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By Erica Stritch
A colleague of mine was recently on a sales call with a prospect who wanted a marketing strategy on the fast track. After two conversations, they wanted to know which tactics they should be employing, how they should position their firm to the marketplace, how much they should be spending, areas they should target first, and more.
My colleague explained that this is not exactly how it works. Successful marketing strategies are built based on your growth goals and desires, the market you are going after, the culture of marketing and business development at your firm, what you've done in the past that has worked and hasn't worked, what you are willing to invest in regards to money and time, and the resources you have available.
The prospect's response, "I thought you were supposed to be an expert and that you have experience with firm's like mine. Isn't there some sort of cookie cutter template you use?"
The truth of the matter is no two clients are ever the same. Even if the firm's revenues, services, number of employees, profitability, client base, and other factors are all the same, a firm's culture make it distinctly unique. What works for one firm will not work for another. There is no cookie cutter marketing strategy that you can hand your marketing coordinator to implement.
So, how do you come up with a strategy to grow your service business? You must first do some digging and answer these questions:
- Where are we now and how much do we want to grow?
This is the most important question you should be asking. Before coming up with any strategy you need to look at where you are now and where you want to be over a certain period of time. It is not enough simply to say, "We want to double in size." The strategy a $1 million firm uses to grow to $2 million in one year is very different than a firm who wants to grow from $5 million to $10 million – even though they are both "doubling in size."
The answer to this question will drive the rest of your strategy. Without knowing where you are going, how can you develop a path to get you there?
- Are we serious about growing this quickly?
Who wouldn't want to double in revenue next year (assuming you are not running a life style business)? While many firms say they are serious about investing in growth, very few firms put their money where their mouth is. Serious growth requires serious investment in both money and time. And, even with this investment, growth does not happen overnight. It requires patience and persistence to see your marketing through.
- Is this realistic?
If, historically, your firm has only allotted 3% of its budget to marketing and plans on allocating 3% again this year, yet has vastly different expectations for growth, you best squash those expectations right away. When it comes to budgeting and setting expectations, look at your growth goals and build backwards.
Say you want to grow an additional $5 million next year. Ask yourself:
1. How many additional sales do we need?
2. Which services will produce these sales?
3. Given our marketing mix, exactly where will each of these sales come from?
Track each sale back to a specific marketing tactic. For example, if you know you spoke at 3 conferences last year and got 3 new clients resulting in $300,000, what would happen if you did spoke at 6 conferences next year? What sort of investment would you need to make for this to happen? Then ask yourself, is this realistic?
These questions may seem pretty obvious, and they are. Yet I see too many firms approach their marketing strategy without knowing the answers to these questions. They take a top down approach to budgeting allocating 3% to marketing without looking at overall revenue growth goals. They say they want to reach a certain revenue goal, yet do not invest the necessary resources to get there. They take a copy cat approach and assume that because their closest competitor advertisers in the local business journal they need to as well (even though historically they haven't gotten a single new client from these ads).
If you really want to double in growth, a cookie cutter strategy will not get you there. Know where you're starting, know where you're headed and develop benchmarks to get you there along the way. |