Because it usually seems that it does not pay off 🙂 Why?
Because the conversion rate of a new business is much lower.
“Greenhorns” are making a lot of mistakes that translate in much higher chances to screw it up. Doing a marketing campaign for a already established company, with a lot of elements to generate trust is much easier and converts much better than a new company, with no testimonials, no brand awareness, no history, no procedures, and so on.
Because the budgets are much smaller
A startup done by inexperienced people have very few funds and usually are allocated in the wrong proportions. People are spending money in wrong directions, with bad results and from their own pocket or for family, friends or other fools :). So, the budgets are more like market research than marketing promotion and the duration for this is limited also for eventually setbacks, that will grow the pessimism 🙂
Because the stress is much higher
An inexperienced client/startup is more or less just like a virgin. You need a lot of “convincing time”, instead going directly to the bull’s eye. The inexperienced client will drive you mad with crazy demands or weird assumptions.
Because inexperienced clients are too emotional
They are much more emotional than rational. They hope to become millionaires overnight (who doesn’t), they become depress very fast and they need motivation to move on. Most probably, they do not have even a P&L structure in mind. Not to mention that almost every start-up owner is convinced that his/her idea is the best, that he is the smartest and everybody else are dumber, just because they do not recognize the genius (and indeed, in very few cases, the inventors/startup owners are correct here!:). Intellectual challenging approaches versus pragmatic approaches are very bad for business, no matter how cool and sexy are real innovations perceived.
So, whenever you pick up a new client which is new in this business, you can make a pretty safe bet if they will make it or not. Most of them, no. But is a good karma, and, if you, as an e-marketing agency are doing your job properly, you have a big chance to be recommended or, next time, at the next start-up, that entrepreneur to call you again. And, in that case, he will have more experience, more money, more rational and the stress will be lower. 🙂
You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find out a prince… 🙂
