Over the course of the past 3 decades of interviewing for branding, design, and marketing projects, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and who we are as an agency. I mainly want to address ‘why’ we DON’T get hired by some of the companies we’ve spoken with.

Yes, this is an odd post. Why am I writing about it this way? Shouldn’t I be writing about every reason in the world why you SHOULD hire us? Yeah, probably. Maybe next time.

My goal here is to add insight into how we think, and address concerns on both sides.

1 // You don’t specialize in our industry.

This is big, especially over the past 5 years or so when everyone is “advising” companies to find a niche. Is it valid? Well, if you look at our client list, it’s obvious that we don’t “specialize”. And it’s worked for decades. Still, I get it, kind of. Here are my thoughts.

The pros to hiring an agency that specializes include:

1. Understanding industry lingo - The agency will use their knowledge to generate content familiar to the audience and help with keyword optimization in the digital space.

2. Having a shorter learning curve - Time is money. The less time it takes to train an agency regarding your industry, the quicker you can potentially move to launch.

3. Understanding more of the competition - Competition is a big part of creating any campaign. Understanding the competition and what they have done that works and doesn’t work will always provide some extra punch.

The cons to hiring an agency that specializes include:

1. Understanding industry lingo - Industry lingo can hurt you. When using typical industry lingo, you end up sounding a lot like your competition, and therefore blend in with the crowd. It's best to have as much differentiation as possible while still using key terms and points relevant to your audience.

2. Having a shorter learning curve - Making too many assumptions based on everything you’ve done in the past can lead to some bad outcomes. Investing upfront in research is a must for any client/agency relationship. If the client isn’t interested in doing research, then it’s probably not the best fit for us. Things are changing constantly, and you should be at the forefront of the change.

3. Understanding more of the competition - We love, love, love competitive research. Again, assuming too much about the competition can be a bad thing. If an agency has too much experience in your industry, you may end up being a carbon copy of your competition. Hiring an agency with an outside perspective has proven to be a very good thing for our clients.

To wrap this up, when you commission a builder to build your house, it is not important that they have built that exact house before. What is important is that they use great materials and have a solid team that can all build from the blueprint. The blueprint and the system the team uses will determine the outcome of the house. At Multiple, we have developed a solid process and "blueprint" to help you reach your goals.

2 // You are too expensive.

Are we the cheapest agency? No. Are we the most expensive? Definitely not. We believe in creating value for both you and us! We don’t believe in billing you for projects that don’t bring some kind of brand or monetary value. The projects in which we engage are packed with research and years of experience. We know that everyone has a budget. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. But, help us help you. Again, bringing in the home-building analogy, you wouldn’t go to an architect and ask him to build you a house without telling him some kind of budget range. That would be a waste of the architects time and your money. We can help you determine what you can get for a specific budget range. If we shouldn’t proceed because of costs, we’ll determine that together upfront.

3 // We decided to keep the project in-house.

There are a few key reasons to outsource marketing. We’ve created an entire post about it that you can read here.

Again, we get it.

We don’t want to force any relationship if it’s not the right fit or the right time. There will always be reasons why someone may not hire us, but there are also some pretty good reasons why they should.

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Want to learn more about creating a solid marketing strategy that will give you more overall structure and piece of mind? You can read The 5 Step Process For a More Structured Marketing Strategy eBook for a more in-depth discussion of these concepts and how you can begin to implement them. 

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