Really, this should be “Part 0” because being a good client – which is to say getting real value for your marketing dollar – starts with something assumed in part 1: If your marketing provider is a professional, then….
So step 0 is an idea: there is such a thing as a marketing professional.
Since most companies and people selling marketing are NOT professionals, they have a vested interested in obscuring this fact: that there is such a thing as professionalism in marketing, and there are people who know and practice it.
Oh, they may be few and far between. That fact is driven home to me every day as I drive down the road and 3/4 of the billboards I see violate the most basic rules of billboard design – which anyone can find out in 5 minutes on the Internet. Or watch TV commercials for Fortune 500 companies with completely inane taglines like “reinventing forward.”
I just made that up but I bet it sounded familiar. Of course you couldn’t say whose tagline it is. It is just reminiscent of other pablum taglines that communicate absolutely nothing, convince nobody, but did earn some branding agency six figures to come up with them.
Us small business people need to be smarter than that.
And it starts with just that simple little thought:

There is such a thing as professionalism in marketing.

Go find some for YOUR company.