Seriously…Why Are You?

We work with a lot of sophisticated clients so much of our work isn’t complex… it’s really just trying to focus our clients, prioritize their work, and execute on the strategies developed.

• Why are you dumping more money into short-term campaigns instead of investing into long-term strategies?
• Why are you expecting more sales when you haven’t proportionately increased your marketing investment?
• Why are you still keeping sales staff on the payroll when they aren’t closing qualified leads?
• Why are you developing solutions internal when you can go buy it cheaper, faster and better?
• Why are you trying to develop more features when you’re losing clients over ones that don’t work?
• Why are you shopping for the cheapest, knowing that your brand isn’t cheap?
• Why are you still paying someone to update your site when content management systems are affordable?
• Why are you still doing business with the same agency that can’t prove their ROI?
• Why are you investing in a new campaign when you didn’t allow the last one to complete?
• Why are you rewarding new clients and not ones that have been with you for a long time?
• Why are you paying for pay per click when you’re not filtering negative keywords or even testing different versions of your ads or landing pages?
• Why are you buying a new website that doesn’t include mobile, search and conversion strategies?
• Why are you paying to promote your site when it’s not optimized for search?
• Why are you shopping for a new site when you never took advantage of the last one?
• Why are you advertising on other sites when you don’t have videos on your own?
• Why are you trying to rank on keywords that you’ll never rank on and ignoring long-tail ones you can?
• Why are you selecting keywords that drive thousands of visitors when all you need is a few?
• Why are you trying to rank nationally when you don’t rank locally?
• Why are you trying to rank better on keywords that won’t convert into sales?
• Why are you reviewing analytics each week when you haven’t set up events, goals, conversion tracking, e-commerce integration or sales funnels?
• Why are you wanting to dive into social media when you know you don’t like being social?
• Why are you marketing on Twitter when your site isn’t converting visitors?
• Why are you looking for new subscribers when so many are unsubscribing from your email?
• Why are you sending out your crappy weekly email instead of sending an incredible monthly email that drives actual results?
• Why are you marketing on Facebook when you don’t have an email nurturing program?
• Why are you blogging on a domain that you don’t own… creating value and authority for something you’ll never benefit from?
• Why are you blogging and not promoting the content you’ve spent so much time writing?
• Why are you working on a resume? Great jobs never come from submitting a resume anymore?
• Why are you going to work every day dreading what you do instead of quitting and doing what you love?
• Why are you on Twitter and Facebook and not blogging?
• Why are you starting an email program when your site isn’t working?
• Why are you worried about bounce rate when you don’t have anything on your site to keep people engaged?
• Why are you writing more content when you don’t even have a photo of yourself on your site for people to know who you are?
• Why are you writing great content and presenting it on a site that you hate?
• Why are you wasting time thinking about the next big thing instead of mastering what you already have?
• Why are you trying to do it all yourself instead of getting help?

I often joke with folks that I’m a social media consultant but I rarely get to consult with people about social media. It’s quite true, though. Today one of our clients just started a Facebook page for their company… 6 months after we started working with them. It would have been irresponsible for me to have them dive into a social media strategy given that they hadn’t leveraged all the work they were already doing.

Everyone is always pushing marketers to do something new, different, exciting, etc… but without a great foundation to build upon, it’s all a waste of time and money. What are you working on that you shouldn’t be?