Enjoyed this blog, well done!

all smo companies are getting likes and fans and followers from fiver...they all are not relevant likes and fans I tries I got 20k likes but all are silent fans...

Cheers to you! I just wrote my blog about this subject - or close - mid-year planning. If your marketing isn't work GET RID OF IT! The world is changing- same old same old doesn't work anymore. Every businessowner needs to measure every marketing activity -- if your marketing person or agency isn't willingly to try something new and you aren't seeing results! Fire them NOW! Life is short - a business life is even shorter -- take action and find what works for your business. Very often this answer is in taking risks and making change - move out of your comfort zone. Vicki

Great article, really illustrates what kind of agencies people should be working with these days. Creative is nice and will never be unnecessary but in today's business world of practically unlimited access to messaging and interaction points if you can't quantify and justify the activities you are engaging in to a bottom line profit you might as well be dead in the water in my opinion. Control your message, know your customers and interact with them where and how they want to be connected with. You can't beat great strategy, timing and above all else intelligent data analysis and tracking.

As an agency, I can tell you that #2 isn't usually the reason behind #1/

Two types of marketers - those who have little to no experience and think they can do everything better than everyone else and those who have worked in the trenches and have been accountable...usually as an in-house marketing/communications director/manager. The 2nd type will get you results because they know they must be accountable. Every day they are being measured by their performance, having to go submit a proposal for a new idea and have to live/breathe the company to know them. Those are the marketing people you need to hire... 
 
 
 
Lastly, marketing is different than PR, advertising, communications, promotions and plain media buying. Unfortunately, most people think they are all one in the same but all are part of the bigger plan.  
 
 
 
Yes, the biz owner is the best marketer! If you can't sell your company/product/service then should anyone really be buying?

Good post, and a lot of sound advice here. Sounds like you worked with an agency that had a toolbag of tactics, but no strategic skills to determine which ones to use. They were all "hammer", and you appeared to be all "nail". This relates to your #2 point for Small Biz Owners - it may be counterintuitive, but if you do have money to spend, think about spending it on strategy first, not execution. Getting everyone on the same page about what matters and developing the big ideas that come from that will then make it easy to execute. 
 
Every small business wants exactly what you did - leads, but misunderstands where the real value comes from - the ideas from strategic planning. Execution is a commodity that can guarantee quality when the direction is good. Having an agency that you can partner with to think big about the real value of your product and who you should communicate with is something to leverage well beyond the first campaign. It works even better when the small business wants to execute themselves (as many are capable of doing now).

Well said, Brian. I don't even think I have anything to add other than... YES!!

Great article, and very timely for us. You have just inspired me to change tack- thanks!

here here Brian! well written. Focus on whats important and flexibility to respond will keep you moving in the right direction.

Brian, I don't disagree with the many of the points you raise here. We are a small marketing agency in Scotland but refuse to be told we are an SEO company. I promote our services as Internet Marketing Services to achieve business online growth. I get very frustrated by those who think it is all SEO. The give me a few keywords and I will rank you at the top brigade, and the I will build you a 1000 links a month people, need to take a look at their business service model. And, instead, focus on delivering structured plans that will of course challenge the business owner, but hopefully (in our case) also educate him so he not only sees movement in the numbers but understands a little about what the 'dashboards' are telling him. I talk about driving the website like a vehicle and we are the 'fuel'. To ensure our clients get the max miles to the gallon each month, we keep reports simple, but detailed enough so the business owner understands more about how the change came about. Some business owners are willing to challenge themselves with DIY Online Marketing, but many still fail 6 months to a year down the line. I am a believer in employing the right skills. If my BMW breaks down, I won't fix it myself, and I won't take it to some back street Joe. I get a BMW qualified mechanic. So, if your business owner, don't get a graphics person or a programmer to do your marketing. Get someone who understands Internet Marketing. And one final point, be aware of those people who insist on using the words DIGITAL AGENCY!!

This was actually very accurate and right on the money, Either Produce me the numbers , leads and results or dont bother doing business. Besides as an agency its great to have all the work like designs and portfolio but a example of number generated and ROI is the bottom line and even the agency itself has to outsource in order to focus on the client a do it all by yourself is harder than what a person thinks, but providing quality and accurate number and services is what boosts an Ad Agency, Marketer or Niche's Reputation

Now time for the follow-up article from those of us on the agency side: "Why I Fired My Marketing Client"

Awesome Article! But with some clients I have noticed, they try to tell me things they want to do, and I try my best to tell them, thats not a good idea or that will not work, but they are do determined. Or they say after hiring you after 30 minutes, I do not see any results, everyone wants everything FAST FAST FAST, AND RIGHT NOW! If nothing has changed in a hour you suck. This is not FastFood pick 1, 2, or 3 marketing.

