Marketing can be very confusing for many small business owners. Especially digital marketing.

And that’s understandable. It’s difficult to keep up with everything you need to know when it comes to the increasingly technical and ever-changing world of marketing when you have so many other things to do running your own business.

So that means, when a business owner finally decides to reach out to a marketer or an agency, they often ask the wrong questions. They tend to focus on the tactics that they think they need.

Can you fix my website?

We need an Adwords campaign!

Can you help with our content marketing?

Do you do Facebook advertising?

…and so on.

But what is worse, is that many marketers and agencies simply respond to the request around the tactic. This means the client gets what they think they might need, rather than what they actually need.

They should be asking the client, “What are you really trying to achieve?”

You see, behind every request for marketing help is usually a much bigger need. And it is usually around growing the business or attracting more leads and customers.

But, quite often, the initial request is the wrong one.

Here’s an example…

A few months ago a new client approached me asking for help with their Adwords. They had launched their business 9 months earlier and engaged an agency to manage their search campaign.

As is common, the campaign burned through thousands of dollars of ad budget, sent a lot of traffic to their site, but resulted in no new customers.

So eventually they decided to speak to someone else about it.

The first question I asked was, “What are you trying to achieve?”

That led to more questions about the business, their target market and their goals.

They didn’t need Adwords. They needed a great strategy to attract, nurture and convert customers.

So we worked with them to design one.

In the first month of that strategy being live they have generated over 120 leads, scheduled 12 meetings and signed 5 new (high lifetime value) clients. All for just $290 in advertising spend on Facebook…not Adwords.

The difference is that they now have a proper strategy, not just a tactic.

Marketers shouldn’t be mere order takers.

We need to ask potential clients what they really need? What they are really trying to achieve.

We need to go deep on their business and understand their audience before we even consider talking tactics.

Because the wrong tactic done well, is still wrong.