The Competitive Advantage

July 10, 2012

Webinar – Creating a Winning Marketing & Sales Plan: 40 Tips in 40 Minutes

When: Wednesday, July 18, 2012 1:00 pm Eastern Time / 10:00am Pacific Time

Who: Sponsored by Quirks, presented by Harpeth Marketing

What: Developed for the owners, managers and hands-on marketers at research firms, this free webinar provides an overview of the process for creating a clear, functional marketing and sales plan, along with tips and tricks for implementing each phase of the process. In this fast-paced session, you’ll explore:

• The basic structure of a marketing and sales plan
• A simple way to develop a profile of your best clients
• The keys to setting effective marketing strategy
• Why your success is in the details
• Easy ways to manage your marketing and sales efforts
• Why a lot of money is NOT necessary for successful business development
• And much more

Where: For details and to register online, click here.

June 27, 2012

Dramatically Improve your Marketing with A-B Testing… it’s Easy and Free!

There’s an old saying that I really like… “That which is easy to do is also easy not to do!”  Evidently, that sentiment applies to A-B testing in marketing, because almost no one does it.

June 21, 2012

If You’ve Got it, Flaunt it… using Case Studies

Do you do good work?  Have some completed successful projects?  Have you helped your clients find insights in new and unique ways?

No doubt, you have.  But are you using those success stories to help build your brand and enhance your credibility?  If not, you should be… through the use of Case Studies.

A Case Study is a fact-based, somewhat ‘clinical’ way to tell a success story.  In fact, it’s a “proof source.”  And it’s because of this approach that Case Studies have a high level of acceptance in our industry.  Do great work… tell the facts of the project… improve the perception of your firm.

June 18, 2012

Do you KPI? 3 Steps for Enhancing your Marketing & Sales Measurement.

One of the great business truisms of all time… “You can’t manage what you don’t measure!”

If you haven’t defined the most important marketing & sales KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your firm and monitored them consistently, here are 3 simple steps for getting started.

June 7, 2012

The One Thing you Must Do to Measure your Marketing

There are three primary parts to executing your marketing & sales initiative.

The first is planning… all of that research, thinking, strategy and the details.

Next comes the execution… actually doing all of the things you set out to do in the plan – on time and on budget.

Some firms (but not nearly enough) go through the planning process.  Most firms handle the execution reasonably well.  And almost no one does the third part – measurement.

May 28, 2012

Marketing Execution… Your Success in the Details

There’s an old story from professional football with an important marketing lesson…

After a particularly difficult loss one Sunday afternoon, John McKay, then coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was asked by a sports reporter, “Coach, what do you think of your team’s execution?”  To which Coach McKay replied, “I’m in favor of it!”

April 30, 2012

Goal setting is not as easy as it sounds…

We’re all familiar with the adage of setting SMART goals (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-framed).  But I submit that’s only half the story.

April 2, 2012

The One Question You Need to Ask to Improve Your Marketing

On our website, we write about the Marketing Loop.  The Marketing Loop is the foundation for the process we follow in all of our marketing & sales plan development and coaching work with clients.

The idea of the Loop means that your marketing is planned and executed, results are measured, recommendations are made from what is learned and it’s done a little better the next time.  That is, it’s a process of continual improvement.

And the part of the process that seems the most difficult for nearly all organizations is ‘measurement.’  Why?  I think measurement is perceived as difficult because it requires nearly as much discipline as the execution of the marketing tactics themselves.