Marketing agencies: those magical unicorns who promise “game-changing” campaigns, “viral” content, and leads that practically fall from the sky. If you’ve been in business long enough, chances are you’ve crossed paths with one of these firms. And maybe, just maybe, you hired one without checking if they had the faintest clue about your industry.
Congratulations! You’ve officially picked up a fork to drink soup…
Why do we do it? Is it boredom? Masochism? A secret death wish for our Q3 targets? Hard to say. But every year, countless businesses hand over their hard-earned cash to agencies whose only real skill is confidently bullshitting on Zoom.
The Pitch: “We’re Industry-Agnostic”(Translation: “We’re Clueless”)
You’ll know you’re in trouble the moment they chir: “We’re industry-agnostic! We bring a fresh perspective!”
Fresh perspective? Karen, this is precision engineering, not Love Island. We don’t need fresh, we need functional. Nobody in aerospace procurement is gasping for a quirky campaign where an influencer explains thermal coatings “in a relatable way” while bouncing up and down in a bra 3 sizes too small…
The Discovery Call from Hell
You’ll try explaining your product: “We manufacture industrial sealing solutions for subsea pipelines.”
The agency’s eyes glaze over. Five minutes later, they’re pitching:
“What if we rebranded you as ‘the Apple of rubber gaskets’ — minimalist, sleek, sexy?”
Sexy? It’s a gasket, mate. If someone gets turned on by that, they need therapy, not marketing.
Their Go-To Genius Ideas
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TikTok. Always TikTok. Because obviously, global procurement managers are scrolling TikTok at 2 AM, just dying for your five-part video series on pipeline integrity.
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Hashtag campaigns: “What if we started a #SealTheDeal movement?”
Yeah, because nothing says ‘high-level B2B negotiation’ like hashtags stolen from a second-rate real estate seminar. -
Influencers: “We found a girl on Instagram who drinks smoothies and once saw an oil rig in a movie. £10k a post, interested?”
What’s Actually Happening:
You’re paying children with marketing degrees and no life experience to guess how your multi-million-pound industry works, while they Google terms during your meeting and pray you don’t notice.
Half the time, you can hear them asking your staff questions such as:
“What is a flange?”
“Do engineers use Instagram?”
“Is B2B the same as B2C but… bigger?”
What You’re Really Buying:
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A monthly retainer for Canva graphics no one asked for.
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A “content strategy” that’s just rephrased ChatGPT garbage, SEO-optimized for terms your customers will never Google.
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Reports full of metrics like “engagement rate” from bots.
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A fancy pitch deck that looks like it was made by someone whose only experience is running social media for a craft gin startup.
Meanwhile, in the Real World…
Your competitors, the ones who are using specialists who actually understand the industry, are busy closing deals while your agency is Photoshopping hard hats onto stock photos of Labrador puppies for “relatable, human content.”
The Brutal Truth: They Don’t Care
They don’t care that your sales cycle is 18 months.
They don’t care that your clients write specifications to MIL standards, not “5 Ways to Slay Q4” listicles.
They don’t care that getting likes on LinkedIn doesn’t move a £1M contract.
They’re too busy playing digital dress-up, chasing metrics that don’t matter, and racking up invoices that do.
Think About Who You Engage
There’s a special place in the Business Hall of Shame for the moment a company hires a marketing agency that doesn’t have the slightest clue what they do.
Get serious. And next time, ask them to define a flange before you sign the contract. If your marketing partner doesn’t understand what you sell, they wont be able to sell it. You’re not “thinking outside the box”; you’re torching the box, the warehouse, the entire bloody supply chain and potentially your company.
You wouldn’t hire a hairdresser to make your daughter’s wedding dress because “they both use scissors.” So why on earth are you hiring a marketing agency that specializes in yoga retreats and dog spas to market your industrial equipment?
Photo by Merakist