Firstly, you should have the foresight to appoint a Marketing Agency who already know what they're doing, and are able to provide the proof required. 
Next, you should take care not to dictate the path of the exercise to strictly, as it stifles innovation. 
It's very easy to be too bossy, but are you actually sure of exactly what you're doing, apart from setting demands? 
The client and the agency should guide each other to a mutually established goal, rather than dictating terms and conditions to each other. 
Cutting through the fog of information overload requires the precision of the scalpel as well as the eye of the surgeon, and economy of stroke delivers the most powerful results. 
In this word-heavy environment, there are certainly more flag wavers claiming to have the know-how, than there are flag-burners who know how well they have done. A space filled with more "how-to" than "how-zat"! 
Tread carefully and always be aware, the Marketing Agency you fire today may just be hired tomorrow by your competition, if only for the insights they have gained into your product or service. 
And keep up the weeding, it's good for the garden.

At the risk of throwing a spanner in the works, I will be the Devil’s advocate here as I am a bit surprized by some things I read (article AND comments). It sounds like this agency – that I don’t know and in which I have no share – suggested things that any reasonable marketer today would do: having an online presence, especially when selling software as a service products sounds to me like a must. Maybe the business has been developed originally via telesales, or door to door, or physically networking, but whatever the recipe from the past, one would assume it had become neither successful nor satisfactory for this business as they decided to call on a Marketing agency for help. We can discuss their prices (absolutely outrageous from what seems to have been delivered) but the service offered in itself sounds neither surreal, nor deceiving for the goal set. 
 
 
 
Now for people who think that Marketing is accountable for the actual Sales – that is “closed deals” for the business – I would like to suggest the reading of an excellent article from Mark Ritson who clarifies the purpose of Sales and Marketing activities. He also states: “Directors of sales and marketing. There are thousands of you out there with that title. And not one of you has the faintest clue what marketing actually means. Because if you did, you would realize that your title makes no sense”. Mark Ritson (you can read the full article here http://z6.co.uk/markritson). I am quoting Mark Ritson because I think we need to remember that Sales people are not order takers and that 600 followers on Twitter sounds to me like some interest was generated around the brand and/or the service and may not have been exploited to the best at the time. However, Marketing can only generate exposure, desire/interest and prospects. There is a responsibility for cost per leads and leads generation on targets. The quality of the leads is already a concept that can be arguable and the closed deals, that is the action of purchasing, is definitely down to the Sales, not the Marketing. Expecting a Marketing agency to physically deliver purchasing prospects is illusionary. A Marketing agency can do a lot about positioning, assessing a brand/product/service against competitors, surveying a target market but they cannot be accountable for the sales figures in the end. Marketing KPIs are not about the sales generated. They provide the leads, Sales have to close them themselves. If there is an obstacle to closing, it is not necessary a Marketing issue BTW. 
 
 
 
To conclude, I would also like to speak about the business goals defined by Brian in this article as he explains: “So on New Year's Day 2012, I sat down and wrote out our businesses goals for that year the total number of leads we would need, lead conversion rates, cost of customer acquisition, total number of new customers, revenue per customer, lifetime value of each new customer 20 pages worth of strategy about how we would achieve those numbers”. There are a number of items in this list that are a genuine psychic exercise: “total number of new customers”, based I assume on the average basket from the previous year and the revenue needed? We all know forecasts are only what they are: forecasts based on the past and wishful thinking. The reality involves many more parameters that forecasters cannot take into account when preparing their figures (competition’s behaviour, economic circumstances, etc.). Besides, increasing sales is not a goal; it is a mere intention that needs to be backed up by a proper goal. All companies want more sales (again, wishful thinking) but once they have announced their intention (be it in thorough detailed figures like Brian did), they have not achieved anything. The real questions are still pending and this may be the real mistake of this Marketing agency not to have clarified the goals behind the intention: Do they want to go vertical? Do they want to penetrate new markets abroad? Do they want to explore new categories / segments of markets? Are they planning on shifting products and services positioning to adapt them to a specific new demand? Increasing sales and calculating figures is again a Sales game but it has nothing to do with Marketing; Marketing is only an enhancer, a sales enabler. Marketing works on branding, corporate communication, leads generation and Channel management at its best, any other business is stretching it outside of its natural ecosystem. 
 
