There isn’t a marketing account manager in the world that hasn’t walked out of at least one client meeting in their career and thought “that client’s f*cking hopeless.”
It’s because your 20-something account manager simply knows better than you.
Thanks for reading – I won’t be taking questions.
Of course, I’m not suggesting your account manager knows how to run your business better than you do.
But I’ve been involved in countless conversations with colleages rooted in sheer frustration over clients that aren’t willing to lift a finger to help their business grow.
Clients who believe digital marketing is a plug-and-play growth solution that’ll just work. And if it doesn’t work, someone at the agency is doing it wrong.
However, the best marketing campaign in the world can’t fix a broken business, so the business and its marketing need to become symbiotic.
We face an important question that we all need to address: how much business success is related to marketing, and how much comes from ensuring your business is set up to effectively handle the result of marketing?
The Definition of Insanity
I’ll clear up this point before I get accused of using a cliche. The actual definition of insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill.
But the version you’ve probably heard – “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – was coined by Albert Einstein.
And in this context, it’s true.
Businesses that get trapped in an endless cycle of rehashing old ideas nearly always crash and burn.
When a new, sexy, or cheaper competitor lands on your doorstep, you have two choices.
- Innovate
- Double down on your current offering
Sadly, it’s not always clear which is the right path. Your new antagonist might be offering something unsustainable, which leads them to shut down in a year.
If this happens, doubling down and sticking to your guns would have been the right thing to do.
But if your competitor is already gaining traction and seems to be making it work, running a Google Ads campaign saying “we’ve been around longer” will only get you so far.
Sometimes people go to a competitor because they do something you don’t, so if your audience has moved on without you, you need to catch up.
Simply saying the same thing but louder will get you nowhere.
In this situation, you need to innovate. Do and say something different or surprising.
It’s like the whole “nobody wants to work anymore” argument that arose again during COVID.
Realistically, it was “nobody wants to work for youanymore,” and believe me, there is a difference.
Businesses that came around to offer employees what they actually wanted (largely more money or a four-day working week) frequently said they didn’t have trouble finding and keeping employees.
As a business owner, you need to be constantly looking for new ways of doing things. It doesn’t always mean adjusting your prices or redeveloping your product offering – sometimes just reframing something can have a tremendous impact.
There’s A Process For That
This one grinds my gears.
As someone that spent copious amounts of time writing 20,000 words of process documents for a company I worked at, if your only reason for not adapting as a business is because you don’t have a process for it…
… make a process.
That’s the beauty of processes: you can just make one.
You don’t need to go to the Process Store and spend an hour looking at all the Processes on the shelf.
You don’t need to read a blog about the Top 10 Processes of 2025.
Just make one.
And if it doesn’t work, change it.
It’s that simple.
It doesn’t have to be complex or lengthy. It can start with some simple dos and don’ts with some explanation so your team understands why the dos and don’ts are important.
If not having a process is holding your business back from innovating or adapting, then you can fix that quite easily.
It’s not an excuse.
Freezing Cold Leads
Something I found incredibly common working in automotive was how many businesses would receive a lead then immediately call the customer back. If the customer didn’t answer, they’d mark the lead as “Lost – Non Contactable” and then shoot off another shitty email to me about lead quality.
And I see it in digital marketing too. There’s an assumption among many businesses that all leads are created warm, so if the lead doesn’t have cash in hand, ready to buy, the lead was rubbish.
Here’s the thing about that – digital marketing attracts cold leads.
Colder than referral.
Colder than word of mouth.
To the lead, you’re just another company that wants their money.
Yes, they need your service and yes, they are willing to part with money for it, but they have no emotional connection to you.
Google & Meta Ads in particular tend to attract a lot of leads like this.
There’s only so much a 30-character headline or a snazzy graphic can do to sell your business. Once that lead enquires, they’ve probably moved on and enquired with someone else within a few minutes.
And chances are they don’t want to speak to you at all. They just want an immediate email or text message saying “This is the price.”
So when you call? No answer.
Does that make the lead shit? In some cases, yes it does. In others, it means you just have the wrong response.
Particularly for businesses that are new to marketing, the ‘heat’ of the leads will be colder than they have ever received, and because of that, they have no experience or process to guide them on how to manage those cold leads effectively.
That’s fair.
But then you need to change your process. Or speak to someone that knows better. Or ask ChatGPT.
Say It With SMS
Returning to the car dealership example, we started encouraging dealers to send leads a text message after they enquired.
In that text message, you’d give the lead two (and a half) choices.
- I can call in 10 minutes
- Or I can call in 1 hour
- If neither of these work, please suggest a time that works for you.
This is a consumer psychology play.
You see, the harder you make the lead work, the less likely they are to respond to you.
This approach means that they only have one decision to make: do they talk to you in ten minutes, or one hour?
