The Competitive Advantage

March 29, 2016

Not doing Client Satisfaction surveys for yourself? Whuuuuut?!

8 Tips for Building Better Services with Surveys

In the perfect personification of ‘the cobbler’s’ children having no shoes,’ I am amazed at how many market research firms – that conduct studies for clients across the U.S. and around the world – don’t conduct any for themselves.

And the oddest one of those is the huge percentage of firms that don’t conduct a client satisfaction survey after each project. Why is that?

June 25, 2014

Great business quotes #4 – on measurement.

If you’ve read any of our previous content, then you know we believe that marketing is a process… and part of that process is the commitment to measure each step along the way.

It’s this philosophy that leads to the 4^th great business saying in our series…

What gets measured gets done.

February 5, 2014

Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret… It’s Not an Exact Science!

Here are the kinds of questions I regularly hear from my clients…

• “What email open rate should I expect?”
• “How many downloads will my new white paper get?”
• “What’s the average bid conversion rate?”
• “What are the ‘right’ steps for the lead nurturing process?”

The correct answer for all of the above is… “It depends!”  Sorry… wish I had a better answer.

September 17, 2013

Get ready to exhibit this fall… part 3 of a 3-part series

Twenty years ago, before I started in into the MR industry, I worked in the conference and trade show industry.  Back then, one of the industry’s key associations – the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (ceir.org) – reported that only 20% of all leads generated at an exhibition were ever followed-up on.  Today, with all of the new tools and technology available to exhibitors, that number is still 20%!

Stated another way, 80% of everyone who gives up their time to come into your booth this Fall (at TMRE, CASRO, ESOMAR, QRCA, etc.) will not hear from you afterward!  That’s not just bad business… it’s downright stupid!

July 30, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 7 – develop content ideas

I hope you’ve been following along this summer and implementing some of the ideas we’ve been discussing.  Whether it’s getting ready for the fall conference season, targeting new sales prospects or even cleaning up your in-house database, the summer is a great time to work “on” your business.  But we’ve got a few more to go…

One of the most popular tactics in marketing today – and it’s popular because it works – is ‘content marketing.’  That is, sharing information and ideas to help your clients and prospective clients.  And in helping, it builds credibility for your firm and positions you as a subject matter expert.

This content most often takes the shape of blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies, ebooks, podcasts and videos.  Throw in the occasional webinar and that about covers it.

One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is deciding what to write about… what the ‘content’ in ‘content marketing’ is going to be.  Which leads us to…

July 16, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 5 – database clean-up

So far, our recommendations for getting through the slower-than-we-want-it-to-be summer have been pretty positive, pretty upbeat…

• Plan for conferences
• Get active on LinkedIn
• Spruce up your online presence
• Get smarter about marketing & sales

But now, we’ve got a recommendation that’s a little boring and a little tedious… but hugely beneficial!

Summer tip #5: Clean up your databases

I can see you now… rolling your eyes at the prospect of having to read through hundreds, if not thousands, of client and prospect records.  I get it… it’s no fun.  But it’s critical.

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 21, 2013

How to break down writer’s block and accelerate your content marketing.

Every (yes, every) Saturday morning since we opened the doors to Harpeth Marketing, I have gone to a local coffee shop (in fact, I’m here now as I write this) to work on things not necessarily related to taking care of clients.  One of those tasks is writing… for my blog, my monthly article for Quirk’s or developing an eBook.

But this week… I hit the wall.  After 60+ weeks of crankin’ it out… I didn’t know what to write about.  I went to my editorial calendar… but I hadn’t looked this far forward so no topics were listed.  What am I going to write about… what do I want to write about?

And then it hit me… that is not the question to be asking.  Then question is (and should always be)… what do my clients (and prospective clients) want to read about?  What’s important to them?  What do they care about?