Before I started Hatchet, I worked as an in-house marketing specialist for a company without a marketing process. Wing it, wince, repeat: that’s how we treated each campaign. As a consequence, we had to convince ourselves that our bad ideas weren’t that bad. Unsurprisingly, we executed those ideas poorly and blew a lot of our money.
After too many chaotic months, the team decided to create a process. We changed our approach, set clear goals and cut out anything that didn’t help us meet those goals. Lo and behold, not winging it yielded better results.
As I’ve detailed in another post, too many agencies ignore the fundamentals of marketing. Establishing a process is one of the most neglected cornerstones. To this day, countless agencies shoot from the hip instead of implementing a strategic, calculated approach to each client’s goals. But why?
The short answer: a lot of marketers are lazy. They realize that some clients will buy marketing services the way they buy everything else, so they sell flashy, one-size-fits-all solutions. If a potential client presents a problem, marketers offer a quick fix—be it better SEO results, a new website or a brand overhaul. These solutions sound nice but ultimately don’t work.
This practice isn’t marketing. It makes the prospect do the marketer’s job and allows the marketer to overcharge for a solution to a problem that may or may not exist. I wouldn’t walk into the doctor’s office and declare, “My foot’s broken.” I would say, “My foot hurts,” and the doctor would order an X-ray. That’s what a good marketer does: orders the X-ray and finds the real source of the problem.
Hatchet refuses to enter into new relationships without a diagnosis. We test what does and does not work for a client and then move forward. Unlike other firms, we’re not interested in immediately overhauling everything and quitting on clients if that expensive overhaul doesn’t work. We want to eliminate problems and aggressively go after sales goals. Those things result from our strong commitment to process.
Ready to stop winging it and pursue a customized sales and marketing strategy? Let’s talk process.