From: bizjournals.com

So, you want a guarantee for marketing?”

It’s always fun to watch a prospect schedule himself onto my calendar for a conversation about what’s holding him back in marketing, sales or tech. Usually it’s a small business owner, CEO or a VP-level person in a bigger company wanting help with all three. I love these discovery calls.

A couple of weeks ago Travis landed on my calendar. When we got together for our first call it was clear that Travis was mad —really mad. He explained in earnest how he had lost a ton of money on recent marketing failures. He described in painful detail the mistakes that had been made and what happened. I felt badly for him. But it’s not unusual these days. It’s the norm.

Travis explained, “Nothing has worked over the last 12 months. It’s cost me tens of thousands. Nobody really knew what they were doing. Everything went wrong and nobody would step up to fix it. People I hired literally stopped returning my calls and emails. I couldn’t believe it. My business is simple and I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I NEED results, now. What kind of guarantee do you offer for your marketing services?”

I do offer a performance guarantee to my clients. But not the kind Travis was looking for that day. I work as a fee-based, interim chief marketing officer, charging a fraction of what it would cost to hire a full-time CMO or VP of marketing or sales. Travis was asking me about a guarantee for new marketing initiatives he would approve, but not pay for up front. He wanted me to “show him the money.” After all, he thought, if I’m the expert and I’m good at what I do, why wouldn’t I take him up on his offer to get paid on the back end?

What Travis wanted was “zero risk” marketing. But it doesn’t exist. It’s a delusion. I helped him work through this thinking as best I could. But I am no shrink.

What I do know is there is never a guarantee in marketing, just like there is no guarantee you will succeed in business. You take that leap of faith into building your own business, knowing that the failure rate is high. Businesses fail because people make too many bad decisions about money, marketing, people, sales, or technology. Or something bad happens that’s beyond our control. Business is a game of managed risk, not guarantees.

Risky game

Sometimes you can insure against risk. But not in marketing or sales or tech. This is common sense. So why do otherwise intelligent, successful people ask for risk-free marketing? Mostly, it’s fear. Sometimes it’s inexperience. When you feel burned by someone the natural reaction is fear, sometimes anger. But did the SEO guy who didn’t deliver really burn you, or did you burn yourself by not making an informed decision about the strategy, tactic or person selling you the solution? Same with the college kid you hired to redesign your website. He meant well. You screwed up hiring him. Bad decision. Live and learn.

It’s not a good idea to seek the advice of a marketing professional by starting out with how badly you’ve been burned and how much money you’ve lost in the past on campaigns that didn’t work or worse, didn’t even launch after you spent big money to create it. It’s a red flag to anyone who’s a pro in our industry. We start to wonder, “What’s wrong with you?” Your fear-based thinking and lamentations tell us you may be trouble. I wonder, “Is there a pattern here?”

So resist the temptation to dump all that on us. I understand your fear because I live it also. I am a small business owner, angel investor and adviser to many successful people who enrich my life. I am grateful to have built the small business and life of my dreams. But it took a ton of risk to get here.

I get to do what I want to do most days. I get to make a difference. Like you, I have to constantly face new fear. That’s what makes us different! We’re willing and able to face the fears that most will never face. Whether it’s a sales, marketing or tech investment, there is risk. Without risk, barriers to entry, unexpected market conditions or Mother Nature unleashing her wrath, there is no possible upside. We would all have day jobs.

What’s the difference in managing fear or letting it own you? Your mindset. It’s the single most powerful element for success in business, especially small business and startups. Marketing is a never-ending process that’s essential to growing a business. Marketing is a mindset. So is sales. Building a business is always a team sport and a mindset! Marketing and business success is a thinking, planning and execution game. The rewards can be huge. Welcome the risk. Embrace the fear. Let it go.

It’s a jungle out there. You need customers. You never have as much capital as you want, yet you need to make due. How do you get there the fastest with the least amount of pain while you limit your risk? How can you and your marketing team find the bottlenecks in the marketing and sales funnels and break through incrementally? Winning in marketing is about consistency, focus, discipline and learning as you go. It’s about never giving up and always being willing to move forward, keep investing, testing and adapting no matter what. It’s about breaking through your fear each and every time you make an investment in sales, marketing, team or tech.

Marketing has become far more complicated than in the past. It’s mostly the technology solutions that confound people and create the most fear when implementing a new plan of action. But it’s also the people. There simply are not enough people available with the highly-specialized skill sets we need today in marketing automation. I have seen my labor costs skyrocket at least five times over the last 10 years. My website designers, programmers, creative types all charge way more than they used to. You feel it too.

Get better advice

Although there is no guarantee for anything in business, it is possible to better manage your risk. One way to do this is to find and hire someone to advise you on marketing and tech, not sell to you. Software sales guys and SEO gurus want to sell to you, not give you advice. How much would it be worth to you to go to bed every night that you can trust someone to watch your back in marketing? That’s what any good adviser will do to earn their fee. This doesn’t happen very often in marketing, though. Everyone is trying to sell you their solution.

Look at what really smart people do when it comes to seeking and paying for advice to protect their assets and achieve their goals. Smart people are happy to pay their CPA to manage tax planning for a reason. Rich people hire wealth managers to invest their money for a reason. Almost everyone will hire a lawyer when hit with legal problems. You want the best brain surgeon if you’re to have brain surgery. That’s how you mitigate risk. You hire the best talent and advice your money can buy. Then you trust it. Why screw around and learn the hard way?

Forget about guarantees. Think about one thing; making better investment decisions when it comes to marketing, sales, team and tech. Maybe you need advice or you can learn what you need to know yourself. But remember that the #1 reason so many small business owners fail is bad management decisions allocating capital, mostly. What this means if you spend too much money on your marketing, your office furniture, salaries for non-performing people or the market clobbers you and you don’t have enough customers to show for it, to pay for it all, then you’re screwed. And you will feel more fear and pain.

Your job is to make better decisions, delegate, hire people better than you who do what they do and let them do their thing. If there’s a prudent, clear plan of action in place for marketing your company and you have the right team following the plan and willing to be accountable, you will win over time. You will learn and adapt along the way. You will keep investing in marketing.

Remind yourself: There is no guarantee. You just have to keep at growing and running your business every day. Enjoy the journey. Face your fears. Never stop marketing.