101 Learnings as a Digital Marketing Freelancer

[Andy Black]

I like @Roli's recent thread here:

• 101 Ways To Annoy Potential Customers

In a similar vein, let's see if we can come up with 101 Learnings as a Digital Marketing Freelancer

These are so much fun maybe we can do different series of these?

 

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[Andy Black]

#1 - Spending €100k a month isn't enough to spend €3k/mth on a freelancer to manage the accounts.

Drop that down to €1,500/mth, get the freelancer to train some young 20 something's in the marketing team about keywords and ads, then cut the contract.

Huh?!?!?

 

[Andy Black]

#2 - If the call centre manager keeps congratulating the call centre on their incredible closing rate of leads into sales, then they will only enter a lead into Salesforce if they think they can close it.

That the number of "leads" you generate via AdWords visitors will look cr@p and everyone will keep pointing the finger at you.

That when they implement a call handling system everyone will finally realise what you've been saying all along - that something isn't right with the numbers.

That the call centre staff haven't been logging all enquiries.

Helpful learning: That you should stop calling them leads and call them enquiries instead. People aren't going to be berated for not converting enquiries into sales, so will log them more accurately.

 

[Andy Black]

#3 - An incredible number of business owners won't pay for leads and sales, but will spend hours writing blog posts.

(AKA: That an incredible number of business owners don't value their time at all.)

 

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[Andy Black]

#4 - An incredible number of people say AdWords doesn't work.

"People don't click on ads."

Okaaaay. So how does Google make over $100 million a day from AdWords then Einstein?

 

[Andy Black]

#5 - A huge percentage of people can't scroll.

 

[Andy Black]

#6 - ... or read.

 

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[Andy Black]

#7 - A client with 8 legal offices will complain that one office is screaming for more leads.

You'll divert spend there, and later on when using dedicated numbers for each office, you'll learn that office misses 50% of calls.

 

[Andy Black]

#8 - The landing page design wasn't approved because the CEO's wife didn't like the colour.

 

[Andy Black]

#9 - If you are an electrician in the village of Kill, County Kildare, then you'll never be able to advertise on Google. That no amount of explaining will allow you to run ad "Kill Electricians".

 

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[Andy Black]

#10 - If you bid on broad match keyword "London", then Google will show you for the following search terms (and people will still click!):

british army

uk sexy girls

you tube

 

[Andy Black]

#11 - Money can't be in two places at once.

When they say the cheque is in the post, it means the money is still in their account.

 

[Andy Black]

Seeing as there's so many Digital Marketers out there... any more amusing learnings?

 

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[BlackMagician]

#12 - When you ask a random guy about what he do, and the reply comes "Digital Marketing Agency Founder".

 

[Andy Black]

#12 - When you ask a random guy about what he do, and the reply comes "Digital Marketing Agency Founder".

Lol. Appropriate at the moment with his thread blowing up:

• Digital Marketing Agency, the new Podcasting?

 

[BlackMagician]

#13 - When you over deliver and bring results, clients start singing your name here & there.

 

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[RazorCut]

Love some of these. Especially:

#11 - Money can't be in two places at once.

I knew a contractor who worked for a company that would only pay by cheque. He was paid every two week. They were pretty much always late getting his money to him and he was working full time for them so it was his only income.

I told him to man up and insist on BACS payment as they had let him down too many times in the past (and add in a pay rise at the same time). He was way too valuable for them to let go of and they were underpaying him.

Anyway he continued as before until the shutdown in December. His Christmas cheque didn't arrive till January. Now he lived pay cheque to pay cheque. His whole family Christmas was ruined. The kids didn't get their presents and they all had a miserable time. He quit soon afterwards.

#1 - Spending €100k a month isn't enough to spend €3k/mth on a freelancer to manage the accounts.

Drop that down to €1,500/mth, get the freelancer to train some young 20 something's in the marketing team about keywords and ads, then cut the contract.

Huh?!?!?

Surely that's working your way from a state of indispensable to 'thanks, there's the door'. If you give away the secret sauce then it's only a matter of time...

 

[Andy Black]

I knew a contractor who worked for a company that would only pay by cheque. He was paid every two week. They were pretty much always late getting his money to him and he was working full time for them so it was his only income.

I told him to man up and insist on BACS payment as they had let him down too many times in the past (and add in a pay rise at the same time). He was way too valuable for them to let go of and they were underpaying him.

Anyway he continued as before until the shutdown in December. His Christmas cheque didn't arrive till January. Now he lived pay cheque to pay cheque. His whole family Christmas was ruined. The kids didn't get their presents and they all had a miserable time. He quit soon afterwards.

Ouch. Lesson learned do you think?

Surely that's working your way from a state of indispensable to 'thanks, there's the door'. If you give away the secret sauce then it's only a matter of time...

Totally. I saw the writing on the wall. The company was being setup to be taken-over. They were getting rid of contractors and agencies.

I don't bat an eyelid when this stuff happens though. If they don't see the value in what I do and think a couple of hours training is enough to manage €100k/month of ad spend then so be it.


I've just seen that a previous client is now spending over $5k for 100 conversions a week. Prior to them cutting us they were spending $1.5k for 120 conversions a week. But hey, they're saving on management fees and that looks good for the employee I reported to.


Which leads us to:

#14 - Things change in client businesses and not always for reasons that benefit the business (especially when you're dealing with employees and not the business owner).