The Danger of Having Too Many Cooks in Your Marketing Kitchen

About a month ago, I wrote website content for a company that provides an outsourced professional service for mid-sized businesses. Before I sat down to do any writing, the client and I spent more than an hour discussing the content for each page, the needs and frustrations of their clients, competitive differentiators, and the results delivered by this company.

After that conversation, the client said, “I’m so glad we did this. I feel like you really understand what we do now.”

Based on that conversation and other information that was provided, I wrote the content. It was a relatively small website. About eight pages.

The client’s initial response?

“First pass, looks amazing! A few comments/additions.”

Exactly what I like to hear. But when we had our follow-up call to discuss the content, I heard exactly what I do not like to hear.

The conversation went something like this.

Client: I had a few of my friends read this. They all said it’s too long and too wordy. One said she would leave a website if she saw this many words.

Me: All of the content is on one Word document. Do they realize it won’t all appear on the same page?

Client: I don’t know. Maybe they couldn’t visualize how it would look on separate pages of the website.

Me: Did they point to any specific parts that they felt were wordy?

Client: No.

Me: Well, that kind of feedback isn’t particularly helpful. I’m going through the content as we’re talking and there are fewer than 200 words per page. That’s not a lot. We want to be concise, but we also have to be thorough so people know what you do, the problems you solve, and why they should hire you.

Client: (silence)

These people had other feedback that, to put it mildly, I didn’t agree with. I asked about the backgrounds of the people. All had ties to marketing and business that were loose at best. But they all did have one thing in common.

None of them were part of that hour-plus conversation about what we were trying to accomplish with this company’s website content.

I harbor no ill will against this client. She’s making a major investment in her business. She was just looking for input from people she trusts to make sure she gets the highest return on that investment.

Unfortunately, this process was having the opposite effect.

The feedback that came directly from this client was completely valid, helpful and very minor. But people who had no idea what we discussed before any content was written – the strategy behind the words – took this client from being excited to having all kinds of doubt.

This scenario is not uncommon, especially for small businesses that don’t have a marketing department, or a single dedicated marketing person for that matter.

I love what you wrote. But let me run it past a few people.

Ugh. Why?

Someone has to make the final call. And you need to trust that person’s decisions.

I’m confident that this particular client will ultimately follow her gut instinct and trust my expertise. But think about what would have happened if she got all these opinions and acted on them.

Suppose I cut content because an outsider said it was too long and wordy, even though they didn’t point to specific examples. The content would be incomplete and less compelling. Opportunities would likely be missed.

If you want feedback from other people, they need to be qualified to provide that feedback. They need to be involved in the process from the beginning.

If you’re paying an outside professional to perform a service, make sure you trust that person or company enough to heed their advice. If you won’t let someone do the job you’re paying them to do, you hired the wrong person.

They just make those decisions harder.

I work with a financial planner who handles my retirement accounts and life insurance. The only people involved in the decision-making process are the planner, my wife and me. If I didn’t trust his expertise, I wouldn’t have allowed him to handle my massive (I wish) wealth.

Marketing is no different. When you make changes based on unqualified or uninformed feedback – whether that feedback comes from employees or outsiders – you start chipping away at the foundation of your strategy. You dilute your message. You slow down your processes. You overthink things. You lose confidence and abandon potentially great ideas.

Instead of trying to build consensus with cooks who have no business being in your marketing kitchen, build the right team. Commit to that team. Trust that team. Trust your own instincts.

And if you don’t trust your marketing instincts, remove yourself from that part of your business and make someone else the head cook.

Trust smart cooks. Not more cooks.