3 Signs You've Hired The Wrong Marketing Help

Have you ever spent money on your marketing and wondered if you were throwing your money away? As a small business marketing coach, every day I meet small businesses who tell me their woeful tales of hiring some form of help in marketing and being disappointed. Here are 3 hints that you've indeed gone and hired the wrong marketing help.

1. They are an expert in implementing one element but not the strategy

If I had a dollar for every client who had hired a social media expert, an SEO guru, a website designer or a telemarketer to help their business growth and not gotten a single new client from their efforts, I'd be living in Hawaii on my retirement funds right now. An expert in one field of marketing can't be responsible for the STRATEGY of your business. For that, you need to hire an expert who can help you determine your most viable niche, your ideal target client and your messaging. Without any of these, how can you expect anyone to really be able to help your business grow?

2. The things you're promised are not happening

A client once cried to me about her web designer who had promised her the moon. He'd promised to help her find her niche, determine her messaging and to help with targeting her ideal clients. Of course, months later my client fired them because they weren't capable of delivering what they promised. Please understand that there are companies who are actually capable of doing that but beware of generalists. Also beware of anyone who says they can help you determine your strategy without doing consumer research. My clients and I research their niches as the first starting point in our relationship. Research is the only way to figure out which way you should go with your marketing and if your vendor is promising you results without it, I would be very wary.