Last week, I had one of the best conversations with the Senior Director of Marketing of one of our largest accounts – let’s go ahead and call her “Kelly.” After catching up for a bit on life, the holidays and how our respective businesses are going, she started in on the purpose for the call – “So Jon, the reason we need to talk…”

Okay, as we all know, this line is generally never good – not from your customers, not from your friends and not from your family. But, I took a deep breath, and focused on listening to Kelly’s needs and the business that she is charged with growing. “The reason we need to talk is that a large competitor of yours approached us and committed to providing the same technology and services at a 33% discount to your current fee.” Gulp. However, what happened next is something that should happen every time, especially in the marketing industry, but for some reason, it almost never does.

Kelly decided to test this competitor against New Engen. Instead of wholesale abandoning the relationship because a shinier object came into view, she challenged the new potential vendor to prove themselves – and gave us the opportunity to do so, as well. Major plot twist.

For New Engen, we couldn’t be more thrilled with this approach. It’s likely we embrace this because we are competitive and like to win (yes!) but also because it is exactly what marketers should be doing. I’d argue that if you aren’t testing the capabilities of your own people, the agency you are using and the technology you are deploying, you are missing out on significant and potentially game-changing learnings and value for your business. For any incumbent technology or professional that cowers at the prospect of a head-to-head test, well, that is quite telling – isn’t it?

Not only did I encourage Kelly to test with this competitor, I went further and asked how we could best support in setting up the test. I did this to help enable her to have a very clean read of the test results so that the best decision can be made to support her and her business. Oftentimes in the marketing services industry, you are either an advocate for the brands you work with and sincerely want the best outcome for them, or you are an advocate for yourself.

At New Engen, our mission is to Elevate the Marketer. It’s not about us – it’s about helping marketers, brands and companies reach their growth goals by using the best technology and services available. We are on a journey to find the best path for each business to achieve their goals (there are many paths, not one) by equipping marketers with a multi-channel paid advertising platform that saves time, scales quickly, performs better than the competition (we generally see at least a 15% lift) and is actually really fun to use.

So, come at us marketers! Test, try, learn and find the solutions and services that solve your problems. We are up to the challenge and committed to your success, even if it is at the expense of our own.