Today everyone is a marketer. From a young person that is a social media wiz and is now ready to do your social media management to a middle-age couple that has amazingly become online marketers overnight with their new Facebook Ads and is now offering you the same. Today everyone is a marketer.
There are many automated, easy services out there that allow you to run your own marketing. You can schedule your social media posts, create landing pages in seconds, and create your own google ads. You can do all of this! So the question lies – should you?
We have joined many online training schools, as participants as well as sitting spies to check out what is going on in the marketing world. What we see is so disappointing and very distracting. We just finished an online challenge where this online marketer guru is teaching 20,000 group members how to set up click funnels, run Facebook Ads, and Automate emails! Wow – learning that in 14 days – you all must be way smarter than us. But as we watch the feed, we see the questions start to come…
- What is a domain?
- How do I set up Facebook Ads Manager?
- Do I have to pay for Click Funnels?
- My ad was not approved, I don’t know why.
- I had 100 people engage but not one conversion, what am I doing wrong?
- How do I connect my email to my lead generation?
The questions go on and on and on. It is frustrating to see someone teaching a group of people how to set up a sales funnel with an offering but then remove ALL the training videos and become unavailable to the group as soon as the online challenge is over. You had to buy in for $2000 USD to stay connected. It’s a classic BAIT AND SWITCH. You now have 20,000 people that have learned how to create an offer, make a click funnel, and run an ad on Facebook and think they are going to be millionaires in the next few months. But the truth is the challenge is an uphill one and without some one-on-one, they will start to drown VERY QUICKLY.
The whole do it yourself marketing is very popular these days. If you ask a photographer, they will say the same about iPhone users – who are now their own photographers. But will those same people take their own wedding pictures? Most likely not! They will hire a professional. Unfortunately, there are still key techniques and experiences that can make the difference which is why you hire the professional.
As a marketing agency, the biggest job we have is to educate the client. In a market that is saturated with do it yourself scams and easy overnight guarantees, we feel the need to make sure they know what they are paying for when they hire out their marketing. One of the biggest reasons we do not suggest small business owners do it themselves is the time that ends up being lost.
TIME LOSS Examples
- Building a basic 7-page website for us takes about 20-30 hours from start to finish and that is with our experienced developer, a marketing manager helping with content and a tech to upload and create the emails to go with the business pages.
- Setting up a Facebook Ad takes about 15-40 hours from start to finish and that is with our Ads Expert building out the ad and testing and adjusting, our marketing manager creating the email automation and our project team updating the leads and meeting the offer demand.
- Setting up Google AdWords takes about 2 weeks from start to finish and that is with our Ads Experts building out the campaigns and setting up the call tracking, our techs coding the websites, and our developer creating the landing pages.
- Scheduling out Social Media Management for 2 platforms takes about 10-15 hours and that is with our content manager curating content from the client and creating posts and finding appropriate trending hashtags to go with them and scheduling them all with optimized times.
These times are all associated with professionals that know what they are doing. If my toilet breaks I don’t fix it – I call a plumber because the time it would take me to learn would result in a LOSS of time and maybe even cost me more in the end because of the mess I made. We find this is one the best reasons to hire some sort of marketing help – time is money so use it at what you do best. The learning curve these days with online marketing is steep and we find the ongoing changes to algorithms, audiences, and ad rules are a lot to keep up with.
If you have a tight budget, we know you can get a low-cost website online and run your own social media. We understand that is how you start. But when you are ready and have a marketing budget do not cheap out or try to learn it on your own. Book a Free Consultation so you at least know what you need and will not be taken advantage of when you do choose your marketing services. Do your research. The DIY method for online marketing is not advisable.
These 20,000 people are all excited now, but the dust will settle, and the fireworks will end, and they too will realize the sun has set and it is dark, and they cannot find their way. Until another set of fireworks start-up and they head over to learn a new trick, a new funnel, or a new Facebook Ad Strategy. All the while wasting more time not doing what they do best. It is a common but unfortunate tale.