Planning for Success: Business Re-Visioning

Ask Questions to Re-vision your business

If I talk to you about “strategic planning,” you might nod your head sagely and admit that it seems like a good thing for big businesses to attempt. But many of my clients also believe that they can’t afford the time or money for such a process.  So when I talk to clients about “business planning,” I call it “Business Re-Visioning” because it sounds more affordable in time and money . . . and actually it is. The process I recommend can be completed by most business owners over several days in about four 1-hr sessions.

No one has a crystal ball, but at least once a year everyone should take the time to review assumptions, align resources, and communicate goals. A process that I like to use with my professional services clients is sparing of their time; helps them size opportunities, risks, needed investment and marketing campaigns; and positions them well for success. I have put together a presentation on this process. 

Taking Stock

When I went out for Chinese food today with friends, my “fortune” in the dessert cookie was an interesting piece of wisdom:  “The keys to a successful future lie in the past.”  Sometimes those slips of paper in the cookies are silly; this one was right on.

How did the previous period—year, quarter, whatever—turn out? What revenue, profit, or unit production/sales did you experience? What segments accounted for that “market activity”—who are you selling to? If you invested in your business (or spent money), how did you spend it? When?

A SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis is useful for pulling together information on the status quo and for organizing all bits of information in a single place. We’ve already written about the utility and value of SWOT for business planning   

Positioning and Segmentation

Who are you currently selling to? Why are they buying from you?  Answering these questions will tell you how you are positioned in the minds of your customers. Is this the positioning you want?  Do you need to tweak your message or how you’re delivering it to create a better impression in the minds of your customers? How does your product or service compare with similar product or services offered by your competition?  Are there unique aspects to your offerings that distinguish them from your competition? 

One of my clients told me about his recent process in selecting a caterer for an event. Three vendors were identified that had similar offerings and pricing, and the vendor was selected on the basis of its superior food,  which my client felt would make a positive lasting impression at his event. Do you know what criteria your customers will use to evaluate you and other service providers in the year ahead?  Are you sure your differentiating elements are ones your customers truly care about?

Are there additional services/products that your existing customers would buy from you if you offered them? Are there some services/products you could offer that would help you acquire NEW customers, who might then also become customers for your existing products and services?  Keep in mind that you don’t have to make or originate the service or product you sell. 

Setting Goals

This is the most important step of your re-visioning process. Everything you do going forward is driven off your goals for the future of your enterprise. What is your vision for the future of your business? How do you want to grow it or change it in the months ahead? What is your vision for what you will sell, to whom and for what price? Who will you partner with, and from whom will you buy services and products? How will you become more efficient, more profitable, and better known in the months ahead?

Your thinking process may begin with identifying some trends, but to be able to determine if you successfully achieve your goals, those goals must be measurable, specific, and achievable and linked to a timeframe.  I like to discuss my business goals with my colleagues, business mentors, and even my family. They all have contributed to helping me refine my goals and avoid “pot holes” en-route.  

Market Intervention

“Wishing doesn’t make it so.” I think that might be a song lyric, but it is certainly a truism in marketing. If you want to change the status quo, you must intervene in the market in some way. Now that you have goals and a clear idea of the directions you want to move in, how will you effect the changes you want to make in your business and its market?

I look at the mix of marketing interventions as being particularly relevant for service marketers. Again, we have written about the importance of planning for and investing in a mix of marketing interventions.

Scheduling, Measuring, and Tracking

You have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish in the next year. You have completed a marketing plan and have confirmed that you have the financial and staff resources necessary to move forward.  Now it is important to create a unified “marketing and Business calendar “that will function as the central place where you book all of your planned initiatives. Since you will be engaging in many simultaneous activities, coordination is essential. 

And everything will perform as expected, right?  Nah. There are bound to be hiccups and problems.  I recently redid my website .  We used data collected from Google Analytics   to refine our key words and adjust many features.  When I do email marketing, my provider, www.swiftpage.com can tell me what phrases used in headlines or subject lines are more effective in getting readers to click on the content and read it. They can even tell me which “targeted readers” interacted with the content more than others, and which ones I should call to follow up with.  

