firm that is handling social media, but doesn’t have the tools to answer complaints and comments, then you are failing. See step one. Keep them in the loop. If you know bad news is coming, tell your marketing firm so they can get ready for the proverbial tweets storms, bad Facebook reviews and the Instagram Issues. (ok that third one doesn’t exist, but you know what I mean).
Follow the plan: A good marketing team can walk you through a lot of steps and issues. They can create a strong timeline of events for things to get done. However, if you decide to alter the plan like you are some kind of Darth Vader talking to Lando in Empire Strikes Back, then things will go awry. Especially, if Han Solo is you in that scenario.
Prepare for the worst: Ask your marketing team what is the worst that can happen and prepare a plan for that. They will know everything that can happen. Ask them to help you get ready.
Rely on their knowledge: You vetted and hired this team for a reason. Rely on their insights and knowledge. They know what they are doing and can get it done. Aka, this is not the time to bring your 15-year-old nephew in for advice.
Remember, hiring a marketing firm to handle your needs is only half of the equation. You need to give them the tools they need to succeed.