Business and clients come in all sizes and packages.
Even the package has a unique taste of its own.
While striking the right chord with clients can be fun and fulfilling, gauging their likes and dislikes can be equally cumbersome.
But as time passed, I, as a marketer, witnessed an alarming gap in the knowledge of some of the strongest names in the market when it comes to digital marketing.
This is why I put forth this question to you:
Are you Digitally Rich, Digitally Poor, or Digitally Ignorant?
No shame in admitting if you are ignorant and no brownie points for boasting that you are rich.
This will simply stand as a reference point for all of us to see where we stand.
So, with the categories drawn, let us try to figure out where we fit in. Shall we?
Most of the clients I have been exposed to, mostly fall in the last 2 buckets! They’re either Digitally Poor or Digitally Ignorant.
The Digitally Rich Daddy:
- Such clients are mostly early adapters.
- They have a strong digital presence and take decisions based on the data coming from various digital sources.
- They like to invest time and money in digital and have the patience to grow digitally.
- They realize that digital as a medium is not a magic wand that does wonders overnight.
- They integrate each digital channel and optimize every data point.
- Most of them have already moved to market automation by now because they know that the future is in Martech.
The kind of questions that they are likely to put forth would be:
- I am looking for a blog writer who understands the buyer persona. Can you help me with this?
- How do I crunch the buying cycle?
- Do I need to revisit my buyer’s persona once again?
- My head map result is showing I need more technical blog writers as the content is not that sticky.
- Do I need the UX guy on my team?
- Do you know any Mar-tech platform for customer retargeting or drip marketing?
- Am I doing all kinds of A/B testing to get optimized results?
The Digitally Poor Dude:
These guys are dangerous. You need to first educate them before pitching.
Most of your digital fundamentals will go over their head and chances are that you might have sleepless nights bringing them to some basic level of understanding.
They take months to understand you and trust you.
The biggest danger you might encounter is that someday they will read something new on the internet or blogs and would want you to implement it immediately on their project.
Their wife, daughters & aunts will come to tell you how to run an Instagram channel, and obviously, you have to pass your copy through them!
It’s a painful journey!
Mostly, such clients don’t last long, as you spend more energy debating with them than working and finding the right balance.
But all said and done, there are also wonderful clients who want to learn and grow.
They are like empty glasses. They don’t come with egos but want to gain knowledge.
I have witnessed that there is no space for knowledge where there is ego.
It’s still better to stick with them for some time and see if they are willing to learn along with you because some of them might be open to new ideas and experimentation.
But mostly, their set of questions to you will be:
- Why do I need a copy person, when my wife writes good English?
- I don’t need a UX designer: my internal DTP artist can do my design.
- Why pay Shutterstock, we can always copy images from Google?
- Why spend on affiliate marketing, my brother-in-law works for a bank DSA. I can get free email/phone data.
- I have no time for inbound. I want immediate conversion/traffic.
- Don’t waste time and effort on the website, as my business depends on SMS/ WhatsApp & personal contacts.
- Why waste on the landing page? I had no such thing since I started the business.
- Can you not cut and paste from other blogs and make your own blog? Why hire people for that
Business and clients come in all sizes and packages.
Even the package has a unique taste of its own.
While striking the right chord with clients can be fun and fulfilling, gauging their likes and dislikes can be equally cumbersome.
But as time passed, I, as a marketer, witnessed an alarming gap in the knowledge of some of the strongest names in the market when it comes to digital marketing.
Which is why I put forth this question to you:
Are you Digitally Rich, Digitally Poor, or Digitally Ignorant?
No shame in admitting if you are ignorant and no brownie points for boasting that you are rich.
This will simply stand as a reference point for all of us to see where we stand.
So, with the categories drawn, let us try to figure out where we fit in. Shall we?
Most of the clients I have been exposed to, mostly fall in the last 2 buckets! They’re either Digitally Poor or Digitally Ignorant.
The Digitally Rich Daddy:
- Such clients are mostly early adopters.
- They have a strong digital presence and take decisions based on the data coming from various digital sources.
- They like to invest time and money in digital and have the patience to grow digitally.
- They realize that digital as a medium is not a magic wand that does wonders overnight.
- They integrate each digital channel and optimize every data point.
- Most of them have already moved to market automation by now because they know that the future is in Martech.
Their kind of questions that they are likely to put forth would be:
- I am looking for a blog writer who understands the buyer persona. Can you help me with this?
- How do I crunch the buying cycle?
- Do I need to revisit my buyer’s persona once again?
- My head map result is showing I need more technical blog writers as the content is not that sticky.
- Do I need the UX guy on my team?
- Do you know any Mar-tech platform for customer retargeting or drip marketing?
- Am I doing all kinds of A/B testing to get optimized results?
The Digitally Poor Dude:
These guys are dangerous. You need to first educate them before pitching.
Most of your digital fundamentals will go over their head and chances are that you might have sleepless nights bringing them to some basic level of understanding.
They take months to understand you and trust you.
The biggest danger you might encounter is that someday they will read something new on the internet or blogs and would want you to implement it immediately on their project.
Their wife, daughters & aunts will come to tell you how to run an Instagram channel and obviously you have to pass your copy through them!
It’s a painful journey!
Mostly, such clients don’t last long, as you spend more energy debating with them than working and finding the right balance.
But all said and done, there are also wonderful clients who want to learn and grow.
They are like an empty glasses. They don’t come with egos but want to gain knowledge.
I have witnessed that there is no space for knowledge where there is ego.
It’s still better to stick with them for some time and see if they are willing to learn along with you because some of them might be open to new ideas and experimentation.
But mostly, their set of questions to you will be:
- Why do I need a copy person, when my wife writes good English?
- I don’t need a UX designer: my internal DTP artist can do my design.
- Why pay Shutterstock, we can always copy images from Google?
- Why spend on affiliate marketing, my brother-in-law works for a bank DSA. I can get free email/phone data.
- I have no time for inbound. I want immediate conversion/traffic.
- Don’t waste time and effort on the website, as my business depends on SMS/ WhatsApp & personal contacts.
- Why waste on the landing page? I had no such thing since I started the business.
- Can you not cut and paste from other blogs and make your own blog? Why hire people for that?
The Digitally Ignorant Child:
They only know that Facebook exists.
Most of them have even forgotten their Twitter and LinkedIn password.
Such clients are sometimes fun to handle. As they don’t instruct you.
Treat them well.
Mostly, there is a huge opportunity to start from scratch and there are no benchmarks.
You gain trust fast and then you can make them invest more.
Their set of questions to you will be:
- How does digital marketing work?
- Will it help me grow?
- Is digital cheap?
- I am facing a marketing problem digitally, as people are not finding me, how can you help?
