The Competitive Advantage

September 19, 2017

What Makes a Specialist Special?

Most research firms are ‘generalists’… offering a variety of research methodologies to all kinds of firms in all kinds of industries. If it’s a profitable opportunity and if it fits their team’s skill set – they’ll take it.

And that’s fine. But with that broad approach to business comes a muddled and murky approach to marketing… decisions are difficult to make. Trying to serve so many kinds of companies in so many industries means far too many marketing options. So, how do you choose?

July 31, 2017

Differentiation: Just Being Different Isn’t Enough

Over the past five years, without a doubt, the most popular topic in my conversations with clients and prospective clients has been around ‘differentiation’… what they can do to stand out from their competitors. Everyone agrees there is far too much “sameness” in our industry – too many firms that look alike and sound alike all offering a range of services that are essentially the same. If you’re a prospective buyer, how do you choose?

May 16, 2017

Content marketing stalled by writer’s block? Here’s what I did.

For the past five years, I have posted a blog once a week, virtually without fail. As a provider of content marketing services, we not only have to talk the talk… we also have to walk the walk. But after nearly 250 posts… I hit a wall. For the first time since we started Harpeth Marketing, I had writers’ block.

It’s not that I couldn’t come up with any good ideas for posts, I couldn’t come up with any ideas… period! It was truly frustrating.

April 4, 2017

The 3 Cardinal Rules of Building Awareness

A simple fact: Potential buyers can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist… or if you never come to mind for them.

So, whatever your marketing & sales plans, strategies or tactics… it all starts with being known. That is, it all starts with building awareness. Period.

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?

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.

November 29, 2016

What do your clients really think about you? Their perception matters!

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 4 of 6

This series began with a discussion about effective use of the telephone… then we moved onto blogging… and last week, LinkedIn. Today, we tackle understanding the perception of your firm.

If I were to ask you what each of your clients think about you, you would probably say something about them generally liking you… after all, they’re sending you their business. And you’d probably be right.

But what if you’re not?