Article copywriter

I like to think of myself as something of an expert in matters relating to marketing. And, like a lot of people who think of themselves as experts, I have a tendency (I am willing to admit) to think that my area of expertise is the be-all and end-all. And so if I can help a company with their marketing needs, their business will flourish, I'll get loads of kudos, and all will be right with the world. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. For you can lead a horse to water, as the old saying goes, but you can't help him close the sale! Maybe you know what I mean because maybe you've had an experience like this one at your company.

You spend a couple gazillion dollars on marketing and advertising and - finally - the phone starts to ring. But your receptionist is not only having a bad hair day, but pretty sure her boyfriend is cheating on her too. She’s on the phone talking with one of her girlfriends about it all when a guy with a million dollars to spend calls from the ad he saw in that month’s Fortune Magazine, the expensive, full-page ad that you agonized over for weeks before you finally decided to take a chance and spend the money on it. She lets it ring about a dozen times since she’s really not in the mood to do anything more that day than talk to her girlfriend, but eventually picks it up with a weary, impatient voice. The guy says something about the ad he saw but she doesn’t really hear everything, nor does she want to keep her girlfriend on hold much longer, so she just transfers him. Somewhere. Anywhere. It doesn’t really matter to her.

He actually ends up in the accounts payable department. The confused person at that extension finally transfers him to sales, but your salesperson is having a worse day than the receptionist is. He had a flat tire that morning on the way to the office, he can’t seem to lose the fifteen pounds his doctor tells him he needs to lose, and his teenage son wants to get a tattoo. Now what? he thinks to himself as the phone rings in his office. He picks it up and hears something from this guy about wanting some more information about something or other and mumbles that he’ll get a sales package out in the mail. He shoots an email to his secretary with the guy’s address but misspells his name and accidentally gives her the wrong city. Doesn’t really matter, though. His secretary ran out of sales packages about two weeks ago anyway. She sent a memo to somebody (she can’t really remember who) to order more sales material from the printer but the memo got pushed off the corner of a filing cabinet by the cleaning woman that evening while she was dusting, and landed behind the cabinet, completely out of sight.

Months later the memo gets found by the repo company while taking back the filing cabinet, as well as all of the other furniture, from the company that just couldn’t seem to attract customers, no matter how much marketing effort they put forth.

The moral of the story? It doesn’t end with marketing. It starts with marketing. If you don't have a plan in place (or the right personnel to implement the plan) for what to do AFTER the marketing efforts begin to show themselves, then all of your money and time spent on those marketing efforts will have been wasted. Keep a close eye on the track that a prospect has to follow after you've gotten his or her attention. If it doesn't easily lead to an order, then you'd better fix it.

After all, it doesn't take an expert to see that.