Marketing Runs Deep: Episode 27

Hey everyone this is Bryan Hatch founder of AutomateBIG. And here we are on another episode of Marketing Runs Deep. And today, I want to talk about why handing off your marketing isn't working, and how to solve it. And I want to start off with something that may or may not work for some of my international people here but I recognize football, football, and rugby.

You know, they're all different sports, situations here but I want to just focus on one thing. Bear with me depending on how you follow sports but don't worry too much, okay? So typically, there are in a football game, like this is offense, I don't know if this is making much sense to you, but these are the people, the lineman here at the front. This is the quarterback and this is the running back, okay? So let's put into this scenario, you are the quarterback.

You own your business, you're an infopreneur, you sell online courses of training. And now you need to hand off your marketing to somebody else. Well, you need to hand off, maybe you roll out this way, you roll out this way. And you hand it off to this person, okay? But it does matter which way you hand off. And it does matter which way you roll out, but that, what happens, and you know, my little kid football here, when you get the football, and you turn to your left. You're hoping that the running back, this guy right here is going to come on your left-hand side and take the ball and run with it, right?

If you're turning to your right, you're gonna turn to your right and the same thing is what you're expecting to have happened as the quarterback. But what happens is, if you roll out to your right and the running back goes to the left, then there's no hand off. And so what happens is in these fun things we do in our businesses, we look to other people and say, "Okay I have somebody else out there in the world that does marketing better than me."

Like that's important to acknowledge, understand. There are roles within your company things that you need to outsource or pay somebody else to do, or bring in an in-house and have someone full-time to do it. But you need someone to help you with things that maybe aren't your forte. That's really sound advice for any business person, and you recognize that. But at the same token I've found with infopreneurs you're typically the person that does everything in the beginning, or you maybe have a little bit of help with an assistant or something like that, but you don't have a ton of help.

And then when you want to give it to somebody else, well you meet a couple of challenges. And typically it's something like this, where you're rolling right and you're running back's rolling left and it just doesn't make sense. And so what happens as well, is there's frustration that's caused to you you're like, "Gosh, I told you what I needed you to do. I needed you to get this thing done, whatever it was for the marketing and you didn't do it. And it's not the way I want it to be. And now I feel like I just to do it back again myself."

So you take it back from the the agency or the person you had involved, and then you start doing it again because you know how to do what you did but you don't know what possibility is over there with them. You only know what you've already created in your business and the marketing you've run to. So there's a couple things to note about that that you need to be aware of.

Number one, is that when you are getting someone else to help you, you don't know what you don't know, but you also don't understand what you're handing off. Okay? You maybe did 10 things. If you listed out everything that you did to make that marketing effort run, you know those 10 things, but when you have somebody else to do it, they have their own expertise. If you don't know how to run ads and you're asking someone to run ads for you then they're going to have their own processes in place to make that happen.

So again, you don't know their process. And so you don't necessarily know what to ask or what to figure out. And so that's the number one thing you've got to overcome is just that fumble that happens between not knowing what you're handing to somebody else.

All right. Now, the second thing you need to remember when you're handing this football off to your marketing agency or your team member, whomever it is that's working with you. You have to remember that it is your expectations that get in the way. But what I mean by that is that when have you ever experienced in your life, someone setting expectations for you and you not understanding those how has that worked out for you?

Same with your team or an agency or anybody that you've hired to help with your marketing. If you've had an expectation of them and it has not been understood, how's that worked out? Likely you've been one of the businesses that has gone through frustration or felt burned or felt like, "Aw, man all these marketing agencies are horrible. They don't do what they say they're going to do", when really it is your expectation. And I hate to say that in a way that you would feel like it's all your fault. It's not, your agency or your team member has a a culpability to that as well.

So it's not like it's all on you, but those expectations don't work. And that's one of the things that we have to realize is that when we expect something to happen but it's not clear, well, we can't expect that it's going to actually work out. Now the best way to solve these challenges that you're facing as you're handing off your marketing to somebody else. The first thing you gotta do is get super clear on what it is the project is all about. The details, all the nitty gritty details and recognizing that what has happened to you isn't all your fault by any means, it is a communication between you and who's working with you for your marketing.

And so to get clear on that is to understand how many pages you're building how many pieces of copy you need.. like get really, really clear on what it is you want to have happen. It's also important to get clear on, Is this a retainer or is this a project? A project is start and then finish. A retainer is do everything possible within 30 days. And then renew that and keep going. That's a total different experience that you want to understand with your agencies you're working with. So I'll make sure that that's the case but the first thing is, again, get super clear.

I mean, get so granular that if you don't know what it is that the agency you're working with, makes you aware of what it is before you get started. That will save you a whole lot of headache and make your life a whole lot simpler. All right. The final thing you need to do to solve this challenge in your business, as an infopreneur, is to be very clear about the objectives. And what I mean is you necessarily can't always know what the outcome is going to be. You don't always know that what the production's going to be.

Maybe you are going to have to review things a couple of times as the infopreneur business leader that you are the quarterback in the scenario like we've talked about, but recognizing that the outcome equals something, the outcome equals that you are happy with it. They are happy with it. And it's agreed upon, like you gotta realize, like, what is that? And even ask your agency, "Hey, if you send me over content for me to proof, and I changed some things and send it to you when can I expect a new version? And is there any edits we need to go from there? Is it just one and two and we're done, or is it we need to do another round of that?"

So it's getting really clear on the outcome of, "okay, now the copy is wonderful. Okay. Now let's look at the design and making sure that that's the case as well." So you have to get clear on what the outcome is. And the only way you can do that is by using clear communication. You see, sometimes we assume things, just this last week, there were links that needed to be changed out on some ads that we were working on and because the landing page has changed. And so we changed the links out but then there were secondary places that needed to be changed as well.

Now, as the business leader, I said, "Hey, change these links out." And I, in my mind said, "that was very clear, totally clear, the links will be changed". The confirmation came back, links are changed. And then upon further review and understanding of our QA process, then we looked and found that, that secondary place those links were, wasn't changed. And so we needed to change that again. So it's one of those things that you have to realize that there's more to the story and getting clear on that and not assuming that you know what it is, but to get really clear from the people you're talking with.

Okay. Is there anything else? Is there anything else that I should be expecting? Is there anything else you need access to? Is there anything else that's gonna cause us a problem to get where we want to go, that outcome? And that third little bonus is to have a QA process. So when you're handing off your marketing you have to have a QA process that makes it be, what you want it to be in the long run. And this training here today is just one small way to AutomateBIG.