Don’t let misplaced loyalties hold you back

Our marketing assessments are a bit of a loss-leader but they give prospects the chance to sample us with a low-cost project—and give us the opportunity to make sure we’re a great fit.

Part of our assessment includes a review the client’s past marketing efforts including their marketing collateral, advertising, direct marketing, public relations efforts, website, and so on.

Problems often reveal themselves immediately:

• Printing inconsistencies from using bargain or different printers
• A website that sucks with design and usability issues
• Mismatched business cards with different formatting and/or designs
• Amateur photography or cliche stock photography throughout

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the point.

Though we’re hired to help clients identify and isolate problem areas and then fix them, some decision-makers are quick to defend their existing resources.

Here are some of the comments we’ve heard over the years:

We need to give _______ our printing—he’s been helping us for years

We like to spread it around among our local vendors

Our designer is really reasonable

We need to work with _______ because they are my [insert relationship here]

XYZ Company gives us $X of business a year—we have to use them

First, I hope the logic breakdown is self-evident: If the current vendors are responsible for mediocrity, shouldn’t they expect more of the same? Keep doing the same thing, you’ll get the same results, after all.

This is a shame, because in the name of loyalty, these hard-working business people are settling for substandard work. I’d argue their loyalty should be to delivering maximum value and results to their shareholders, employees and customers.

So the next time you find yourself saying, “but we can’t make a change because we owe it to so-and-so,”—STOP.

You owe it to yourself and everyone else that depends on your organization to be casting responsible and have the best marketing company you can possibly have.

So, where have you seen misplaced loyalties?

Comment below to weigh in.

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Note: I don’t have an axe to grind. Indeed, we do prefer to work with our carefully selected tried-and-true team of partners and vendors (it’s all about quality control and better integration). Except in limited cases, we don’t require clients to work with our resources.