How to choose the right marketer for you?

Marketing is essential for all business and brands.

You need a good marketer and a marketing strategy to help bring out the best of your brand/product/services to all your potential clients out there.

However, there are so many professional marketers all around locally and globally. Who would be the right pick for you?

This topic came into my mind after meeting with several potential clients of mine recently.

Many of these potential clients have been going around asking for advice from multiple marketing consultants and despite that, they still struggle to hire one due to many reasons.

Few of the reasons are such as, fear of hiring someone that cannot perform, the budget is all much for them to handle, the vision of the client and marketer doesn’t seem aligned, many more reasons.

So here I am today to share on this topic. If you’re keen on hiring a marketer for your business here are a few ways to help you identify whether the marketer is right for you.

First filter out the nonsense!

Yes, you read it, filter out the nonsense. While there are many great marketers out there, there are also a bunch of bad apples laying around. Hence, knowing which are those and filtering them out will help you narrow down your choice.

I’m sure the next question would be who are the bad apples?

One best example I can give is this, “Sign up with us with and we will definitely bring you conversion and boost your business in no time!”

First off, here’s the bubble I want to break, no professional marketers would give such promise to you. Because executing a marketing campaign is never a 100% sure hit thing. In fact, a recent lesson with digital marketer I found that with a proper system and structured campaign the conversion of clients is only about 2/10.

That is only a 20% conversion. And that takes tons of hours of a/b testing and tons of email/messaging campaigns to make it happen. It’s a continuous effort of trial and error.

There is no such thing like one-time bullseye marketing strategy, you’ll need consistency in innovation and improving a strategy until it becomes optimal for your branding.

Do a proper background check

This point upsets me a lot! And it annoys me as well!

Remember those days where job titles really meant something to everyone? Like if you’re a CEO, you are really CEO.

I’ve seen too many people on various social media platforms claiming themselves to be professionals and CEO’s and so on. And I’ve talked to some of them, and some of them even approached me trying to sell me their services.

I have nothing against people that want to sell their services to me, but what annoys me is that some of these so-called professionals aren’t even professionals.

They claim themselves to be one and yet through the way they present themselves and the questions they ask you’ll find many doubts about their real potential.

I have quite a numbered of clients that used to fell into the traps of these so-called ‘professionals’. Claiming that they have the right solution to help them build their brand with a very affordable cost. And at the end of the day, that so-called ‘professional’ literary messed up the entire branding and forcing them to do a re-branding for their company.

This upsets me a lot because irresponsible acts like this leave a bad taste for other markets out there. People start to doubt the ones that are really doing their job and resulting in a bad market for marketers.

So if you’re keen to look for a marketer here are some things that you can look into before even contacting them.

1. Usually, professional marketers would have a decent company page or personal profile that you can refer to for credibility check.
2. Majority of them would at least have a publication or blogs of their own.
3. They would definitely have a LinkedIn profile with proper connections.
4. They are active on social media platforms, sharing useful content for others.

Basically, if they are a good marketer, they would know how to market themselves. And they would have a lot of contents and platforms that support their credibility.

SO before you jump into any courses or sign up for any of their services, be sure to look into these things. Personally, I think that if a marketer doesn’t know how to market themselves, they are definitely not ready to help anyone market their brand.

Learn up the basics of marketing

As a consultant, I will never fail to remind all my clients about this. You need to know the basic of marketing before hiring a marketer.

You might this that this contradicts the idea of hiring a marketer, but it doesn’t.

First off, the brand belongs to you. You and your core team would know what the direction you want the brand to go. A marketing consultant or a marketer is there to advise and help you in executing your vision for your brand.

Hence, I would always tell my clients that they need to understand how the basics of marketing work.

For instance, if they want to hire a social media marketer to do their social media marketing; they should pick up the basics of how social media marketing works. Like how the reasons behind each targeting, measuring the effectiveness of an ad, which kind of ad works best for your targeted audience.

But understanding some of these basic, you’ll be able to also gauge the effectiveness of your marketer and you’ll also have more confidence in putting trust towards your marketer and not constantly thinking are they really doing their job.

If you’re wondering where do I get all these information about marketing, fear not. Here are some of the people that I follow that they constantly provide great insights into how to conduct marketing for free. You can check out Neil Patel, Amy Porterfield, Brendon Burchard, or even look into Facebook Blueprint if you want to know more of how to use Facebook to it’s best.

My business mentor Patsy Lim constantly reminds me that if you want to lead, first you’ll need to know all the ins and outs of the job. By gaining a good understanding of the job flow only that time we will be able to manage the whole process properly. And knowing how to troubleshoot when issues occur.

And that advice helped not just me but also my clients as when they understand more about how marketing is done, they gain more clarity in their direction resulting in a more efficient implementation of the strategy.

Take time to talk to your potential marketer

A good marketer always listens then acts later.

If you were to hand your brand over to someone to market, it is most important that they understand your brand.

Take time to talk with those potential ones that you want to work with. Let them check out your brand and hear out their honest opinion about your brand.

I strongly believe that as a marketer I have to be honest to my clients regarding what I feel about the brand. If I don’t love it, I can’t possibly market it. Hence, I would normally take a week to study through the brand and find the sweet angle to focus on for a strategic implementation.

Talking with them always helps you to gauge are they really a good suit to work with. I remember when I first started as a freelance marketer, I constantly went into head-butt with some of my clients due to the different expectations from both ends.

From that time onwards, I would always take at least 2 hours to sit with my potential client. Just having simple conversation understanding the brand and also my clients so that I know what they truly want before pitch them my ideas.

This method has helped me reduces a lot of miscommunication and misunderstood expectation from both ends. Should I find that we are not a good fit to work together I would normally assign the project to my associate that fits their expectation.

A good understanding ensures a good working relationship.

My personal take towards the marketing culture today…

Is that some of us just wants to ‘fake it till they make it’ and in the process it caused many of the people to lose faith in marketers. Thus, resulting in a loss of confidence towards those who are really passionate about marketing.

I’m not here to bad mouth anyone nor I’m here to start a war, but instead, I’m here to advocate.

I might not be the best marketer, heck, I’m not even close to the top. But despite that, I do believe in upholding an integrity while I’m doing my job.

Hence, when I see an issue that concerns this field I would stand up and voice out my opinion in hoping to advocate and bring awareness so that people would not see only the bad things in this industry.

I hope that all of you enjoyed my 2 cents on this topic. And if you have any more suggestion or advice on how to help choose the right marketer please do share it with me.