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So many clients (inadvertently) want you to solve their entire business, where do you draw the line of not my job?
IMO we’re supposed to only care about sending qualified people to the site but obviously if sales are down it’s not a good look. When the traffic is interacting with the website at stable prices, CTR is better than ever but said traffic is not closing the deal, I feel responsible even though I shouldn’t (since i’m only the promotion part of the marketing mix, I can only suggest prices, products but they are not my decision).
Obviously It depends on what you negotiated with the client maybe only the Facebook/google platform part, maybe you added the design of the website but usually where do you draw the line?
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13 Replies
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Unless the sales people can not do their job. The goal should be to send traffic that converts into a paying customer.
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I have a client who’s constantly asking me for further business advice and I made the mistake of engaging in that conversation in the first place. Now it’s become an expectation and it’s much harder to backtrack when it’s become an expectation. If you can still avoid that situation, stay in control of the conversation and don’t go down that road.
They’ll milk you for all your worth if you let them. Set boundaries and be firm about your defined responsibilities.
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You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.
If you’re generating qualified leads, that’s really all you can do. You can’t make a lead buy the client’s product.
I wouldn’t look at CTR as a KPI though. You can get high CTRs with terrible quality traffic. Having a high CTR can be a bad thing because you are paying per click. Lower CTRs can be better when the clicks are prequalified.
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> I feel responsible even though I shouldn’t (since i’m only the promotion part of the marketing mix, I can only suggest prices, products but they are not my decision).
Ultimately unless this thing works, you will no longer have them as a client. So root for, and help them (for an extra fee is you can). It’s that simple, fair or not.
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I lean on my network. I have friends who do graphic design, content writing, SEO, video work, etc. We refer each other to clients all the time. It’s a win-win.
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I feel you, it’s always frustrating doing your job and not seeing it translate for the customer.
One thing I would often do is provide a mystery shop, show them what the customers experience looks like after submitting a lead, especially if you can show them what a competitor is doing. Sometimes that will shine a light on internal issues that are nullifying the work done on your end.
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What end I up doing is taking more of a partnership position with clients that I see potential in. What this ends up encompassing is gradually over time, I guide them through multiple facets of their business and presence. It’s kinda a two way street pending on the client- I learn a lot about their specific industry and in turn am able to offer valuable outsider advice and input. Also ultimately, I’ll do anything reasonable (and within my budget) to help out my clients. This is also why we bill high! If it’s a cheap client asking for a million things, then no. They gotta solve their business stuff on their own.
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My go-to statement “digital marketing works really well when done right, but unfortunately digital is not the answer to the overall business problems.”
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I have this “I won’t save your business” rule. When I was starting out landing clients that were desperate was easy but nerve racking for them and me. I learned quickly that your clients have to have a business with a solid foundation, because no matter how good you are, if they can’t convert leads or worse screw up the leads then your dead. I learned the hard way, being offered percentages of failing business, partnerships that collapse. Keep your lane and be honest with your clients that you are able to do the services you outlined and not really anything else. Or you spend to much time on terrible companies.
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Do you want to make more money and make them a more loyal client? Then become their strategic thought partner and not just an order-taker. You need to make the flip to this kind of role, but if clients value your expertise, then they’ll pay for it.
You may not want to do that kind of work, which is fair enough, but in my experience that’s where the money = time equation gets tossed out and you can earn a lot more money for a lot less effort.
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The problems you solve are in direct correlation to your income
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For me this is where knowing basic Google Analytics comes in handy. Being able to prove efficacy for one channel can be tough, but being able to prove it has roughly equal efficacy as other channels can be validating, even if the client doesn’t recognize that. For example:
“Using {these relevant keywords} I drove X number of people to the site at a CTR of Y%. While we only netted this many conversions, compared with other traffic channels we saw similar overall conversion rates, and it was the top or second source of traffic in your niche.”
If you are not using heatmaps like hotjar, it can be handy using Behavior Flow in GA to show how people behave when they arrive on site, regardless of which traffic source they got there on. A bonus option might be heading to Tag Manager and adding link clicks as a Trigger, and then a Google Analytics Event where Action=Click Text and Label=Click URL. This way you can view any page or landing page and see where people clicked and where they went in addition to any basic page-level data like duration, bounce, etc.
Obviously, you want to be top converter and have a strong ROAS, but in the end it depends on the client’s site and its ability to convert those who arrive on it.
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Hi u/xdesm0
As PPC people we’re inclined to focus on what goes on in the FB/Google account. We might venture into building or advising on landing pages, but few of us routinely get involved in what happens after the lead is delivered.
I think that’s a mistake for several reasons.
1. You can have the best ads, and the highest converting landing pages but if the client can’t sell he will cancel.
2. Most businesses are not that good at handling leads. The last 4 clients I worked with were closing fewer than 5% of leads when we started working together. We’re not talking mom-and-pop outfits here. Between the 4 clients we’re probably getting > 10 000 leads a month. This means that there is plenty of scope for improvement.
3. This is low hanging fruit. Think how much effort it would take working on ads, keywords, negatives and so on to double the number of leads without increasing the ad budget. Now, if you applied the same effort to a sales process that was losing 19 out of every 20 leads do you think you could get them to only lose 18 out of 20 leads? My experience has been yes, you can, and they’ll be very grateful for it, which brings us to the next point.
4. You can probably add a lot of value, (and get paid for it). For the first 10 years I ran Google Ads I thought that my job ended when I’d delivered the lead to the client. About 3 years ago I woke up and started getting involved with what happens to the leads after I deliver them. The last 3 years have been the best 3 years in my business. It’s not coincidence.
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