 
 
I hope I don’t sound too harsh on Brian. I get his points and I think there are also elements in this article that are very true and worth thinking about, but I can’t let him slash an entire profession on a bad experience – especially when I think responsibilities seem to be shared here between a business not knowing which model to follow and having misplaced expectations on their Marketing agency and an agency that failed to understand, reading between the lines, that the goal was nebulous as a start). Marketing is powerful but it needs to be focused and Marketing agencies will never guess better than the business owners where they want to take their company/brand/products. They can only be working on behalf of their clients: the clearer the goal, the better the results. Trust! ;-) 
 

I'm in the process of figuring out if our agency is worth keeping around or not. I'm trying to light fires under their rears, but they just aren't performing. Not to mention I seem to be putting more work into getting them to do the work.

Great article. My favorite line was, 
 
"If you hire a "Yes Man" marketing agency, you're done for...You need people to challenge your thinking, and get them to drive results for your business..." 
 
However, I think it's important to mention that even though it's vital to quantify the bottom line with stuff like, how many new customers you brought this month and how many sales dollars you produced, etc...new twitter followers and Likes are also important. These social KPI's indicate an interest and awareness that is being generated around your brand and/or the service — it's what you do with all of these listeners that's important. 
 
Is it fair to say there need be some sort of balance? Also, I'm aware that you can play the numbers game successfully but quality suffers. I’d prefer 10 substantive relationships over 1k empty ones. I guess what i'm say is, I think having the best of both worlds is optimal and is what agencies should strive for.

So are you getting more leads now than before?

"Four months and 30 new customers later" 
 
How many new customers did you have the previous year without the agency? 
 
It'll be interesting to see how you do the next 4 months without the agency, please let us know.

It shocks me sometimes how online marketing agencies have a big retainer plus percentage of spent + cuts from brokering deals with affiliate networks etc. Really great article by the way. Pointers for my business.

This article is an eyeopenner, thanks.

Spot on. Too many agencies that try to pull the wool over their client's eyes. Azam Marketing is a marketing agency agency and we often see our clients having been burnt by recently-formed agencies that don't live up to their word.

So true, I am a marketer and when I am up against competition, I bring to the table experience of getting it done - but not every client wants to hear that. They like what's new and hot, even if it won't help their business overall. I see my job as helping them see the new and hot, then picking and choosing what will really WORK for them and their unique goals. Very interesting perspective! 

This is a great blog and if more people approached the agency relationship as a partnership, results would be different.  
 
However, I take issue with the following statement: 
 
This may sound obvious, but most small business owners think they can't do marketing alone. You not only can, but you'll be surprised how much more work you can squeeze out of yourself in the face of adversity.  
 
Marketing is not something that people can just 'do.' There is a significant amount of knowledge, educations and research that a qualified marketer possesses and leveraging that can lead to fantastic results. At what point do people realize that marketing is not a DIY project with pretty pictures and logos. Often times agencies are called in to clean-up the mess individuals create by taking on the project themselves and that's a lot more expensive than starting out the right way.  
 

In response to your question, Brian, I've fired PR agencies for the same reasons you cite. I like the tact you take in your write-up, specifically when you state, "I share this story not because I think marketing agencies are worthless. In fact, many agencies are absolutely worth your money and will deliver awesome business results." and then lead into the lessons.  
 
I know there are multiple sides to a story. However, I can't disagree with any of the lessons you lay out. In fact, many observations you make in your article resonate with the reasoning behind our company adding Internet Marketing as a service.  
 
Marketing needs to be tied to tangible results. Without those results, the agency/client relationship is on shaky ground which leaves the client often questioning the budget and the agency wondering when the relationship will end. Not a smart way to do business.  
 
Challenging a client's assumptions takes tact and has, so far, been worth it every time. It creates a better, more trusted relationship and weeds out clients who just want a "yes man" (or woman, in this case). 
 

Brian, 
 
Thanks for the post. You are representative of a lot of small/medium business owners today. In my opinion a marketing agency is not here to get you more twitter followers and a beautiful website but rather help you communicate your company/product story via the right channels to achieve your goals (conversion, growing brand equity or both). 
 
It seems to me that you and your marketing agency (it takes two to tango) did not communicate properly on what where the goals at the beginning of the venture.  
 
It would be interesting to hear the marketing agency side of your story to better understand what went wrong in their opinion. 
 

Excellent read.

Thanks to everyone that took the time to read this post and share their thoughts. It seems like this is a topic that a lot of people are pretty passionate about and have pretty strong points of view on -- business owners and marketing agency owners alike. Is something clearly broken with the way marketing is being done and/or delivered? 
 
