What do you do with a 'marketing pro' who has landed on your online doorstep, armed with a bunch of academic certificates, along with a deep pot of theoretical bluster and a treasure trove of jargon and psychobabble between their ears?
Not only that, how do you navigate the seasoned pro who is simply practicing old, worn out ideas and strategies having little to zero impact, sparkle or fizz?
Beware!
Educated marketing dunces and deceptionists come in a variety of disguises, wearing many a different cloak.
And so, if you're not vigilant, if you're not observant, if you're not aware, you'll soon find a bunch of marketing dunces frolicing, prancing, prattling through your business, most likely soon stamping and stomping it into the dirt.
A solution?
A start, to test their brains and their history, can be to ask them the following 10 questions.
And if they get at least half of them right, they may be worth considering. Because they would have proven a certain level of marketing depth and knowledge. Quite frankly, it shows them to be smarter than the average marketing bod, who is most likely amongst other things, amped up with AI-itis.
Only 3 questions right?
Well, it could trigger the following question going round in your head "is my business and my future really in safe hands?"
Here then, are the 10 questions:
1. Who first coined the phrase - "salesmanship in print"?
2. Who first created the phrase - entering the conversation currently going on in the mind of your prospect or customer?
3. What are the key elements of a true direct response ad or promotion?
4. What are the differences between a direct response ad or promotion, and an image based or institutional ad?
5. Who said (and he based his entire advertising philosophy on it) "you can't preach to empty souls in a church"?
6. Which direct response ad contained 6,424 words, was inserted in one paper for one time, and produced over 10,000 qualified leads?
7. Who was considered the most prolific direct response copywriter of all time, wrote the most stolen book from libraries, and where copies were said to have sold on ebay at one time for over £1000?
8. The name of the ad man considered to be Britain's most respected, most acknowledged and most brilliant direct response marketing practitioner living today?
9. What edition of John Caples' Tested Advertising Methods book is considered the most practical, most informative, and most leaned on version by proper marketing pros?
10. Which landmark copywriter chewed tobacco and spat profusely at the person he was talking to?
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Now of course, you can go hunting for marketing and copywriting help, anywhere on the planet.
The world truly is your oyster.
You can pay anything from a fivver, to 500k and beyond. You can hire the highly reputable, to someone with no reputation, and anything in between. And yet still come up short.
However, I suggest you'd want to do all that you can to make sure that you're not succumbing to educated marketing sweet talkers with oodles of sleight of mouth deception, running amok in your business.
The above little test can help put a stop to that.
But don't let that limit you.
You can add to it.
You can create your own version, based on what works for you, and for your situation.
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Don't let your business starve itself of fresh ideas and proper compelling communications. You can start to fix that by sending an email to me at the following: raja . hireker @ gmail . com
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