How to hire a marketing company

The time has come to hire yourself a marketing company to promote your business.

However, please do be very careful when you hire a marketing company.

Because hiring a bad marketing company can make things much worse for your business than if you'd just not bothered to try to market your business in the first place.

Do the principals behind the marketing business have any qualifications in marketing? Are they members of any professional bodies?

Also, how experienced are they in marketing? Do they have any personal testimonials that they will be willing to share with you?

But further, are their qualifications in marketing genuine? Are their qualifications recognised by any officially authorised external invigilating and accreditation bodies?

 Are the professional bodies that they claim membership of legitimate?

And do check the membership lists of the organisation concerned. Are they really a member in good standing?

After all, it would not be the first time for someone to claim a qualification they were not entitled to, or to claim membership of a body which they are not a member of.

Ask for verifiable professional testimonials. If these are not forthcoming, just walk away from them, immediately.

How are they marketing themselves and their own business?  If they are not capable of marketing themselves and their own business properly, how on earth could they possibly be able to market your business effectively?

Are they understaffed? Is their office professional and businesslike? If not, remember the golden rule of business? Run Away, Quick!

How on earth could they possibly hope to be able to help market your business if they can't market their own business?

After all, they really aren't going to be able to help you, if they can't help themselves.

Ask to see samples of their work. If they claim to be able to work on major marketing campaigns for clients, let them prove it.

Do they fill their meetings with you, the client, with meaningless jargon and buzzwords? If they do this, demand that they translate them into English, or your local language. If they can't, then RAQ!

Also, if they claim to have a press release writing service, ask to see the original press releases and examples of where and when the press releases were published.

If they can't, do remember the golden rule: "RAQ! Run Away, Quick!"

I once wrote some press releases for a very small marketing company which was a client of mine, but only for a short while.

Their marketing 'expert' completely changed the press releases, adding some amazing grammatical howlers and altered the press releases from what had been "ready to print" news stories, into dreary and utterly banal wodges of marketing drivel that no editor would touch.

And you can trust me on that point, because as a news editor of many years standing on newspapers and trade magazines I regularly binned or deleted press releases which were written in just that way.

Remember, it's your marketing budget, so do spend it wisely!

These organisations might be of assistance to you:-
http://www.cim.co.uk/membership/
http://www.marketingagencies.org.uk/agencies
http://the-cma.com/about-us/