Agendas and Digital Marketers

When it comes to utilizing digital marketing to promote a business, it’s a given that there are many seemingly-disconnected components to what is at its heart a technical service, with tremendous potential to accomplish multiple benefits concurrently:

• You can gain increased visibility online across the board (Google search results, Google Business listings, Google Maps, paid ads, just to name a few).
• This usually results in increased revenue, which can in turn help a business grow rapidly and reinvest capital back into infrastructure and keep that growth process churning along indefinitely (Amazon is a classic example of this perspective and example also of why and how they keep surpassing the competition both online and offline).

Often where business owners and entrepreneurs can become lost in the shuffle is by being seduced by the lure of something for nothing (“free” DIY template generator services or super-cheap neighborhood hobbyists), fixating on price over value of achieving business objectives, not fully grasping the concept of Return On Investment (ROI), not seeing digital marketing as an ongoing service (but more as a single item like purchasing a box of business cards), or simply not knowing where to begin.

One way to solve most of these potential problems is in the use of deliberate, organized agendas, whether from the perspective of the business owner or from the perspective of the Digital Marketing Specialist.

Five Ways Digital Marketing Professionals Can Benefit from Using Agendas

Five ways digital marketing specialists can benefit from using agendas when speaking with clients are:

1. During initial phases of new client screening to tell if the client is an ideal fit for you or not
2. Onboarding new clients so that you can discern what their most important business objectives and problems are.
3. In offering productized service solutions that are easily repeatable and quantifiable
4. Moving new clients through an established and tested process for fulfilling their objectives and resolving problems.
5. In training distributed teams, onboarding new staff, moving discovery calls forward easier

All of these five steps apply and help the potential client just as much (if not more) as they do the digital marketing specialist or expert.

The Digital Marketing Specialist

The Digital Marketing Specialist is (by my definition) someone thoroughly trained in all aspects of online marketing so that they are fully informed in using all the different tools needed to build a business online; SEO, social media marketing, branding, email automation, website development and design, website security, video marketing, podcasting, content creation, content distribution and repurposing, paid advertising or PPC, and coordinating these efforts with more traditional, offline marketing.

Since the Digital Marketing Specialist has such a varied arsenal of tools available at his or her disposal it’s incumbent upon that person to work from a very organized methodology or else it’s going to be very difficult to coordinate all the different pieces of the puzzle from discerning whether or not the client is an ideal fit for you or not, to figuring out how you’re going to solve their problems (whether it’s selling a property, scaling a business, selling more items, taking payment for services, soliciting more donors, bringing more patrons to a restaurant, filling more beds at a medical facility, or whatever). Like the song says, you “can’t get there from here,” without a thought-out way to get a handle on things that’s repeatable and tested.

Agendas for keep conversations structured toward a definite goal. Combining the use of agendas with a systematic way of working can transform a digital marketing consultancy toward increased professionalism and just an overall easier way to work and accomplish objectives faster.

Five Ways Agendas Help Clients and Digital Marketing Specialists Get More & Better Results

1. They help identify key business problems that can be resolved through the use of digital marketing. Examples of such problems could be not reaching a specific market, not attracting sufficient number of new leads, needing to process secure payments for products or downloads or services or event tickets or other bookings, wishing to track certain types of data, or being able to use digital technology for almost any other purpose.
2. Agendas keep discussions structured and focused on deciphering key business problems so both parties can benefit directly and in less time.
3. Agendas in digital marketing help set the tone for moving forward in productive business relationships.
4. Agendas help established constructive marketing plans that empower and enable accelerated growth.
5. Agendas in digital marketing save massive amounts of time, effort, and as a result, money; since they require a higher level of organization and engagement. Finally, when digital marketing professionals utilize and rely on organized, deliberately thought-out agendas they help the client receive higher value, greater returns, and establish that digital marketing professional as a serious and focused expert…This can very possibly differentiate that person when compared to neighborhood hobbyists, online amateurs, or others operating without such a level of organization.

Using agendas from the Digital Marketing Specialist view point can enable them to have more systematic ways to outsource when needed, onboard new clients, move through discovery sessions where we can discern client needs more thoroughly and more efficiently, to having more structured calls and meetings and communicating a greater level of commitment.

From the Business Owner Perspective

Business owners gain similarly when using agendas in their meetings.

Often times when it comes to digital marketing potential clients will call asking for a price on an undefined quantity. For example, the question “how much is a website?” is very common. The question is difficult to answer since it suggests that what the client is interested in is a number on something unknown.

The Digital Marketing Specialist doesn’t know the scope of the project, what’s needed, what business goals (if any) matter to the caller, what their local demographics are, who their competitors are, if they care about outranking competitors online, and suggest a “one size fits all” solution to what can be a complicated problem or situation. All we can do is provide a general range of what digital marketing could cost over time without knowing more concrete details. Now, from the perspective of the business owners, an agenda prior to that call can make a huge difference.

Documenting business problems (such as not being on the first page of local search results and needing to gain increased visibility), anticipated budget range and asking for verification on that estimate, providing information on how that estimate was arrived at, detailing who’s involved and their roles, how success will be defined and measured, even if some of this information is speculative, is still going to propel the conversation forward in a much more meaningful way than calling out of the blue asking for a price on something unformed or vague.

Both parties, Digital Marketing Specialist and business owner client, should have (and even discuss) agendas prior to meetings or conversations, as doing so will help both individuals gain more from their working experiences together, enjoy their collaboration more, and help both sides achieve the same final objective more completely and more quickly.