That’s an easy choice for them.
And the ‘threat’ at the end of having a back-and-forth with a stranger about availability makes the decision to choose 10 minutes or one hour the path of least resistance.
When they started doing this, the response from leads was much better.
It all comes down to understanding your customer.
On most websites, your lead form is presented alongside your phone number. If your lead wanted to speak to you on the phone, they would have called.
Instead, they chose to enquire.
Chances are they did that because they don’t want to talk to you.
So ask yourself, honestly, do you think they’re going to answer the phone…?
Understanding Is Its Own Reward
We’re going through a major cost-of-living crisis.
Businesses in all industries are collapsing daily.
People have less money to spend, and every month there’s something new that adds to the financial uncertainty looming over every day.
Ironically, while people are more guarded with their cash than ever, they are more prone to frivolous purchases.
The problem is that frivolous spending tends to be impulsive. It’s unplanned, and will often be relatively minor such as clothing, UberEats, a phone case, or a bottle of wine.
But as soon as they have to speak to someone about their purchase, it stops being an impulsive buy.
Every minute you are talking to them allows doubt to grow in their mind. Every second, they are looking for an excuse to back out and retreat.
So it is important to get to them quickly, but what’s more important is to understand that they are the guardians of their money.
Thus, to be an effective salesperson, you have to truly understand how your product or service solves the customer’s problems.
That’s the kicker.
You don’t sell services or products. You sell solutions.
And the only way of knowing how your solution solves the customer’s problem is to understand the customer’s problem.
What you think of the problem is irrelevant.
What the customer thinks is paramount.
If the customer is scared, you need to empathise with them and explain how your product or service alleviates their problem, which, in this case, is their fear.
They aren’t scared it’s too expensive – they are scared it’s not going to solve their problem.
You have the power to change that if you understand the root of the customer’s problem.
It’s not easy. People are more guarded with their fears and concerns than ever before because they are scared of being manipulated. They will often mask their problems with false bravado.
I’ve had countless conversations with potential clients who told me that money wouldn’t be a problem, but when I quoted them a price for my services, they suddenly became penniless beggars looking for a morsel of generosity.
Ultimately, people buy to change something, or to prevent something changing.
Those are the only two reasons. Think about everything you’ve ever bought and chances are you can trace that purchase back to this rule.
Your job is to understand what the customer wants to change, or what they are scared of changing.
People That Aren’t Your Customers Matter Too
I worked with a client that routinely bitched about his team.
When I spoke to his team, they routinely bitched about him.
The sheer level of unprofessionalism on display meant that, even though I would never be in the market for his services, if I was, I would never buy from him.
But the problem goes deeper than that.
I’ve told people about this experience and now I have no control over how those people pass on my comments to others. This impacts reputation, and reputation not only impacts lead quality but lead volume as well.
Some people may never become your customer, but they might know someone that could become your customer. They need to love their interactions with you even if you weren’t right for them.
You need to be professional at all times, and ensure that you and your team are playing the same game.
It’s Gonna Happen
Bad leads are going to come. You can’t avoid them.
Customers are unpredictable and frequently don’t behave how you’d expect.
Just accept that not every lead is going to be good.
You don’t need to send an email every time a low-quality lead comes in.
Do your best and move on.
Be Actively Establishing Trust
I recently wrote a blog about only targeting wealthy customers. It can be done, but you actively need to be promoting yourself as a business worthy of your prices.
Largely, this means being on social and producing interesting content that isn’t always about selling.
Your customers will research you before they enquire, and if they find you or your company relatable, they are more likely to form an emotional attachment to your business.
When they enquire, they are already partially sold because they like you.
Unless your marketing is posting content such as this, you need to be doing this regardless of what other campaigns you’re running.
But It Could Be Your Marketing
We’ve spoken about how businesses need to innovate, be creative, be empathetic, and be understanding.
And you should be all of those things.
But none of the above is to suggest that it isn’t your marketing that’s causing the problem.
For many people, your marketing is their first experience of your business, and if it misses the mark, then the pieces are unlikely to come together at any point in the lead journey.
Here are some things you can do to ensure your marketing speaks the same language you do.
Actively Review Your Agency’s Copy & Creative
Don’t rubber-stamp their work with your approval. I’ve had countless occasions where a client has approved the ad copy, only to see it two weeks later and complain about it.
Forget best practice and trusting your agency – if you don’t think it sells your service or products properly, get them to change it.
Your agency represents your brand. It’s your responsibility to make sure they do that properly.
Clearly Define The Problem You Solve
This jumps back up to the problem we discussed earlier about selling solutions, not services.
Make sure your copy highlights that. Showing understanding in the first interaction goes a long way.
Be Consistently Consistent
Don’t chop and change your messaging or customer-facing processes frequently.
