I was inspired today by a great blog post by Seth Godin. In it, he compares marketers to lawyers, charged not necessarily with telling the truth, but with arguing for the client, their product, their practices, etc. We're paid to claim that our client's products are the best, even if they are not. Clients hire us to build email marketing campaigns, event marketing programs, interactive marketing strategies, and other marketing strategy efforts to sell the product or the service, even if it's not the best; even if the customer would be better off with nothing at all, or heaven forbid, a competitor's product.
What about when a client hires a Cincinnati advertising agency like R.O.Why! Marketing? They want email marketing tips and ROI marketing programs that grow their business. They need a newsletter and they know that what they need is a newsletter. But what if they don't? What if they're wrong? What if they really need something else? What if R.O.Why! Marketing isn't right for them?
It's happened before, on each end of the spectrum. Just this week we landed a client who felt that email marketing was what they needed. While email marketing does need to be a part of the mix, we believed it was not the right time. After we considered the ultimate marketing results they were looking for, their culture, the budgets and timeframes, we felt strongly that blogging for business was best for them. We could have just sold them an email marketing program for more money and more profit. It would have been easier, but it wasn't right. Their audience expects more and while we were hired to serve the client, I believe we were really hired to serve their customer.
We've also had to walk away from business because the product couldn't live up to the marketing claims. The company needed to make dramatic changes to the product itself in order to make it competitive, and good for customers, and worth buying.
As Seth says "...marketers still have the chance to be believed. But trust belongs to statesmen, not lawyers."
