I recently decided to update my home office. This actually started with the desire for a new storage cupboard. Long story short... this turned into all new furniture, new carpet, new paint and soon... possibly new IT equipment.
Most of the furniture came from IKEA even though I HATE building flat pack furniture! I looked at hiring Task Rabbit, Assembly Angels, Flatpack Assembly Services, Justflatpack and more to build it for me. The prices varied and there was seemingly no obvious way to assess experience or quality and so I decided to try and build them myself.
I opened the boxes, read the instructions, looked at the room, tapped the wall, realised I had no idea what to do and roped in a friend with the skills and experience to help me. (What a legend!) With his help (he was in charge, I did what I was told) it wasn't too bad, I guess! The stuff is built, on the wall, and hasn't fallen off... yet! (I managed to get my wife to help too as she is better at this stuff than me!)
It took hours, 2+ days in fact to assemble five pieces of flatpack furniture. We followed the instructions (which were wrong in many places) and discovered there are certain things that aren't written down... you are just supposed to know. My friend knew this stuff. I didn't. How can I know what I don't know?! We managed it but it was not great fun, nearly got me divorced, and ultimately took me away from other things I should have been doing. But it saved me around £200...!
This got me thinking. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had about marketing strategy & activation. So many people want to know what they should do. I believe these people can be grouped:
Group 1: those who think they can do it themselves with little to no experience.
Group 2: those who don't want to pay someone to do it for them
Group 3: those who think 'how hard can it be?' and try and sort it themselves based on a few instructions or pointers (can we grab a coffee?).
Marketing isn't that tricky. After all, we are all consumers. However, these groups will spend more time and money and undoubtedly make more mistakes than if they paid for help. These groups never have time to do it right but always have time to do it again. They think they are saving money but more often than not, they are wasting it.
Group 4: people who hire you for your expertise and help and then micro-manage and tell you what to do (without the experience to do so). Fun times.
Group 5: The unicorns... the hard to find group of people who know what they know and more importantly what they don't know. These people understand the value of marketing and are happy to pay to bring in the skills to solve their problems, whether that be employees, colleagues, agencies or freelancers. Working in this way allows the people running the business to focus on what they are good at, whatever that might be. In my experience, it is these businesses, whether at a start up stage or fully operational, that thrive.
So... which group are you?
If you are asking yourself 'How should I spend my Marketing money?' (as opposed to 'Should I spend any marketing money?'), you might be a unicorn.
If you are and fancy working with someone that can help you... and whose advice often pays for itself in cost savings and/or sales... please get in touch.
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