From Your Shop to Your Marketing Agency, Success Still Comes Down to Customer Service
Over the years, shop owners have told me dozens of different stories for why they are skeptical of online marketing, investing in a great website, and yes, sometimes the internet altogether. Regardless of their specific story, these shop owners all have one thing in common: Poor management of their marketing efforts.
Whether you’ve hired a family member with little to no marketing experience or signed up with an agency that didn’t have your best interest in mind, you understand how painful it can be to watch your marketing initiatives fail. But the biggest mistake I see shop owners making in these situations is really after the fact. This is where comments like “Online marketing doesn’t work” and “AdWords doesn’t work” come into play.
This is never really the case. For starters, you may be spending your marketing dollars on driving traffic to an out-of-date website. You can put a BMW hood emblem on a Pinto, but it’s still a Pinto. No matter how big your Google AdWords or overall marketing budget, you are wasting your time and money if you don’t have a personalized, user-friendly, and attractive website for your customers.
Beyond driving traffic to bad websites, failed marketing efforts often come down to poor management, plain and simple. The hard truth is there are companies in every industry that use clever sales tricks and buzzwords to sell their services to small business owners, and disappear after they make the sale. This is when many shop owners start to believe that online marketing doesn’t work for them, that it’s broken and cannot be repaired. In reality, they are missing the support, research, and effort that they assumed they were getting from their investment– in short, poor customer service.
The bottom line is always this: It’s not about the gimmicks, it’s about doing it right. This is why every AdWords account manager at Autoshop Solutions takes the exam to become Google certified. This is why we implemented necessary best practices to become a trusted Google partner, and why we break down data and numbers so that our clients can make smart decisions about their websites and marketing dollars on a regular basis. Without that time and effort, and without customer service, all the shiny tools and sales pitches in the world can’t save your marketing efforts from “It doesn’t work”. The good news? It’s never too late to make repairs.
Thoughts? Comments? View my original post on LinkedIn.
