
What would the best marketing consultant in the world do for a company going under?
First let me explain I'm not really a "marketing consultant". I was brought aboard to do in-house marketing mainly google places, facebook, direct mail where we've only done one failed run so far.
This is the problem ok. There is no leader in the business. Everybody has ideas, we throw ideas back and forth all day long, very little work actually gets done. I KNOW this is the problem, yet its such a personal thing, if I tell the boss, he will fire me. The boss is the real problem imo. Anytime I try to work, he's always nagging and being disrespectful to people. Joking about how his companies going bankrupt which I do not find funny at all. Not to mention what thats going to do for his salesmens spirit and motivation.
We have got essentially NO RAIN all winter, and his business is basement waterproofing. It started getting really bad I mean his bank just keeps getting lower and lower and no leads are coming in whatsoever.
So what happened now was the things I originally planned on doing (google places/facebook/direct mail) can take a bit of time. He needs leads immediately and keeps diverting my attention from working on these things.
Part of me feels he's right, but because theres no real other plan, part of me feels we are all wrong.
We have noone in the office cold calling, I think that could be a start.
We have not done any homeshows and are trying to get one set up asap, and I think that will help a lot too.
As a last ditch effort my brother talked him into starting a second business. Something we can be upselling to people who may not need basement waterproofing, which is essentially high efficiency clean energy systems. Radiant barrier, insulation, ventilation, cfls, water heaters, solar fans for the attic, etc.
We started this second biz in hopes of compensating for the fact that we aren't getting leads from the first. We've tried A LOT of ways of marketing, that use to work fine when it was raining, so I have to assume its not the marketing but the lack of rain thats the real problem for the waterproofing. Then we did our first campaign for the clean energy and hit 100,000 homes, got 1 single call.
Now however, things aren't really getting better. Now all of our attention spans are divided between 2 businesses. Its become twice the work, and noone is exactly sure which business to focus on. One is seasonal, but the jobs sell for twice as much. The other should be easier to get leads for, but its a brand new company and we haven't even began to think of who we're going to target other than homeshows or getting lists and cold calling.
Right now the boss doesn't lead. He lets everyone just kinda do their thing. Noone is sure about anything, we are all confused, we all have tons of great ideas, but then the second an idea is implemented someone always mentions "thats going to take too long to get leads" or "we need leads right now and thats not going to do that for us".
Is the company just f&*ked? We are all disorganized. Noone has clear goals because theres no real business coming in. I feel I know quite a bit about marketing, but I can't put all our eggs in the basket of google places and just keep my fingers crossed. I can't expect that facebook will work or direct mail because we already did one run for the energy audits and got 1 call from a guy saying "whats the catch" when there is no catch. We save people money by making their homes efficient, we waterproof homes that have water coming in the basement.
But we can't get leads and we need them fast.
Should I leave the company and let it sink? I just feel the boss is not professional and thats the real problem. Yes I'm suppose to be helping with marketing, but anything I do he asks "how long is it going to take to get leads?" and I have to say something like "we need more reviews, its a process, etc etc".
Can someone just enlighten me on maybe a better way to focus here or salvage this company before it goes into the ****ter. I really am feeling helpless here. Leads are definitely not easy to come by these days.
edit: could the problem be that we are trying to run these 2 companies seperately? Because the reason he's doing it this way is he is recieving leads from a company he doesn't want knowing that he is competing against. So we forced to kinda hide this second company in many ways. It forces us to operate these 2 business's completely seperately, which kills A LOT of time. And I'm thinking if we just had 1 company to focus on, that offered both services, it may help in terms of marketing. But then he would stop recieving literally the ONLY work he is getting. They give him the jobs, we install them, they cut him a commission and keep most for themself. I always felt this secrecy is going to be an issue, and having 2 seperate business's like this may just be too much for the amount of man power we have. Its such a messed up situation but theres got to be a way we can get some leads. Other business's like the one he's getting leads from gets all their leads from homeshows, cut all their other marketing. So this tells me homeshows might be great for our business.
Jean Paul a.k.a AdwordsMogul
PHPDevelopers.net - Top of the range PHP developers
⇉ Easy Link Saver - Are you tired of the pain of constantly searching for your affiliate links? ( Chrome extension - FREE )
Jean Paul a.k.a AdwordsMogul
PHPDevelopers.net - Top of the range PHP developers
⇉ Easy Link Saver - Are you tired of the pain of constantly searching for your affiliate links? ( Chrome extension - FREE )