Marketing Information
If My Work is Good Enough
"If My Work is Good Enough, I Shouldn't Have to Market, Right?"
How to Earn the Right
"How to Earn the Right..."
Shine a Spotlight on Your Professional Service Firm
As a life-long dancer, I know a bit about the importance of good preparation before performance. Before a dancer is ready for the spotlight, she has to master the basics including alignment, strength, flexibility, balance, choreography, and artistry.
Why Smart People Dont Know How to Market
As an educated professional, your success is based on what you know, your education, your intelligence, and your creativity. Even if you?re just starting out, you?ve achieved success just to get your many degrees and pass those licensing exams! Your clients return and refer because you apply your expertise and insight to guide them to appropriate answers for their unique situations.
Painless Marketing for People Who Hate to Market
Face it?you know you?ve got to do something to keep a steady stream of clients coming to your professional service firm. But when it comes to the m-word (marketing), you?d rather not. Do any of these statements sound familiar?
CRM: Strategic Engine or Just Another Tool?
CRM?strategic engine or just another technology tool? How would you answer this question about your company's CRM initiative? It depends on how honest you are in answering some other questions, including:
How to Up-Sell Change
As Freud cautioned, it's insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. You know things have to change. Business as usual is a guarantee to fail. Your boss supports you, but is fairly lukewarm about resources and time commitments. Your staff agrees but then claim they are too busy. Activity traps, inertia, disinterest, ambivalence, fear? people fabricate (consciously or unconsciously) lots of reasons to avoid making change. This is a frequent organizational dilemma: a needed change stalls before you even get started.
The First Rule of CRM for Financial Services
Things have to change. Cross selling is not going to happen simply by installing new CRM technology. A corresponding movement from a transaction mentality to the underlying CRM principle of focusing on the long-term relationship is required. What does this mean for financial services? Stop pushing products and start building relationships.
CRM Star Wars: When Marketing is from Venus and IT is from Mars
Inherent tensions exist between marketing and IT. This is often compounded by lots of cross-talk, with each function on different channels. When tension becomes unresolved conflict, CRM strategy is impossible to execute. To avoid clashes, it helps to understand that CRM is not just about the exchange of information, it's about the exchange of relationships. And every effective relationship includes a fair amount of conflict. The key is in how you handle it.
A Successful Solution: 10 Things to Consider
A provocation for the coming year, decade, century or millennium.
Marketing Brain Trust
Rest assured that no matter how smart you are, you do not know everything about marketing. You don't even know anything about marketing your product! You can't figure everything out yourself, or see all the angles, or provide every bit of critical thinking.
Your Secret Marketing Weapon
As a professional service provider, you?re paid for what you know. People come to your firm for the expertise you offer, first and foremost. Did you also realize that this is also your secret marketing weapon?
The M-Word (Marketing) Phase 2
Last month we looked at what you need to do before you spend money on marketing brochures, a website, advertising or even go out to network. During Phase 1, it?s all about crafting your message. Key steps include getting clear about your market niche, developing a clear message about how you solve your target clients? problems, articulating what makes you their best choice, packaging your services so clients will buy, and demonstrating why they should trust you.
Differentiate or Die
Sounds pretty harsh, doesn?t it? Well, I can tell you from personal experience with both my own business and with my clients, ?differentiate or die? is not an exaggeration. Whether you?re a small one-person shop or a large government agency, solvency and the future of your business rely on you standing out in a competitive marketplace.
How to Profit from Your Expertise (Part 1 of 2)
Are you looking for a natural way to market your professional services? What if you could exponentially multiply the number of motivated, pre-qualified prospects you reach in a fraction of the time that networking and referrals require?
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Trade show booths are one of the best direct contact systems with end consumers. The face to face meeting opportunity with customers can provide some excellent results?provided you have a good communication strategy in place. Keep in mind that there are at least a hundred other advertisers at the same trade show vying for the attention of the consumer, you have a small window to make an impression on the persons mind. Here are some tried and tested strategies to implement to maximize your on-the-floor communication:
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You will always have more people that turn down
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Budget Your Branding
It is very important to regularly monitor your advertising activities in the process of brand building, to realize how much they are contributing to the bottom line. Expediting marketing expenses wouldn't generally lead to a stronger brand name. Neither is it necessary that they will give you voluminous sales nor a good market name. Though, when the communication is hay wired it might get ruined!
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