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Strategic Marketing Assessments

Is it time to update your marketing materials, but you're not sure where to start?

Do you have a bunch of "marketing stuff" that doesn't work together?

Get specific direction and advice to take your marketing materials to the next level with one of our strategic marketing assessments.

We offer several strategic marketing assessments packages to meet your specific needs:

• Marketing Materials Assessment
• Website Assessment
• Voice of the Customer Survey
• Comprehensive Marketing Assessment

Learn more about Strategic Marketing Assessments

Featured Article

3 Step Marketing Makeover

This is typically the time of year when we think about making a strong push to finish the year and begin preparing for next year. While this year has been far from typical, it’s never too early to begin refining your marketing plan for the coming year. Here are my top three tips for taking your marketing, and your business, to the next level.

Discover Your Remarkable Difference

The most power marketing strategy you can use to grow your practice or business is to find and communicate your Remarkable Difference. How are you different from everyone else who claims to do what you do? What is the Remarkable Difference you make in the lives of your customers?

Our customers are often better are communicating our Remarkable Difference than we are. That is why I always recommend that you interview your customers on a regular basis. Ask them questions like:

• Why did you first hire us?
• Why do you (or don't you) refer us to others?
• What do we do that others don't?
• What would you do differently if you were us?
• What's missing from our industry as a whole? This is a great question for uncovering new opportunities.

Don't forget to ask follow up questions and drill down to the real answer. For example, if someone tells you they love your customer service, drill down and ask them what that means to them. Is it turnaround time? How you handle problems? The fact that you answer your phone and return calls? Get to the specifics.

I am often asked about using e-mail or tools like Survey Monkey to conduct these surveys. Although technology can help us be more efficient with our time, I believe that in order to be effective, you should conduct at least a portion of the surveys by phone or face to face. The value of these types of surveys comes not from the immediate answers to these questions, but from the follow up questions and conversations that result.

If you want to use automated survey tools, use a mix of automated and “live” interviews. If you don’t have time or don’t feel comfortable conducting phone interviews, hire someone to do them for you.

Now Communicate Your Remarkable Difference

Step two of your 3 Step Marketing Makeover is to review your current marketing materials to verify they are communicating your Remarkable Difference. Your web site, marketing kit, brochures, advertising, signage, etc., should all be communicating your Remarkable Difference to your prospects and customers.

While you are reviewing your marketing materials, check to see that each one has a strong call to action. Each call to action should provide a way to track responses. This is the only way you can measure the results of your marketing efforts and know what is working. Stop spending money on any activity for which you can't track the results.

In addition to your materials, it is important to review all of your customer touch points to make sure they are supporting your Remarkable Difference. Marketing is all about setting expectations. It makes no sense to spend a lot of money setting expectations only to have those expectations shot down as soon as customers come into contact with your business.

We've all learned that actions speak louder than words. How you answer the phone, how your invoices look, the message that is communicated when I come into your store or office - all of these touch points speak volumes about your business. Make sure each of these touch points reflects your Remarkable Difference.

Live By A Calendar

Once we have discovered our Remarkable Difference and have updated our materials to reflect that message, the biggest challenge becomes consistently carrying out our marketing plan. As small business owners, we wear many different hats. When things get hectic, it is easy to put off marketing. 

Success in marketing isn’t about finding the “next big thing”. It’s about doing a few things really well and doing them consistently. The best way to make sure that marketing gets done is to schedule appointments with yourself to work on your marketing. Treat these appointments as if they are with your best client - no rescheduling at the last minute, no interruptions or phone calls, etc. Consistently spending as little as an hour per week on your marketing will yield huge results for your business.

Pull out your calendar and get started on your 3 Step Marketing Makeover today.

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Recommended Reading

Are ideas born interesting or made interesting?

Chip & Dan Heath believe in the nurture side of the debate and their book Made to Stick identifies the six key qualities that your ideas need to be "understood, remembered, and have a lasting impact". The six traits that they identify are used to create the acronym SUCCESs. They are:

• Simplicity – finding the core of the idea
• Unexpectedness – getting and keeping attention
• Concreteness – concrete images help us remember and coordinate our activities with others
• Credibility – credible ideas help people test them for themselves
• Emotions – people are wired for feelings, not abstractions
• Stories – stories provide inspiration (motivation to act) and simulation (how to act)

The book discusses the Curse of Knowledge – the inability of people to imagine what it's like to lack the knowledge they have. The Curse of Knowledge plays a major role in the failure to create ideas that stick.

The epilogue of the book explains how the 6 traits can be used as a framework for solving communication problems.

I highly recommend this book, and not just because it has duct tape on the cover ; ). It is well written and contains tons of practical information. I have notes covering the two inside pages of the book and seem to have gone highlighter happy marking all of the great ideas I found.