We all have “one of those customers” who talks over what you are saying and doesn’t want to listen to any of the advice they hired you for. If you didn’t need the revenue, you would gladly let them go elsewhere. Or you keep them around because you really like them, or they keep you sharp.
We have a few of these, but John (not his real name) is special. Not a week goes by without at least one person on our staff getting a call from John. He is always going somewhere, driving to his next destination, which seems to be from his mountain home to his beach home more than anywhere else. He also has several people on the call and asks more questions than a Jeopardy contestant.
John is usually calling to let us know that he’s not happy with how Google is affecting his business and wants to know what we are doing to fix it. We not only appreciate the fact that he is paying attention to his business, but also that he has very specific questions.
The problem with John is that he gets fixated on things that don’t matter and doesn’t want to look at the things that do. Is it that he doesn’t know what matters in his business? Or is he mad because Google controls his fate? Or he’s been in business so long that he is making some assumptions that might have been true years ago, but aren’t any longer. As you might have already guessed, it’s a little bit of all three.
Here’s what we love about John: He genuinely cares about his business and staff. Here’s what we dislike about John: He wants things to work the way he wants them to work even when it’s out of anyone’s control, i.e. Google. We get it. We wish we could control Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. We’d be geniuses and all make a lot of money.
The hard truth
Businesses these days are playing on other businesses' playgrounds and they have no control over what these businesses change or do. Picture playing baseball in your neighbor’s yard. They own the land, the bases, the bats and the balls. All you brought was your glove. You get to play until the neighbor says you can’t or makes up some dumb rule that totally screws up the game. You can get mad, but in the end you will be going home with your glove and only your glove.
You have three basic choices:
- Decide not to play on that playground anymore
- Decide to be angry because you don’t think it’s fair
- Decide to keep playing the game even when it changes
John goes back and forth between 2 and 3. So do a lot of small-business owners and we get it. Why? Because we are the ones tasked to “fix it.”
This article isn’t meant to gripe about clients like John. We know change is hard. We would like you to look at how you react to marketing changes because a lot has changed in the past 12 months, and we think more is coming.
What has changed
Here are a few things that have changed in the past year:
- The latest is Google Search changing back to 10 companies on a page for organic search, which was how it was for years before they changed it about 18 months ago to continuous scroll search.
- Google Business Profile has had several changes including map proximity search, showing companies that are open when searched, suspending a lot of businesses, making it much more difficult to open new locations, and eliminating messaging features.
- Search Engine Optimization has changed due to the advent of AI now being added into search platforms, then removed, and then added back with changes, etc.
- The advent of all the AI tools and apps that everyone is talking about and learning how to use them if you think you need to.
- Google Adwords is now using AI all over its platform, leaving you to figure out if it’s for the betterment of the advertiser or Google.
- Facebook is now integrating AI into almost everything, leaving you to figure out if it’s for the betterment of the user or Facebook.
- AI systems are making videos, audio, photos and pictures, and no one knows how to tell if they are real or not, leaving businesses to decide if they should use the technology.
Our point is, there are only so many things a business or marketing company can control so start looking at those things and try your best to eliminate the noise.
What a business can control
- The budget
- The marketing channels you use
- Measuring your marketing and sales
- Customer service
- The customer’s journey
- The follow-up
- The sales process
- Your location
- The business tools you use
- Use of automation
- Use of AI
- Who you hire
- Who your vendors are
- Who you serve
- Staff training and certifications
- Business culture
- Getting reviews
We could go on and we hope you see that you control more than you might think you do. The good thing is that if you decide to change all of the above at any given point, you can. The power over these things is all yours.
What about keeping up with Google and Facebook?
That’s your marketing person or agency’s job. And while that job is a bit like herding cats these days, it also keeps us on our toes so we can answer John’s questions when he asks. John hasn’t been with us long, and we know from experience that it takes time for clients to learn they can trust us. In the meantime, we keep encouraging him to focus on what he can control and change so that he doesn’t feel like he’s marketing by the seat of his pants.
