The Competitive Advantage

July 9, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 4 – get smarter about business development

So, are you keeping up… are you taking the time to focus on your marketing & sales this summer?  I hope so, because it’s a great time to do it.  We started with conferences, LinkedIn your online presence and now…

Summer tip #4: Get smarter about business development

Marketing has evolved and changed as much as any discipline in business.  We used to think about marketing as print ads and direct mail.  Then along came the internet and our choices expanded to include email and banner ads.  And in the last few years, thanks to advances in technology, our choices have expanded further to include social media marketing, search engine optimization and mobile marketing.

With the proliferation of options – where do you turn for answers?  Ironically, to the same technologies that are the cause of this anxiety in the first place… the internet and social media.  There’s enough information available – most of it for free – to make almost anyone a marketing expert!

July 5, 2013

Prove it! Nine ways to convince prospects to work with you for the first time.

Years ago, Geoffrey Moore published a popular and important book called Crossing the Chasm. The book was written in the early days of the tech boom and provided a road map showing companies that had developed a new technology how to convince consumers to try it. The key strategy was to leverage the early adopters as “proof sources” to help those who followed overcome their hesitancy to buy (“Let someone else buy it first. If it works as promised, then I’ll try it.”).

And while only a few of us are in the business of providing technology or tech-based services, there is still hesitancy from prospective clients when it comes to trying us for the very first time.

How do you convince new prospects to become a first-time client… A great capabilities presentation? A dazzling proposal? A first-timer discount? A guarantee?

All of those options are good and your prospective clients will appreciate them all but what they really want is peace of mind! They want to know that if they take a chance on your firm, they won’t be let down or disappointed. Can you blame them?

July 3, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 3 – spruce up your online presence

OK, we’re now three weeks into this series of working “on” your business during the summer slowdown that many of us face.  Based on my earlier posts, have you done some planning for the fall conference season?  Or spent any time improving your use of LinkedIn?  I hope so.

Here’s the suggestion for this week…

Summer tip #3: Spruce up your online presence

June 25, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 2 – get active on LinkedIn

This is the second in our series of blog posts outlining some ideas for taking advantage of the summer slowdown to work “on” your business.

Last week’s post was on planning for the fall conference season.  This week…

Summer tip #2: Spend some time on LinkedIn

From my perspective, LinkedIn should be the #1 social media site for firms in the MR industry… it’s ideal for connecting, promoting and engaging.  This summer, while you’re lounging by the pool, consider the following:

June 19, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 1 – plan for the coming conferences

The summer is a relatively slow time for many of us… clients slow down, people go on vacation, kids are out of school, etc.  And how people respond to that slowdown usually falls into one of two groups – those that gripe about it, chalk it up to seasonality and fall into a bit of a summer funk and those that take advantage of the extra time that the season provides to work “on” their business.

So, for those of you who in the second group (or those in the first group that want to be in the second group), over the next several weeks, I’ll make a series of recommendations of activities you can work now on to help grow your business.

June 12, 2013

7 neat, little marketing resources… and they’re all free

Small companies – like Harpeth Marketing – with limited resources, need to watch every penny.  Because of that, one of the things I’ve done is to hunt for free online resources that can help me to do my job better – whether that’s running my business or taking care of clients

We all know about the big, well-known, free tools – like Google, WordPress, YouTube, SurveyMonkey and the social media sites. But there exists a lot of lesser-known online tools that might do only one thing… but they’re easy to use and can support your marketing efforts.

Continue Reading

June 5, 2013

‘Start at the End’… a Book Review

I recently bought and read the book, Start at the End: How Companies Can Grow Bigger and Faster by Reversing their Business Plan, written by Dave Lavinsky.  On a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a 7 – pretty good.

The premise is all about crafting a business plan… but doing so by starting at end.  So, for example, rather than asking, “We’re a $2 million company now… what level can we grow to next year… and the year after that… and the year after that?,” it pushes us to ask, “What will my company look like in 10 years?  Now, how do I get there?”

May 30, 2013

Five everyday ways to grow your business

One of the biggest challenges that the leaders of every small and medium-sized research firm face is finding the time to get everything done. We wear many hats and are pulled in many different directions. As a result, marketing and sales often suffer – pushed to the bottom of our priority list.

So what happens? After realizing that we’re behind on business development, we decide to try something, like writing a blog. We get all excited about the benefits of blogging and commit to writing once a week, telling ourselves “That’ll be easy – it’ll only take half an hour every Friday afternoon.”