What Are You Doing?

Originally sent out: 22/05/25

T.E.A Break – 036

**Get this content earlier than it’s published on our blog via our T.E.A Break newsletter. Sign up now.**

Earlier this week, the phone rang. It was one of our newest clients.

Our office manager was away from her desk, so I answered.

The client asked for one of the team, and I enquired what the call was about.

They quickly realised it was me on the other end of the phone and said, “Actually, you may be able to help.”

“Sure”, I said. “What’s up?”

“We’re just wondering when the leads are going to pick up as we’re quiet and I’m getting a bit anxious.”

This client has been working with us for less than a month.

We get these types of calls/emails occasionally from new clients and totally understand where they are coming from.

The team here do a great job at setting expectations for new clients with how long things take and explaining the process we must go through.

Namely the auditing, researching, analysing, creating and building of everything required to grow their business online.

That said, sometimes clients just need a little Evergreen cuddle and that’s something I and my senior team are well versed at doing.

I reiterated the above key points.

I pointed to existing client examples, referencing their campaign growth and results timelines.

But more than just reiterating what good work looks like.

I asked a key question: “What are you doing?”

Specifically, what are they doing to market and grow their business?

We ask questions like this to encourage our clients to think about the bigger picture when it comes to their marketing.

I went on to say that paid media while extremely powerful, can only do so much and it needs to be one of several cogs in their marketing wheel.

I reminded this business owner that alongside what we’re doing, they need to focus on everything else, namely:

• Email marketing to nurture leads (which inadvertently is something we’ll be introducing for our clients later this year).
• Maintain their social media presence.
• Offline marketing so brochures, leaflets.
• I suggested this client consider text message marketing.
• Local PR was also mentioned to raise brand awareness as they’ve recently moved to a new area.

As I reeled off a number of things they could and should be doing alongside everything we were working on for them, I could hear the cogs turning on the other end of the phone.

After a short pause, I got a great reply, which is so accurate to what they and many businesses do when they employ an agency.

“You’re absolutely right. Since we agreed to partner with you, we’ve not done any other marketing.”

My reply: “You can’t solely rely on ads to grow your business alone, it’s a vital component for sure, but you need an omni-channel approach. You need to get creative with your marketing, and try lots of different things to stay top of mind with your customers and get them to buy now.”.

They replied: “Yep, we’ve been lazy.”

I really admire and respect them for saying it how it is.

I said, I’d let the team know they had called and the client ended the call by saying:

“Thanks Aaron, you’ve calmed me down. We’ll get to work our end and let you guys do what you need to do.”

Now, let me tell you dear reader. That client is going to see some incredible growth in the months ahead.

We’ll work our magic for them and they just need to play their part and work as hard on their marketing as we do.

I guess the learning from this is as follows:

No agency, no matter how good they are can single handed grow your business alone.

It has to be a partnership where both sides are actively pushing for the same goal: Growth through marketing.

These days you’ve got to have a multichannel approach.

• You’ve got to get creative.
• You’ve got to out-think your competitors.
• You’ve got to be smart with your marketing touch points (both online and offline).

Evergreen is not, nor will it ever be a jack-of-all services marketing agency.

We do the bits we’re experts at (paid media and creative).

We play our part and do it better than most.

Paid search ads (Google/YouTube) and paid social ads (Facebook/Instagram) are hugely effective ways to generate leads and sales.

By themselves they’ll be good for your business.

Combined with organic social media, email marketing, brand PR, offline advertising, trade shows, print media, etc, they’ll be great for your business.

Every single one of our clients that is doing really well is proactive with all facets of their marketing and they work with us for the parts we can play.

Why? Because they know we’re the best at what we do.

They also know, we work exclusively with businesses like them (them being home, garden and lifestyle brands), meaning our expertise and experience is unrivalled.

So, if you’re relying on that one silver bullet to transform your businesses fortunes, maybe it’s time to think again.

___

👋 Never miss an update. Sign up to T.E.A Break, our weekly newsletter.

👉 See our case studies to discover how we grow brands online.

👉 Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

👉 Follow our Grow with Evergreen podcast on Spotify, YouTube & Apple Podcasts.

👉 Download our new Home and Garden sector paid media report