A few specific points that I am going to share some more thoughts on:  
 
 
1. Who wants to participate in the rebuttal -- "Why I Fired My Marketing Client"?  
 
Freddy -- this would be great! I would love to hear more about how marketing agencies are setting up their sales process, qualifying their leads, weeding out the bad ones and working with the good.  
 
What makes things go sideways with clients? Have you ever had a poor experience with a client (please don't name any names)? What made them so intolerable to work with? Is it always the client, something internally that isn't working well, something else? 
 
In fact… I'd like to present a question to those that are listening -- How many people would be interested in participating in one of two mini surveys?? One survey would ask a number of questions around, "Why I Fired My Marketing Agency," and the other, "Why I Fired My Marketing Client." 
 
I think this sort of, "gap analysis," could serve as a framework to improve the way in which marketing agencies and prospective clients both find each other AND work together.  
 
Who's interested? 
 
 
2. Are a lot of agencies struggling with demonstrating/ reporting results to clients?  
 
Based on the comment thread it sounds like a lot of people have had a poor experience with either: (a) being able to report results to clients, or (b) being satisfied with the results/ way in which results are reported to them as the client of the agency.  
 
Is this true? What makes reporting difficult? What has been lacking in reports that you would like to see (from either the agency or client perspective)?  
 
 
3. How is Marketing different from PR/Advertising/Communications/Promotions/Media buying?  
 
I'm genuinely curious to better understand how the audience sees these as different, if they're different at all. Are they fundamentally different forms of marketing somehow, or are the consumption channels such different experiences that they impact the action, "those being marketed to," take? Does it depend on B2B vs. B2C? Go to market strategy? Something else? 
 
 
4. Should a marketing agency be responsible for driving sales outcomes?  
 
This was a great point brought up by MarketingFairy -- and no, you didn't sound too harsh! I agree that while the marketing agency should not necessarily be responsible for closing sales (which should be the job of a company's sales team), is it unreasonable to think that a marketing agency should be able to increase website traffic and generate marketing-qualified leads for the sales team?  
 
Mark Roberge, VP of Sales at HubSpot, wrote a great article about the alignment between sales and marketing and some metrics he looks at to better understand how well Sales is doing its job and how well Marketing is doing theirs. Check it out here -- (see point #3 in this article) -- http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/the_science_of_building_a_scal.html. My opinion is, "Yes," marketing should be responsible for generating marketing-qualified leads, but sales should be responsible for, "sales-qualifying," those leads and closing them as new business.  
 
 
5. Can marketing (really good marketing) be done without the help of an expert? 
 
I think the answer is, "It depends." Here's some interesting perspective from Peter Caputa, our Director of the HubSpot Partner Team, on coming up with and executing on an internet marketing strategy: http://www.collaborativegrowthnetwork.com/blog/bid/87218/Just-Follow-the-Internet-Marketing-Process?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Pc4media+%28pc4media%29.  
 
Key takeaway -- whether this process is followed by the business owner, a marketing agency, or delegated to someone else… every good marketing plan is closely tied to a set of clear business, sales and marketing goals. It may sound obvious, but I think that it's something too many people lose sight of because they're, "so busy." We're all busy!! Set some goals and get over it…  
 
I'm also interested on getting more perspective here -- does this question come down to a "build/ buy/ ally" decision? Or is it not that cut and dry?  
 
 
Let's keep the conversation going. I'm open to thoughts on how to do that.  
 
 
Cheers,  
 
Brian

Marketing is more than advertising, it's about making sure that everything your company does is customer focused. 
 
A 'marketing' agency should be providing services that help you understand your customer, develop an offering to suit a need/want, communicate to your target segments, deliver the offering and capture the value. If they only operate in the communicate space, they are an ad agency and most of what is said above is generally accurate. 
 
As an experienced and well educated marketer i really don't appreciate people associating the function with only 'advertising' - it shows tthe people who lack even a basic understanding of the function and value it should be delivering.

Great post and very timely for me. You have just inspired me to change tack- Thanks for sharing. 

 
 
The author does not appear to understand that there is a difference between "Sales" and "Marketing" which are usually two different departments in larger organizations. 
 
 
 
The number one goal was to get sales leads, i.e. a sales function. It's therefore logical that a marketing agency would not be the right choice for that task.  
 
 
 
Why not hire a software sales person with a good Rolodex, who would also offer the advantage of being paid (partly) on commission?

