Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Engaging Marketeer. On this episode, I’m afraid it’s going to get a little bit ranty because I have literally been having the same conversation with multiple people over the last few weeks and I feel like I’m repeating myself. So I’ve got to do it on a podcast because if I’m going to keep repeating myself, I may as well have the ability to play it back and listen to myself saying the same thing that I’m saying over and over again, or at least point people to this podcast.
So what is it? Why have I suddenly been having this same conversation with people repeatedly? It’s because people have been coming to us at Engage Web and they’ve been saying things along the lines of ‘I need some SEO to help me with my business, to get some more leads to get some more sales’ or ‘I need some PPC’, ‘I need some Google ads to help me get more sales’, or the more popular ‘I need some Facebook advertising, I need you to do some Facebook ads to get some leads’. And every single time I’ve been having this conversation with people, bar one, the website that they are hoping to get these leads and sales from has been s**t! It’s been absolute s**t, and I don’t know two ways to put it.
Now, obviously I don’t say ‘your website’s bad’. I will put it in a constructive, critical manner, such as ‘you know, your website doesn’t convey the values and the professionalism of your business’, or ‘your website doesn’t compare well against your competition that are offering a similar product’, something along those lines. But the essence is, essentially, your website is pants. Just because you’re able to send traffic there via SEO or via PPC or via Facebook, if your website is pants, it’s not going to convert, so paying to send people to a website that isn’t going to convert isn’t the answer to all of your problems. If your website isn’t converting and you’re paying for paid traffic to send people there, all you’re doing is paying for people to go to your website and see that it’s s**t.
If you run a restaurant, and every single person that walked in through the door looked at your menu and went ‘uh that’s disgusting’ and they left without ordering, the solution wouldn’t be ‘hey we need to get more people through the door to look at our menu’. If you run a football team, and your star striker is crap , every time the ball comes over to him he tries to head it and it goes flying over the bar or it smacks him in the face, the solution isn’t to get Trent Alexander Arnold on the wing to get the ball into him with more crosses, because all that’s going to happen is he’s just going to miss it again. No, the solution is to do something about what isn’t converting. Get somebody in who can actually put the ball on the back of the net. If your menu is crap and nobody wants it, fix your menu so that people actually want what you’re serving. If your website is crap and it’s not converting, the answer isn’t to pay for more traffic to go to your website, the answer is to fix the website so that it converts. If you do that, if you solve the problem as to why you’re not getting business and leads in the first place, then you can ramp this up a bit and get some more people to the website, because this website’s starting to convert now, this website is turning the little traffic that it’s got into business, into clients, into customers. Let’s put some money into PPC, or let’s put some money into SEO, or let’s put some money into Facebook ads, or into email marketing or whatever is the best channel for you. Do not do that until your website is converting, because all you’re doing is wasting your money.
A high converting website is going to make you a lot more money than a low converting website. Spending money on paid ads to send people to a low converting website is just going to cost you a fortune, so why would you do it? Why would you play your worst striker and let him take the penalties? You wouldn’t do that. But I have been having the same conversation over and over again for the last few weeks. People have been coming to us thinking that SEO is the answer to their prayers, and it isn’t, it really isn’t. If somebody clicks on a Facebook ad and goes through to a website that is rubbish, that doesn’t load very well, doesn’t have the information they need, doesn’t fill them with confidence, they’re not going to buy from you. You don’t go to a doctor and say ‘got a bit of a pain in my chest, could you do a quick heart transplant because I’m pretty sure that’s what’s wrong with me?’ You’d probably let the doctor have a look, investigate what might be the problem and then advise the best solution. You don’t go to a mechanic and go ‘my engines making a bit of a noise, could you swap out the head gasket or could you just replace the engine?’ You’d probably let the mechanic have a look and see what it is that’s actually the problem, rather than tell him what you want him to do. It’s the same with a marketing agency. Don’t go in and say ‘I want you to do PPC for me’ or ‘I want you to do Facebook ads for me’. Go in and tell them ‘I want more customers’, ‘I want more clients’, ‘I want more business, what’s the best way for me to do that?’ and let them have a look.
There are some agencies that are not that ethical, believe it or not, and you can go in and say to them ‘I want you to do Facebook ads for me’ and they’ll go ‘yep, not a problem, let’s do some Facebook ads for you’. It’s not right for your business and it’s not going to work.
Thank you for listening for this slightly ranty episode of the Engaging Marketeer. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve listened to today, please give me a follow on YouTube, on Apple, on Spotify, whatever platform you like to listen to on, and I would absolutely love it if you would leave me a review, and I will catch you on the next podcast.