If you invest in some kind of marketing interventions—email marketing, new website, postcards, telemarketing—carefully consider and set up a process for measuring what works and what doesn’t.

You’ll need this information next year when you take stock of your business and “Re-vision” your future.

Push, Pull and a Hand Shake: The Importance of Mix in Marketing

“We’ve got a killer website. I don’t understand why we aren’t doing well!”  If I had a nickel for every time I have heard that complaint . . . 

Most people going into business for the first time don’t understand that marketing and business development necessarily involve a mix of approaches. While the idea that one single silver bullet will hit the target is understandably appealing, it’s NOT going to work because the target is never one individual who always has the same feelings and needs.  Putting it that way makes obvious the need for multiple techniques and avenues to gain customer awareness and trust.

When I begin helping clients with their marketing plans, I always tell them that we need to plan for a mix of marketing techniques and investment. I use a mnemonic to help them remember the idea: Push, Pull and a Hand Shake.  They need to blend Push marketing techniques with Pull Marketing investment and use personal marketing—that Handshake—for outreach and message correction.

Push Marketing – the Virtual Tap on the Shoulder

When marketers talk about push marketing, they are referring to the wide variety of techniques that can be used to attract the attention of potential customers and motivate them to take the first step in doing business with their clients. Telemarketing, advertising, direct mail—all are examples of this type of “interrupt” activity designed to call attention to a business and responsive action from potential customers.

Although all of these techniques have their quirks: some are more effective for certain products and services than others. But as a rule of thumb, the more you spend, the greater your success: frequency plus good execution yields desired outcome.  Most of these techniques have the advantage of producing results fairly quickly.  

But marketing campaigns based solely on Push, or Interrupt, marketing techniques inevitably fail. Why? This year, the average consumer will see or hear 1 million marketing messages, almost 3,000 daily.  Since most automatically screen out most “interrupt messages,” other techniques must be used to get our attention. 

Pull Marketing Investment

Many marketing tools do not interrupt the customer but, rather, support his intention when he seeks a product or service. The best example is search marketing, which is enabled by a website or blog that, when searched by a search engine, leads your prospect to your online information. You can also pay a fee to have him directed to your online information (pay for click). The more information you put online, on your website, your blog, your social media outlets, the more likely you will be found by a prospect interested in your business. Creating this online footprint can be expensive, and you must shoulder some of the cost before you sell your first widget. 

Why assume the cost of implementing a Pull strategy? Simple: it works.  MediaPost recently reported that U.S. spending on search engine marketing (another pull marketing technique) will grow from $12.2 billion in 2008 to $22.4 billion in 2013.  Indeed, companies are embracing the idea of building entire campaigns around content that is shared through a variety of online and social media platforms. But just like efforts based solely on Push techniques, using Pull techniques in isolation may be self-limiting. For one thing, the expense of investing in and perpetually refreshing content in the absence of immediate demand (and business) is risky. Without continuing feedback from the target market in the form of measurable traffic, engagement, and commitment to the buying process, companies will be hard-pressed to continue to invest in Pull marketing. 

Pressing the Flesh

The least expensive and the most effective marketing technique is personal marketing. It  has long been employed by the smallest businesses. From the business card and referral swapping in networking groups to the attention-getting and positive reinforcement from public speaking events, actually meeting and touching your potential customers can be very gratifying. It provides a level of information and affirmation about you and your offerings that cannot be equaled.  A little time spent honing your 30-second commercial can garner you new business in a single afternoon of networking.  It also gives you immediate feedback about what parts of your message seem relevant and which parts don’t resonate with your prospects. You can also use that information to tweak your push and pull campaigns if they are running at the same time.

Marketing efforts that embody all three of these marketing modalities stand a good chance of being successful. They generate needed immediacy, higher conversion, and lower cost per lead.