In today’s feature interview, we will be hearing from Janelle Page, founder and CEO of KickFire Marketing. Janelle has been the architect of successful and strategic, laser beam focused marketing campaigns for businesses large and small for over a decade. Janelle is a highly sought after marketing consultant and popular speaker. She travels around the nation teaching marketing bootcamps to business owners and is regularly featured in industry magazines and the press for her business acumen and marketing expertise.
Jane Tabachnick: Many business owners claim that marketing doesn’t work. What are your thoughts on this perception?
Janelle Page: I empathize with those business owners who have had setbacks that have caused them to lose confidence in marketing. Typically these individuals have been promised astronomical returns by well intentioned, and perhaps not so well-intentioned, marketers or salesmen that sold them on what was billed as the latest and greatest marketing product or tool. Then after the hype settled and the metrics were analyzed the promised ROI never materialized. So all they’re left with are empty promises and an empty marketing budget.
Jane Tabachnick: What do you think went wrong with their previous marketing campaigns?
Janelle Page: From my own conversations with these disgruntled business owners, where their previous efforts fell short was their lack of a focused, cohesive plan. They know they need some sort of marketing. So their marketing strategy was a shot gun approach, rather than a laser targeted approach. Their belief was that if they threw different types of marketing in as many different directions possible then they’d hit something and be able to call it a success.
Jane Tabachnick: Isn’t a broad, segmented, marketing approach preferable?
Janelle Page: Not with how they were managing it. Let me explain how it was working, or rather wasn’t working, for them. I’ll use the fictional “Joe’s Widgets” as an example of countless clients with whom I’ve consulted. Joe’s Widgets decides they need marketing but they want to capitalize on as many marketing avenues as they can. So they pay one company for SEO, and they pay another company to manage their pay-per-click ad campaigns. Meanwhile, a third vendor has just created their website for thousands of dollars, while Joe is simultaneously paying yet another company to manage their social media. They’ve dabbled in-house with some video or whiteboard animation, and have outsourced some direct mail advertising with this or that company. So Joe’s Widgets has all these vendors working independently of each other, resulting in a hot mess of marketing that’s unfocused, unmeasurable and unmanageable, is doomed to fail and ends up being more costly than necessary.
Jane Tabachnick: That scenario sounds like the old adage of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Janelle Page: Absolutely, and going with your analogy it puts marketing experts and strategists like myself in hot water with these business owners after they have been burned by those less effective marketers and, in some cases, modern day snake oil salesmen masquerading as marketing experts.
Jane Tabachnick: So what is the recipe for a successful marketing strategy?
Janelle Page: Companies like Joe’s Widgets didn’t need a shot gun, what they need is a laser rifle. Marketing strategists, like myself, give business owners what they’ve lacked, or what they haven’t seen from their failed and lackluster previous marketing efforts—a blueprint. The common variable in all my consultations with business owners that were ready to give up on marketing is that at no time have they ever sat down with an integrated marketing strategist and created a customized, comprehensive marketing blueprint.
Instead, they’ve just been presented with specific pieces of a plan with vague goals, a laundry list of tools, and no cohesive plan with how it all works together. And after these disjointed pieces fall apart the business owners lament that “marketing doesn’t work!” Simply put, they’ve been trying to build a house without a blueprint. Instead they have the marketing equivalent of piles of hammers, nails, saws and wood but no idea how the tools interact. We give them the blueprint, and once that blueprint is set in place, the clients can see how all the pieces of the marketing strategy fits together. They get a clear picture of what the finish product, and what the ROI, should be for their efforts.
About Janelle Page
Janelle is the founder and CEO of KickFire Marketing and has been the architect of successful and strategic, laser beam focused marketing campaigns for businesses large and small for over a decade. Janelle is a highly sought after marketing consultant and popular speaker. She travels nationwide teaching marketing bootcamps to business owners and is regularly featured in industry magazines and the press for her business acumen and marketing expertise. Visit http://www.kick-fire.com to learn more about how you can build a marketing blueprint.
