r/webmarketing

Hi all,

I work for a $90 million dollar company with 50 units and have been there for about 6 months.

The company mostly sells to the public but we have a special landing page on the website for b2b wholesale orders, which is what my department is.

The department is brand new, opened just a few months before I started. I am the only person in the department.

I've been hitting the ground locally and doing cold calls and cold emails and have put together a few lists to amount to about 12,000 b2b contacts. I've done 25 presentations and have had 22 orders.

It has been very hard to get any traction at all - like it's literally been pathetic - and I'm usually the #1 sales person on every team I've ever been on. I realize we have been starting from scratch but I find the numbers to be paltry and embarrassing.

When I've brought this up to the marketing consultant (our marketing director left in February, so we have been working with someone in Europe..we are in the US,) they've let me know that it's because the company has a really bad reputation in the community.

The company isn't perfect and definitely due for a branding update, but they've been around for 50 years, and when I speak to people in person, they seem to love us.

Recently I was looking on our website, at the landing page with the wholesale items, and I realized there is a bunch of marketing copy explicitly stating that we do not offer the professional b2b wholesale items that I have been hired to sell.

It literally says "Company name is not a wholesale supplier of b2b items."

I am a bit baffled to be honest. I'm shocked I didn't notice it and at the same time feel a bit slapped across the face, as I've been working myself into a tizzy trying to get sales.

When I brought this up to the marketing consultant, just that I thought the website copy needed some updating, they went into a 10 minute long rant about how much experience they have, and a laundry list of the things that they cannot change on the website (I hadn't even gotten more than my first sentence in and hadn't even described what I felt needed to be updated...seriously could not even get a word in with this person,) and then they chewed me out for an email I had missed a month into the position because I had booked myself so many in person appointments across 2 counties that I was in a bit of a whirlwind.

The business owner came on at the tail end of them talking about this during our meeting and the marketing consultant then harangued me for mock ups and examples of copy of what needs to be on my departments landing page. When I have provided mock ups for them in the past for other projects, they were flatly rejected. I am just kind of shocked that I need to help them replace the copy that says we do not offer the items that I was hired to sell to something that is a bit more…persuasive?

I've also been asked to come up with marketing ideas and initiatives several times by the team only to have this marketing consultant squash every single one. They send me very long emails rejecting every single item I propose. They are received by me at about 2am because of the time difference, so they are the first emails I read when I start my work day.

I've also been asked to come up with marketing ideas and initiatives several times by the team only to have this marketing consultant squash every single one.

To be clear they stated they have 20 years experience but when I looked at their work history, we both have 15 years experience, so the same length of time, however they've mainly worked as an independent marketing consultant outside of my specific industry, while I've been at brands that are major household names.

Since this happened I have looked into the website and have found a plethora of UX errors and issues and I realize that the entire marketing effort for my department is frankly, a tangled mess that looks like it was made by someone that has never worked in my niche of the industry. There is also no direct contact information for me, no downloadable order form / price list and no contact form.

The marketing consultant told me none of these were issues and that there was 0 drop off on the landing page.

Also, I've received about 3 leads in total from the website since I've been here.

I was in charge of my own marketing emails until the marketing consultant took them over - I explained I usually format them like a regular check in with my lead, as a friendly neighbor and that newsletter style sales emails haven’t worked for me in the past. This has been ignored and they have been sending newsletter style emails.

A lot of my business is very seasonal, very cyclical and they have rejected marketing initiatives that I’ve used in the past at other companies, tell me to go into another direction that has proven to be unfruitful.

For example, their direction would be to tell me to try and sell Christmas trees to someone that lives in a forest instead of what my instincts tell me to do - to go sell sun screen and lemonade at the beach.

I just want to ask, how would you feel about this?

How would you feel about there being copy on your sales landing page saying you don't actually offer any of those services/products?

How do you think that would affect sales, when most of them classically have been web driven?