Working with Local Marketing Agencies - Episode 10

We break down how to choose and manage a local marketing partner without wasting budget or trust. 

• clarifying what you’re buying and why
• why authenticity needs your stories and photos
• risks of single-channel tactics at the local level
• building a simple website that converts
• using ads only with relevant landing pages
• measuring impact without chasing vanity metrics

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Transcript

Know What You’re Paying For

Beware Single-Channel Solutions

Build A Solid Website First

Measuring What Actually Matters

Authentic Content Requires Your Involvement

Take Control And Diversify

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Marketing from the Car. In this episode, we're going to talk about working with uh local agencies. This could be a marketing agency, an ad agency, a service provider, someone who's going to do some marketing for you. And at Locable, we're not an agency, but we do work with some. We love working with the good ones when we're uh value aligned, when we're values aligned, when they care about their community and take a practical approach. We love that. And we, in fact, cultivate those relationships and try to help them to be uh better. So today I want to talk to you about a couple things to look for. What makes a good partner, uh, what makes a less good partner, and um, and what to be aware of. Now, right out of the gate, uh, marketing and advertising often get used interchangeably, but they're very different. Um, people could offer all sorts of services. So the first thing you need to know is what do you want them to do for you and what do you want to get out of it. Years ago, I tell a lot of these stories, but years ago, I was at a networking event and a gentleman who runs a senior care service or facility or something was telling me he just hired a company to do SEO, search engine optimization, to presumably help him rank higher on Google. And I asked him a question that seemed to uh bother him quite a bit. I said, Cool. What will they be doing for you? And the look on his face was as though I was an idiot. Made him really angry, uh confused, I think. And he said, Well, what do you mean? They're gonna do SEO stuff. And he proceeded to tell me how he was spending$1,500 a month, which could be very valuable depending on the situation. It could also be a ripoff, but at$1,500 a month, he does not know what he's paying for. I bet he in his case, he probably had a better sense of what his goals are or what they told him they should be. But that would be like me hiring somebody, and you come visit the office, and I'm introducing you to people, and I say, This is John, and you say, What does John do? And I look at you bewildered and say, What do you mean? He does work stuff. Is he in sales? Is he in finance? Is he code, right? Who knows? The point is you need to know what you're paying for, you need to understand it. And if you're not technical, that is not an excuse. Just like when you hire uh an attorney or you hire uh an accountant, you may not understand the laws they're referencing or the codes or whatever, but you need to know what they're trying to accomplish. So the first thing is what are they actually going to do and will it help you? The next thing is um, are they too single-minded? We see a lot of folks that do social media marketing. I have a big problem with that. We see a lot of folks who used to do things like geotargeting, which if you're interested in that, unless you really have a good reason uh that you can articulate, that's not worth your time. Um, so very rarely will a single-minded solution work for you at the local level because you don't have the budget to have lots of different folks. Now, search engine optimization could arguably be a thing if you're got a budget for it, maybe your local car dealer or a chain of restaurants, maybe, maybe, maybe. Uh, but really, I want someone who's going to do marketing for you. Ideally, content marketing. So clearly I'm biased, but you're listening to this, so you at least believe me a little bit. Uh, so content marketing says I want to reach people where they're at. I do want to get more out of social, but I also want to show up on Google and maybe AI. I want to drive more referrals, I want to cultivate an email newsletter. I might do some advertising, and I want all the other things that I do to make those ads convert. See if you don't have those other things, you might run ads, whether it's online or offline, and they might work and you fail to get a customer. They might come to your website or they might pick up a magazine or hear you on the radio and they start to look you up, but they find it doesn't do it for them. So now that ad was effective and you fumbled at the one-yard line. You were going into score, and you fumbled because your website was trash or non-existent. Which brings me to the next thing. Start with the foundation, your website. I don't care if it's simple or not. Ideally, it is simple, but make sure it's solid. It has a clear value proposition, a clear message, a clear call to action, a clear way to connect with you, a clear way to do the next thing. And if you're running ads online, you surely need to link to specific pages. So if anyone is going to run ads for you and link to your homepage, they're disqualified. They need to link to a specific page on your site. On that note, we want to talk about measurability. There's the old adage that 50% of advertising doesn't work. The problem is we don't know which 50%. This goes back to the late 1800s. Uh, over a decade ago, I was in an event uh with Rex. Oh, forgetting his last name. Um well, Rex ran a company that did attribution, which is to say like Honda and Pepsi and these big companies, those sorts would work with him to figure out what advertising is working. And he said, We're so much better now than we were. We're up to 60, 40. This is a world leader for big brands. So don't get too obsessed with the ability to track things. Um, yeah, you might run Facebook ads, and someone from a Facebook ad might click and might buy something. That's cool, but that doesn't mean you can get rid of all the other stuff that you do. How do you know that they didn't pick up a flyer, drive by your store, see a blog post, hear you on the radio, do all these things, and then see the Facebook ad and take action. I was talking with a young marketer a few years ago at the Florida Main Street Conference, and he says, Oh, yeah, I always uh tell my clients, get rid of anything you can't track. That's really short-sighted. You're not gonna run billboards or do print ads or any of those things anymore because you can't track it. That doesn't mean it's not working. And that leaves some ambiguity, of course. But you know, when I proposed to my wife, well, obviously she said yes, we're married, but while I had to propose for her to say yes, there were countless things that had to happen before I proposed for me to get the answer I wanted. And so think of marketing like courting someone. You can't measure everything, and that's just the way it is, that's just life. But there are certain things that you know work. You know what? When you say please, when you say thank you, when you hold the door, when you act like a gentleman, wouldn't you know it? That generally gets you going in the right direction. If you buy flowers and you recognize and you say, look how pretty you are, and you say these things and do these things, does that quantifiably move you closer to a wife? I don't know. But is it the right thing to do? Yep. So think of marketing like that. There's certain things that you may or may not be able to measure. Definitely weave some things in that you can. And I'm not saying don't look at analytics for for uh for goodness sakes, look at your Facebook page, see how few people you're reaching to believe me when I say do some other stuff. So as you're looking for a partner, um really make sure that they come to you and that they want to include you. If anyone promises that you don't have to be involved, either what they do will be irrelevant, it will suck, or it just won't be authentic. And at the local level, your authenticity is one of your biggest advantages. So if they're creative and they're all that, that's awesome. But as we've talked about before, you need to share examples from your business and they don't know what those are. So at a minimum, they need to sit down with you, probably get some pictures or go take them for you at a client's facility, at the project, at your store, whatever. And then they need to tell stories about people that you work with clients, um, employees, donors, volunteers. So, all that to say, you may have a great opportunity to work with somebody locally. And if they do the things you need them to do, fantastic. But no, you must know what they're going to do. You must be involved in some capacity so that it's relevant for you. And they cannot do a single channel, or you're putting all your eggs in a basket that you don't control. And as I say, Facebook hates you. It's not just Facebook, and for them, it's not personal, but for you, it is. So provide yourself with some control over your destiny. And again, if you haven't watched or listened to our distribution episode, you can see some simple ways to get more out of it. And if you're working with someone you really like and you think they may not have the skills to do what I'm talking about across the board, send them to locable. We'll help get them up to speed on our marketing 345 approach and get equipped so that you and your community can take back local.