Let’s say that you were a contractor, but you let your own building lapse into disrepair. Or perhaps you’re a mid-to-large sized commercial architecture firm with a poorly designed office. What does it say about your company, your brand or your dedication to quality work? As professional service providers, you generally are expected to show yourself off well when you have the chance to do things your way, i.e. your own offices. If you don’t, you miss the opportunity to show just how great you really can be.

My intention isn’t to single out those of you that haven’t been upgrading your offices :-), but it is to point out a flaw in what many businesses are willing to accept when they choose marketing consultants.

I recently came across a “creative consultant” that specialized in social media strategy. Fair enough, there are only thousands of people (all with varying levels of marketing expertise) jumping on that bandwagon right now. However, this social media consultant touted some amazing stats that I wanted to share.
  • 200 followers on Twitter
  • 1 blog with a total of 3 posts…ever
  • 0 functioning website
Now, I personally am a big proponent of having the right fans/followers instead of a huge amount. I believe in being pretty targeted, perhaps even to a fault. However, the complete lack of a website and a sparsely populated blog are hardly acceptable if you are a social media guru. Granted, these few stats don’t tell the whole story, but they paint a pretty good picture.

To me, the comparison is this: Professional residential contractors lose jobs all the time to guys working “out of the back of their truck.” Likewise, residential architects lose jobs all the time to contractors that say they don’t really need an architect. Sometimes that works out just fine. Often it doesn’t. The hope is that all of our clients take the time to research and “background check” the important purchasing decisions they are making to select the option with the best value, not just the one with the best price. In the marketing world, that means at least taking a peek at their website, blog, etc. to determine what kind of marketing advice they follow themselves.