The Competitive Advantage

November 19, 2024

‘Former’ Clients Don’t Have to Be ‘Former’ Forever

When a client leaves you for a competitor, do they come back? In many – if not most – cases, the answer is ‘no.’ But why is that?

For most of us, when we lose a client, our mindset becomes, “Well, it was a good run – time for us to move on.” In some cases, we get busy with other clients and other projects and just forget about them. Occasionally, we get pissed at them, “How dare they? We did good work for them… why are they leaving?” But the fact is, it doesn’t have to be like that.

Gone doesn’t have to mean gone forever. Here’s an example of a client experience that happened to us recently…

September 25, 2024

Stop Pretending You’re a Specialist!

At the Insights Associations’ Corporate Researchers Conference last week (a really excellent event, by the way), I sat in on a panel discussion with the CEOs from four of the largest research agencies in the world.

I was listening intently as they were describing their firms, when one of the CEOs said, and I quote, “We specialize in a wide variety of solutions!” Huh? Wait a minute… that makes absolutely no sense! If you’re a ‘specialist,’ your firm has a focus on one or two key things… a methodology or an application or a particular industry or market. But more than a few… and you’re a ‘generalist.’

April 22, 2024

Stop Relying on Others for Your Success… Take Charge of Your Business

Creating a Revenue Growth Plan for Independent Consultants and Small Businesses

It’s an interesting dilemma. Most people become independent consultants, or start small shops, so they can focus on research and on doing great work for their clients. They certainly didn’t start their businesses so they could spend their time doing sales and marketing.

And yet—as small-business owners—they absolutely have to do that. If they don’t, who will?

October 17, 2023

Strategy or Tactics? Yes, it really does matter!

If I were to ask you, “How are you going to achieve your revenue goals next year?,” how would you answer? You might say something like:

• “We’re going to expand into a new vertical industry.”
• “We’re going to launch a new service line.”
• “We’re going to implement a key account program for our biggest clients.”

Those are all great answers. And those are all marketing strategies. And yet, when most [non-marketing] professionals are asked about marketing, they respond with answers like “email” or “social media” or “advertising.” Those are all marketing tactics.

Strategies are the WHAT. Tactics are the HOW.

October 10, 2023

Busy Q4? DO NOT Stop Marketing!

Here’s why and here’s what to do about it…

The fourth quarter of the year is often a very busy time for our industry as research buyers need to spend their research budgets by December 31^st… or risk losing some of those dollars the following year. And as the firms in our industry (MR agencies, panel companies, etc.) get very busy supporting those buyers, they too often ignore other elements of their business… especially marketing. Big mistake. Big. Huge.

June 28, 2023

Lessons Learned After Writing 500+ Blog Posts

This is post number 533 on our blog, and with the exception of two guest posts, they’re all mine. And all of them written since I founded Harpeth Marketing in 2012. In those 11+ years, I’ve learned a few things about blogging and content marketing that I thought might be of value…

June 6, 2023

The 3 C’s Strategy… Point Your Marketing in the Right Direction

Tactics without a strategy is just ‘noise.’

I’ve been working with a client recently, helping them to create their first-ever marketing plan (yeah, I know, it’s odd timing, but their fiscal year starts in July). As we were getting into it, they said things like “We want to do a quarterly newsletter” and “We want to post on LinkedIn every week.”

To which I responded, “That’s great! Why?”

And I got a blank stare in return. Then I said, “What do you want to post about every week?” The stare continued.

March 29, 2023

Want to Win Your Clients’ Trust? Change 1 Word in Your Vocabulary.

I was having a conversation with a client last week – the president and his senior staff. We were talking about their business objectives for the year and the kinds of marketing and sales efforts they would need to achieve them.

As I was laying out a number of strategies and tactics that could help them reach their goals, the president interrupted me, and said, “Steve, don’t tell us what we could be doing… tell us what we should be doing.”