Or without warning, for that matter.
Particularly if you have a longer sales cycle (i.e. your services relate to property or are generally very expensive), it can take months for a customer to make the decision to go ahead with you.
If you’re constantly changing your messaging, services and offers, then each time the customer interacts with you, it’s like they’ve never seen you before.
Every interaction goes back to square one.
Yes, it’s important to keep your creative and messaging fresh, but fresh doesn’t mean totally different.
Make sure your agency isn’t making drastic changes frequently.
Know Your Audience
In the age of AI-driven campaign targeting, this is getting hard. Your audience has so many buying signals that can’t be targeted in the advertising platforms that sometimes it’s better to hand over the keys to Google & Meta and say “Do it for me.”
But it’s important to know who your audience is so you can craft your copy and creative accordingly.
It’s also important to know which platform you’re using.
Effective copy for TikTok audiences, for example, might not be effective copy for Facebook audiences. The ad placements are different, and if we’re being honest, so are the demographics of the users.
Your agency needs to know this, so make sure they are targeting the right people.
And if you don’t know who the right people are, sometimes knowing who aren’t the right people can be just as helpful.
Ensure Your Goal Is Clearly Defined
Targeting leads or conversions is good, but it tends to be an immediate, short-term objective.
The problem with those is that they tend to require immediate, short-term marketing platforms such as Google Ads, so when you turn those campaigns off, your leads stop.
That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about leads – of course they matter – but there’s more to marketing than getting people to enquire.
It’s important for them just to know your brand.
It’s difficult to measure, but brand awareness can go a long way towards improving your business’ longevity.
So yes, leads might be your final goal, but remember that putting “enquire now” in every ad doesn’t necessarily help you reach that goal.
Make Sure Your Agency Understands Your Products or Services
Whenever I onboard a new client, I ask them three questions:
- What is your most profitable product?
- What is your most common product?
- What is your most expensive product?
The reason I ask this is because I can then allocate marketing resources accordingly if these answers are different.
For example, a website that sells laptops could say standard HP laptops are the most common product, MacBooks are the most expensive product, and Chromebooks have the biggest profit margin.
So guess where I’m going to allocate most of my efforts?
Correct – HP laptops, MacBooks, and Chromebooks.
HP laptops bring the volume, MacBooks bring the revenue, Chromebooks bring the profit.
Together, that works, but these three products all require different marketing. A MacBook is a more emotional purchase than an HP laptop, and Chromebooks attract a… specific clientele…
So if I suddenly start using the same creative and messaging to sell these products, or if I go off on a tangent and start advertising Acer laptops, something isn’t going to work.
The point is that you need to make sure your agency understands the things that have the biggest positive impact on your business.
And that comes from you.
Keep Records Of Poor Leads & Be Specifc
The most unhelpful feedback an agency can receive over leads is “the leads aren’t good.”
There are a multitude of reasons why leads might not be good. Non-contactable. Fake details. Spam. Not relevant. Not ready to buy for a long time. Outside the target area. Not suitable for the service.
Just saying leads aren’t good doesn’t give your agency anything to go on.
Give proper feedback about why you’re struggling with the leads. It’ll help your agency investigate ways of improving this.
A good agency should also, within reason, be able to match individual leads back to their original marketing source.
Because they can do that, they can match poor-quality leads back to the ads that generated them, and analyse how that lead came to be.
So keep track of leads that don’t work out due to quality issues and talk about them with your agency.
I don’t mean forward every single dud lead to your agency the second they don’t answer the phone. Just keep a record of the lead, and discuss them during your WIPs.
Was The Grass Really Greener?
I’ve worked in agencies and in-house, so I have seen clients that needed to do better, but I also have been the client that needed to do better.
When I was working in-house, our business was very quick to realise when we were missing something.
The problem? We were behind because a lot of our products were above the Buy-Now-Pay-Later maximums offered by AfterPay and ZipPay.
The solution? So we brought on board Humm, which had a limit of $6,000.
The problem? Our service department was struggling to communicate effectively with customers.
The solution? We integrated software to manage the whole process of booking, getting repairs approved, and completing appointments.
We had no way to shift returned products with minor defects, so we wrote a process that allowed us to sell them as second-hand products.
When a competitor started undercutting us in price, we didn’t just slam the big red ‘discount’ button. We leant into what made us better, and offered product bundles so that we increased the value of the sale without diminishing the value of the product.
Unfortunately, a lot of these decisions need to come from the business owner. As agencies, we can suggest these things but it has to be you that pulls the trigger.
And if you never pull the trigger, then you may miss the chance to take your shot altogether.
But if you want help that goes deeper into your business than just assuming everything can be solved by a marketing campaign and lead funnel, maybe it’s time you partnered with Stark Digital.
