Guest Blog: Marketer, Heal Thyself!

Today’s guest blog is from my friends Jeff Peyton and Laura Stocker of marketing firm Tin Cans Unlimited. Jeff and Laura write frequently on a variety of e-marketing and social networking topics. Their blog, String Theory, is formatted as a breezy conversation rather than formal essay.

Jeff: Somewhere between college and the Army, I served as assistant to the director of the marketing arm of a national lobby organization. The group was dysfunctional, to put it kindly.

“You’re communicators, for God’s sake!” the boss was fond of shouting. “You’ve got to communicate with each other!”

For creative – in print or on the air (no Internet back then) – this group was unmatched. But the irony of a professional marketing team not being able to communicate… let’s just say it wasn’t lost on young and impressionable me.

Laura: The phrase “Physician heal thyself” comes to mind all too often when it comes to marketing firms. Sadly, it happens so often it’s almost a cliché: the agency does a bang-up job for their client but can’t quite get it together for their own brand message.

Part of the problem is unique to our industry. Most of us are focused on the creative or we are completely customer-focused. The best of us are both. So even our occasional down time ends up spent tweaking a client’s message, or working on proposals for potential clients, or any of a thousand distractions. That means there is very little time – or creative energy – left over for in-house projects.

Jeff: But the problem is bigger than that. Agencies survive on billable time. When artists, writers or developers work on house projects, they aren’t working on projects that pay the bills.

It’s a tough cycle. You need to develop a brand message – and get that message out – in order to attract new business. But you also want to run lean. To many, that means only keeping staff to handle the billable work.

This is why the cobbler’s kids never get new shoes.

Laura: The parable of the cobbler’s children is a bit cliché, I’ll admit. In fact, if you do a Google search on the phrase, you’ll see half a dozen results that speak directly to marketing and web design (our Tin Cans Unlimited site included). But if it is cliché, it’s because it is so true.

Marketers need to recognize it for what it is, and then deal with it.

We expect our clients to trust our advice in part because we’ve been there, done that, and have the T-shirt to show for it. Our clients value our experience as much as our knowledge. In my experience, clients are most comfortable with agencies that clearly demonstrate their expertise rather than merely talk about it.

Jeff: This is true for all marketing efforts, whether for print, web or social networking. I have seen examples of agencies – right here in central Pennsylvania – offering advice on social media even though they themselves don’t have a Twitter account or a Facebook page.

No client will stand for “do as I say not as I do” for very long. If you advise clients to invest time and money in something that you yourself do not, the clients quickly – and rightly – lose confidence in you

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Inkling Media.

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