The Competitive Advantage

February 3, 2017

Can you really be “all things to all people?”

Transforming your firm from ‘generalist’ to ‘specialist.’

Here’s a really interesting exercise… spend some time over the next day or so scrolling through the websites of a number of market research firms – even small and mid-sized ones – and one of the really unusual things you’ll find is this: the majority of firms claim to be experts in a whole bunch of different research methodologies… serving all kinds of industry verticals or markets… with the ability to seemingly solve every kind of marketing, branding or product problem. Kinda strains credibility, huh?

In addition, these “generalists,” have a really BIG problem they have to deal with every day… not only are they competing with every other generalist out there (which is the majority of firms), they’re also competing with a different batch of specialists on every project. Yikes!

January 25, 2017

Question: What percentage of your clients don’t return?

Answer: It’s a lot higher than you think!

Creating a “client for life.”

True story. I’ve been working with a large firm in our industry for the past several weeks… and one of the data-gathering projects we did early on was to look at Revenue by Client, for each of the past several years.

Of all of the insights that this exercise can provide, the most interesting – in this case – was that 40% of their clients only did one project with them… and then never returned!

We’ve done this “one-timer” analysis for many firms and the resulting information is ALWAYS a surprise… because the percentage of one-and-dones is ALWAYS higher than the client expected!

January 17, 2017

Strategy & Planning are Easy… Marketing Execution is Hard!

OK, strategy and planning are not easy… not even a little. They require focused time and critical thinking – two assets often in short supply around the office. But once they’re done… they’re done. Then the real work begins.

I was out of town last Thursday and Friday working with a new client. It was for two days of coaching on marketing strategy and planning… helping them to focus their business development efforts then putting in place some targeted tactics to execute over the coming months. And it went really well.

Now the question is… will any of those agreed-to tactics actually get executed?

January 9, 2017

12 Marketing & Sales Activities you Gotta STOP this Year!

Consider these your 2017 Anti-Resolutions…

Yup, it’s that time of the year… when you find all kinds of articles and blog posts from marketing & sales gurus about the kinds of New Year’s Resolutions you need to be setting on how to achieve growth for your business. And while I’m all in favor of starting off the new year by adopting some new ideas, processes and techniques… let me suggest that before you do that, you STOP some of the bad habits you’ve been living with up until now. Here are just a few…

STOP “winging it” with your marketing and sales. Block off some time (now!) and give it some real strategic thought and put together a basic marketing & sales plan to follow.

January 3, 2017

Blogging in 2017? What do I write about?

A few weeks ago, I had a conference call with several contacts at one of my clients about Content Marketing in 2017… and specifically, about blogging.

The have committed to blogging a couple of times every month. Great! They understand the value of blogging in helping to position their firm as Subject Matter Experts, for building awareness and for helping with SEO. But every one of them had the same question…

“What do I write about?”

December 27, 2016

The Top 10 Marketing & Sales Posts of 2016

During this past year, we’ve posted more than 50 articles and blog posts to our website… and they were read by thousands of website visitors. Thank you for your interest. We hope you found the information and stories in those pages to be helpful in some small way. And in case you’re not a regular visitor, below are links to Harpeth Marketing’s top 10 posts and articles of 2016.

December 20, 2016

Stupid Business Rules

True story… I received a notification from the State of Tennessee recently that it was time to renew my ‘dba.’ Fine… so I filled out the form, wrote the check and sent it in. A few days later, I received an envelope back from the department I had responded to. On top of my form and my check – which they were returning – was a letter from the head of the department and, across the top, stamped in big letters: REJECTED.

Crap! What did I do… wrong amount on the check, improperly filled out form, what? Nope. I had sent in my form and my money too early! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? So, let me get this straight… one of your customers (me) pays TOO promptly… and your response is to send the money back?

You can’t make this stuff up!

December 10, 2016

How to maximize the impact of your marketing investment.

Make sure everything is working together with Integrated Marketing.

Think about the kinds of business development activities that take place in the average firm in our industry: a website, email marketing, social media, some content marketing, maybe a salesperson, networking, PR, etc. Fairly typical, right?

And generally, we think about each of them as their own entity. We have a sales plan… a content marketing plan… an email schedule… and so on.

But rather than that ‘silo mentality’ – where each of these activities are implemented separately – think about what they would look like if they all worked together… connected to one another… and fed off of each other. That is how to maximize your marketing & sales impact.