For the most part, I think the advice offered is good. However, I agree with Caricouture in stating that you hired the wrong type of agency for your goals.  
 
Given that you needed immediate leads a sales consultant, manager, person, etc should have been hired to bring in accounts and close deals. Marketing tends to be most effective for achieving long-term goals which is also a part of why it takes more effort to track results (but its not impossible). 
 
That being said, if you stated from the beginning that your primary and only concern was generating sales/leads I would place some of the blame on your marketing agency. They should have known and told you that you would have been better off seeking the services of sales professionals.

Brian, 
 
Thank you for sharing an experience which has sparked such great debate! 
 
The most crucial mistake here was not hiring the proper type of agency.  
 
Making a few assumptions, from your description of the product, and the emphasis your Marketing Agency placed on social media, it sounds as if the new venture was an online product. In which case your leads would be defined as "hand raisers" in the form of expressed interest (i.e., signing up for either a trial or demo on the product's website). Hence why turning to an agency which (likely) had experience with online marketing and social media seemed like a good idea. 
 
Since this seems like a much shorter sales process with a focus on volume of leads, hiring a sales person with a good rolodex (as Caricouture noted above) would only accomplish part of the goal. This kind of sales activity would drive users of the product (and likely where you got your 30 leads), however they would likely be confined to one geographic area and, while the experiences of these users could potentially be used for quotes or success stories, or to encouraged the users to share with "refer a friend" type promotions, it would likely not drive the awareness and sales goals you expected/were looking to achieve with an online business. 
 
To answer your question about how is marketing different from PR/Advertising/Communications/Promotions/Media buying, it's not. Those are all disciplines within the field of Marketing. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as, "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."  
 
Each of those types you have outlined approach that definition from a different angle. And each achieve their relavent marketing goals of managing reputation (i.e., PR), driving awareness (i.e., Advertising), increasing existing sales (i.e., Promotions), etc.; of course noting that there is some overlap in each. 
 
So, for a goal focused on leads, you needed to work with an agency which focused in the relevant discipline. 
 
The type of agency you needed to hire was a Demand Generation Agency. An agency whose only focus is to drive towards lead-goals using tactics ranging from traditional direct response to online (such as email marketing, web seminars, etc.), and have the ability to also align marketing and sales processes for effective lead nurturing and management. Seems as if this would be much more aligned to driving a high level of interest, not limited to one area, and which could be better qualified using marketing automation systems.  
 
And to your other question about whether this can be done effectively on your own, only with training. It would be like hiring a plumber to work on your car. They could likely get the job done with Youtube and a handbook, but what would be the quality of the job? There are always occasions to DIY, but you may not save any time. 
 
And to the point of your agency's behavior, I agree with Natasha above. Had you made it clear that leads was all you wanted and did not care about anything else, seems as if the agency in question should have referred you elsewhere. 

You wanted to generate sales leads, so you hired a marketing company?  
 
Sorry, but if you want to generate sales leads you need to pick up the phone and knock on doors and SELL yourself. Hiring a marketing company with a view to generating sales is just lazy. Marketing companies are all about putting the brand out there and generating desire and yadda yadda yadda. If you didn't want that, don't hire a marketing company. If the marketing company got you some press coverage and built your online presence and got you some twitter followers, and you didn't see any sales from it, then your product probably wasn't very appealing. I'm guessing that since you're now a blogger on a minor scale blog that firing your marketing company didn't solve your problem and turn your business around. Right?  
 
Do you hire some people to build you a shop, then blame them when no-one visits the finished shop? Do you blame your postman if he delivers a t-shirt which is too small?  
 
Of course, the ultimate aim of any marketing activity is to generate sales, but marketing and PR is a softly softly approach - it makes people aware of your brand, it lets them know you're good, it educates them about your products... but unless your product is absolute dynamite it's not going to produce swift and firmly tangible sales figures.

Thanks Brian for this enticing article... but... COME ON... it is Unfair to just blame the agency for the whole case even without hearing their part of the story. 
 
You seem to stereotype the marketing Agencies by putting the whole burden/responsibility on them. Please accept the fact that we in agency side usually suffer from clients who try (most of the time) to "throw" all their business work under the umbrella of "Sales & Marketing"..... even they as the business owner sometimes don't have a business goal or vision to build upon and expect the agency even to pick their kids to the school!! The road to business success must start with a clear strategic view that draws the requested business model which the agency has to "Understand" before the business can achieve any of the goals (Branding, Leads, Sales....etc). 
 
The gist reader gets from what you are trying to tell is that: Why should you hire a plumber, do plumbing yourself!!