Problem · Owners
We have an in house marketer and they are not getting us any leads.
Sometimes it is a relative, sometimes a first hire out of school, sometimes a good generalist. The pattern is the same. Six months in, the social feed is active, the newsletter goes out, and the lead count has not moved. Before you blame the person, check the job you gave them. One marketer cannot build a website, run paid search, write technical content, and prospect. Nobody can.
How people search thisin house marketer not generating leads · hired a marketing person no leads · our marketing coordinator is not producing results · should I fire my marketing manager or get an agency · one person marketing team not working
Most owners in this spot keep the marketer and add Catalyst at $5,000 a month: one Google Ads campaign, a landing page, and content run by a senior team, with the in house person owning social and the newsletter. Kinetic at $10,000 adds an outbound seat with a meeting number in writing. Pricing is published.
What one marketer can actually produce
A single in house marketer can run two channels well: usually social plus email, or content plus events. A pipeline needs six functions running at once: the site, search content, paid search, media, outbound, and the handoff to sales. When one person owns all six, four of them are dormant and the two that run are the two that produce the fewest meetings. Social posts get likes. Newsletters get opens. Neither is a lead.
The tell is the report. If the monthly report is about impressions, followers, and open rates, the person is doing the job they were given. If you want a report about meetings, you have to buy the parts of the system that produce meetings.
Why it is not a people problem
A marketing manager loads to roughly $140,000 to $175,000 a year with tax and benefits. A junior coordinator loads to $60,000 to $80,000. At either price you get one set of hands and one skill set. Google Ads, technical SEO, server rendered web builds, and outbound calling are four different crafts. Replacing the person with a different single person changes the two channels that run. It does not fill the other four.
The other tell is the website. If the marketer inherited a five year old brochure site, every dollar they spend lands on a page that does not convert. We see conversion rates under 1 percent on those sites and 3 to 5 percent on pages built for the query. The marketer cannot fix that alone.
The three options, priced
Option one: keep the person, buy the missing steps. Catalyst at $5,000 a month runs one Google Ads campaign, builds the landing page, and produces the search content, while your marketer keeps social and the list. The same team that will eventually run outbound builds the content, so nothing is thrown away later.
Option two: keep the person, teach them the system. The Protocol is one day at your office at $5,000, and your marketer leaves with the eight runbooks we use, rewritten in your brand: content production, page build, Google Ads weekly review, outbound, lead handoff, reporting, and the two compliance runbooks. Good for a capable person who was never given a process.
Option three: replace the function, not the person. Kinetic at $10,000 a month runs the whole pipeline including an outbound seat with a monthly meeting number in writing. The in house marketer becomes the point of contact who approves in 48 hours, which is the only job on your side the system needs.
How to decide in one meeting
Ask three questions. How many qualified meetings did marketing produce last quarter, and how do we know? Which of the six steps is running today? What would the person do with a senior team behind them? If the answer to the first is a shrug, the problem was never the person. It was that nobody wrote the number down. Writing it down is the first hour of every engagement we run.
Questions on this problem
No. Most Catalyst and Kinetic clients keep an in house person as the approver and the owner of social and email. The system runs better with someone on your side who knows the company.
Then give them a system instead of an impossible job. The Protocol at $5,000 is the cheapest way to turn a willing person into an operator, and it keeps the relationship intact.
Paid search produces in weeks four through eight of the 90 day ramp. Organic content compounds from month three. Outbound on Kinetic carries a meeting number for the ramp in writing.
George Stoff, Founder and Lead Engineer
Thirty years building software, brands, and demand. On every account.