What I learned from hiring a company to write $99 content for me
As a company, we produce content for our clients. Written, images and specifically videos. It is a big part of what we do and we are successful at doing so for a reason. That reason is that we get to know our client’s business inside and out. We learn their WHY. We get to know the specifics that makes them different from the competition and we dive into WHO their customers are. This allows us to capture their voice and in turn produce valuable and useful content.
While reading Entrepreneur I stumbled on a post talking about inexpensive automation for your business. One in particular was daily posts for social media for $99 per month. Our service is not $99 per month but there they were, mentioned in a respected magazine. Of course I was skeptical but thought “it’s only $99, I gotta find out what they do”. I am sure their clients probably thing the same thing, “It’s only $99 bucks, what’s the worst that can happen?”.
I will skip the boring specifics to keep myself from sounding like a whiny puppy. A week into it I had to cancel the service. If it was only $99, why did I cancel before they finished their first 30 days? I cancelled because the experiment was going to cost me more than $99. I did not want potential customers to think that the way we represent ourselves online was a reflection of what we would do for them.
To be transparent, it was an experiment. I wanted to see what 99 bucks would get as far as content. I found that it was not much. Don’t get me wrong, they posted but the posts were generic and sometimes irrelevant to my animated video company brand (Vid MAchine). That is not who we are and I know that is not who you are.
What is the lesson here? There are a few.
- $99 dollars may not sound by much but over 12 months you are looking at spending $1200. That is an amount of money that can be better spent elsewhere
- Cheap is cheap for a reason
- Anyone can say they will do it for less. Saving a few bucks upfront can cost you thousands in the long run
- If content is outsourced, the people creating the content need to truly know you, your brand, your customer and your voice
- Marketing is personal
This experiment reinforced that the personal approach we take to every project we work on is right. I am not interested in automation. Marketing is about people. Good reminder.
Good Selling
Byron G. Torres