Over an enjoyable supper last night with a CMO previously at Coke we discussed the importance of choosing the right agency with correct skills to provide the solutions needed.

She had been  frustrated in the past by the lack of agency talent to provide an encompassing offering, ( before she hired Digital Fire ! ) meaning she had to go to a series of agencies who often promised the skills she needed so they could win her business but when it came to the crunch did not deliver, and the subsequent pain of having to go over and remedy mistakes was an antithesis to her.

We agreed that such situations lead to wasted money, frustrated employees, wasted time and crucially the lack of a quality offering to drive sales in the market.

I told her a story which exemplified the importance of getting it right first time and is a real life example of when digital marketing goes wrong through lack of planning, skills and execution.

I like quality produce, whether its Montblanc pens, Range Rover cars or Church’s shoes. These products if looked after well will last you a life time and you will enjoy using them. Sure, they cost more than average but who wants  average especially when quality delivers more value in the long run.

I approached the MD of a luxury leather travel accessory company, I think they had better remain nameless,  as I used their beautiful products, enjoyed their undisputed quality, and was often compliment on the bags and asked where they came from. I was happy to pass on the details.

Each year I probably purchased 15,000 ZAR worth of the bags for presents so I  thought it would be good to meet the MD behind the business and see if we could work together.

We met and I complimented him on his products and asked what his target market and digital marketing strategy was and if we could assist him in driving sales and profit as we provided a full service digital marketing business.

The first alarm bells went when we told me he had left all the marketing to his web build agency.

Build agencies are not marketing agencies.

A good analogy between the difference between the two would be a build agency creates your hotel, and the marketing agency delivers people to stay.

(That said the marketing agency needs to be consulted before the hotel is even built, as they have insight into what the target market will want to experience.)

The MD  was 9 months behind on the website. He expected that it would launch and the sales would poor in.

When I looked at the site I realised that there was trouble ahead.

Any advertising or marketing starts with the target market. The designs on the site were not going to resonate with the high income UK and EU audience required. The functionality was poor as was the user experience.

He asked if we could change certain areas but the way it had been build did not allow for that.

A few weeks went by and eventually he told me the toe curling story that at a trade show in Europe 500 people had tried to order his bags on line and the system had not been able to deliver a sale.

5000 x 500 is 2.5 million rand.

He has also spent 600,000 rand on the website so far.

I told him that a rescue package was not a possibility and he would have to start all over again.

He was understandably reluctant to start again but months later that’s indeed what he had to do, scrap the entire project and start again.

He didn’t thank me for saying so  but the truth was that if he had come to us first we could have got it right first time. The build agency did not have the market experience or personel to deliver what he needed.

So what should he have done ? Before one line of code has been written the end goal must be clearly defined. Start at the end and work back to the beginning.

I estimate the entire process had cost him 4 to 5 million rand in wasted time and sales opportunity.

Luckily he has recovered but that was a hammer blow to his business that could have been avoided.

We could have built the website with our partners and created a fully functioning digital marketing strategy for a quarter of that wasted cash and added another 3 million in sales over that coming year.

• Situations like this I often  see with MD’s who understand their business whether it be discount trainers or luxury bags, however they don’t understand the myriad different skills which need to be harnessed by a strategy to drive the required business results.
• Those results are always the same thing : sales and profit.
• If you don’t get your digital strategy right you are losing market share and money to your competitors.
• You need specialists to deliver the right strategy and to execute it.
• If you have hired the right agency then the profits you generate from your marketing will outweigh its cost; hence you make profit.
• Create poor quality marking – lose market share and money
• Create quality digital marketing – increase market share  and make profit.

It really is  that simple.

Businesses who dramatically cut their marketing budget or try to do digital production on the cheap, or with the wrong agency starve  their business of opportunity to make sales. Sales drive profit. Profit is the end goal of business.

Don’t slash budget to save money, it doesn’t  work. Instead evaluate your marketing and spend your budget where it generates profitable sales.

This sounds elementary basic but its amazing to me how may businesses fall into this trap,

Many MD’s understand their business but they don’t understand digital. They think a web designer and a social media person means they have their digital covered and then they are disappointed when the results they wish for don’t come.

A quality web site needs people who have these skills:

1. Content production
2. Marketing strategist
3. UX specialist
4. Designer
5. Coder
6. Search Engine optimisation
7. Social Media
8. CRM functionality
9. Business strategist
10. Video marketing
11. Animation
12. SMS
13. Email marketing

Get the right agency – Don’t rush in, kick the tyres of the agency, clearly explain your end goal and look for examples of what they have done in the market you wish to target and the results they have generated.

Clearly identify your end goal. Create and test a strategy for reaching that goal. Implement the strategy and check progress at each stage along the way.

Get it right = happy customers, brand expansion, sales and profit

Get it wrong  = frustrated customers who go to competitors, brand damage, financial loss.

Which will you chose?

– Thomas Boyd, MD