What Exactly Do You Do?

For many years, from the average person on the street to the business professional, telling someone that you worked at an “advertising or marketing agency” was pretty much understood across the board. You usually had to fill in a few blanks here and there when it came to services to elicit the comment “I didn’t know you did that”. But wow, how times have changed. As the marketing industry expanded into the areas of online/digital, e-newsletters, email and text messaging, social connection pages, in-mail options and more, people hopped on the bandwagon and started a movement of connecting (or trying to) in the most expedient and easiest way possible.

Although these forms of connectivity are powerful and very effective if done properly, unfortunately the fact that people are people, it was only a matter of time until some, including the scammers, took advantage of a good thing. Now a lot of professionals initially assume that an introductory email is spam, or a scam. Decision makers are receiving mass amounts of emails, phone calls and messages from so-called “marketing companies” that are in fact only selling the same “canned” product to the masses. They cast a wide net, often with fake promises that never produce results. Spam email from companies offering low cost (cheap) services, often from countries like India, obliterate our inboxes. Remember, the saying “you get what you pay for”? That definitely applies here.

The point here people is that the marketing industry has become oversaturated with offshoot spammers, “marketing companies” and tactics - and true marketing agencies are being lumped into that assumptive group. As a result, many professionals don’t know what services are offered by marketing agencies, digital or traditional (or both) and we are greeted with a blank stare when we tell someone what we do. Or, even more commonplace, we are simply avoided outright because people are overwhelmed with pitches from marketing-related people and companies.

And that is a true shame, because you get what you pay for. Always. So if a real marketing agency comes calling, you might want to re-consider listening to what they have to say, because there’s probably a good chance they know what it takes to grow your company or organization. Because that’s what we do.