‘Did I Really Just Blow $25k On This!?’ One Online Marketing Client Asks

We had a client say these words to us in a call once:

“Did I really just blow $25k on this?”

And my heart sank.

For one, I didn’t even know they had paid us that much. I wasn’t on the original sales call. I was just the ‘tech guy’ that took care of the execution after the fact.

And it wasn’t like this was a huge business that could handle $25k like it was nothing, it was a family owned vet in a suburb somewhere in the Northeastern US.

I was already a bit annoyed with how this client was being handled. I mean, I think they must have been promised the world on the call. And sold everything under the sun:

• Total marketing strategy
• New website
• Content
• SEO
• Facebook Ads
• Graphics
• Emails
• Automation…

I’m sure there was more. It was the whole package.

Which would have been fine, but I was the one that had to deliver, and I wasn’t all of those things. I was ‘techy,’ and I could cobble together a WordPress site, but I wasn’t a web designer by any stretch of the imagination.

I wasn’t a writer and didn’t have the time to come up with good content.

And the SEO? This was right after Penguin and Panda (if you remember all that) and the techniques we used before no longer worked as well.

Email? I don’t know if that even happened. I can’t remember.

What I do remember…

I hated hearing him say that.

Because he was right.

And he should have never been sold that entire “package.”

My philosophy on helping businesses with their marketing is this: It’s not my job to sell them as much as possible to make my company money…

It’s my job to get them an ROI on the money they spend with me.

I know. What a novel concept.

And I think that moment has really shaped the way I run my own business today. Maybe to my own detriment at times but, hey, I need to sleep at night.

Ever since then I’ve only tried to focus on the things that actually matter and that get clients an ROI.

I don’t try and sell new shiny objects or fads.

Just tried and tested truths that I see work time and time again.

There’s a lot of crap out there in the marketing world. There’s a lot of ‘FOMO’ (Fear of Missing Out) and shiny objects. And a lot of it can be really enticing.

But not all of it really works.

In fact, most of it doesn’t.

And, to be honest, not all of it is really new either. It’s just presented differently with a new name.

When you have an issue with a campaign, your first instinct should not be to find a new tactic to fix it.

Your first instinct should be to go back to the fundamentals and make sure you’ve covered everything.