WHY YOU SHOULDN'T JUST HIRE MARKETERS

If you ask the average Nigerian Entrepreneur starting out in business, "how do you intend to attract customers and drive sales in your business?" You can almost guess what the answer would be. "I'll just hire Marketers who would go out and bring in the sales". They'll mostly respond.

Guess what? I can boldly say that the larger percentage of business failure we experience with Nigerian Entrepreneurs could be attributed to this assumption that:

Hiring Marketers = Automatic Sales.

But here's the thing. Sales in business, and business growth relies solely on 80% STRATEGY, and 20% MARKETING. The 80:20 principle comes alive again.

Now, what's the better approach? 

I'll paint 2 scenarios of how my firm works with our clients and I believe that will make obvious how best you should engage henceforth. 

1st Scenario.

Sometimes last year, there was this client that spoke to us. They wanted to introduce some new products into the market, and required us to facilitate the process. After all deliberations, we concluded on fees. It was meant to be a monthly Retainer. 

For the fact that it was their first time engaging us, and they got hire us via a strong referral, we agreed with them to mobilize us with half payment at the start of the first month and later balance up mid month. She did pay the half after a few days and we commenced work. Only for us to request the other half payment, and stories started of how she hasn't seen "results" from the payment she already made. Results to many clients is ONLY conversion (sales).

We tried explaining but discovered she had the mindset of I hired Marketers, and should already start making masive sales EVEN IN THE FIRST WEEK. As at this time, the strategy we built for her was already generating some very good Leads, even without paying up the balance yet. Long story short, we couldn't reach a compromise and the engagement was terminated. 

2nd Scenario

Late last year, there was this other firm that hired us and we got right on the job. They were into the production of women health products.

Their goal: They needed their product known, and want sales for the products too. 

Now, each of their products sell for 35k. This, of course is not too much of a high price, but could be a high offer for a brand that is totally unknown to the market.

So the first thing we did was to work with the brand to design a cheaper market entry product that was sold for just 2k each. With their lean budget, we strategized carefully and ran marketing promotions for them. Over 250 plus prospects were attracted within few days. Because the price was low, prospects rushed the "entry product" and the sales were massive. 

Having engaged the product and saw the effect generated, the customers were the ones bugging us with orders for the initially targeted product. The sales again, was massive!

I hope you are seeing the place of strategy in marketing? The challenge with entrepreneurs is that many are in a rush to engage Marketers over Brand Strategists. For obvious reasons of course.

The former is relatively cheaper to engage. However, while the Strategists see themselves as a part of your business and put themselves on edge to see to it that you get results, the Marketers may not really be as committed. A Yoruba adage says, "Oga ta, oga o ta, owo alaaru a pe" (best interpreted as, irrespective of whether the employer make sales or not, the employee's salary remains sacrosanct).

Does it make sense now why it's actually safer, "cheaper" and saner engaging Brand Strategists   (or Brand Strategy firms) over "Marketers". And don't just hire them, spell out your goals to them very clearly, and also define the KPIs they'll be adjudged by. Don't be pennywise, pound foolish. And do not be unrealistic with your expectations, most especially within the first month of engagement.

Let me know in comments if you got value. Feel free to ask your questions too.

Cheers

Reallionaire.