davidpoulos.com

Category: Marketing Cures

  • Marketing Leadership Means Asking the Right Questions

    Marketing Leadership Means Asking the Right Questions

    Ever wonder how market leading companies got that way? Ever wonder who lead the way and how they knew to veer in the direction they did? Based on our analysis of hundreds of business cases, we’ve determined that there are some key decisions that top marketing executives make in common with market leadership, the result of which is moving that company to the next level of market penetration.

    5) Select Partners Carefully. Ask yourself this question: Would i want to do business with this company regardless if I made a profit or not? If the answer is no, then it’s probably not a good fit. For a partnership to work, both sides have to support the mission equally and enthusiastically. If you don’t enjoy your interactions with the partner and they’re not tremendously fruitful, cut your losses and dissolve it before things get bad.

    4) Know When To Call it A Day. Ask yourself: Is this effort as effective as it was the week it started? If the answer is no, is it fatiguing and lagging due to lack of support, saturation, market shift or getting stale? It may be you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns, and the ROI of continuing it is no longer viable. If that’s the case, you’re throwing money away, just pull the plug and initiate another effort. Clinging to a failing program costs you more than you imagine in lost opportunity, time, and it’s negative effect on your audience, staff and company morale has a measurable value.

    3) Have a Purpose. Ask yourself: Why exactly are we doing this again? If the answer resembles something like “we did it last year”, or “our competitors tried it,” or “The Boss wants it that way” than it might be time to rethink the effort from the beginning. Legacy programs whose rationale have changed due to altered circumstances can be doing damage to your brand, losing you money, and wasting time. If the purpose no longer exists, don’t do it!

    2) Are We Winning, and If Not, Why Not? One thing most market leading companies use as a mantra is that they have to be in the top 1-2 positions in each market they compete in or changes need made. They feel a need to lead, and they do everything in their power to lead their particular category for every product or service they offer. A quick analysis of the leader will tell you what you’re doing wrong, and you have to make a decision whether to fix it or bail out. The Cost/Benefit analysis should be performed regularly, and a market scan produced quarterly with ruthless honesty.

    1) Where Do We Go From Here? Market leaders don’t often have to ask this question, because they think 8-9 moves ahead and plan strategically each move and have three contingencies based on research and market intelligence. They ask “where do we go” long before they get there! Draw the roadmap before you leave the barn, leave room to be flexible to respond to unforeseen challenges, and stay the course, and you’ll be surprised how far you’ll go. The control and discipline it requires to do this is what separates the men from the boys, but you can bet that market leading companies spend more time planning than executing, and spend significant time asking “What if?”

    If your company wants to be a leader in their market, it comes down to asking the right questions, and probing until you get an answer that satisfies your needs. Keep digging . . .

    For more great questions you should be asking, pick up a copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Engagement Means Understanding

    Engagement Means Understanding

    We’ve been working with several B2B clients recently on outreach programs to help them find and engage new customers, and one of the tactics we’ve had success with is the use of dimensional mail. The main reason is that while overall mail volume is down in the last two years, the amount of mail reaching top executives is up slightly, as gatekeepers have been removed through attrition or layoffs as company’s pare staff, and we were finding that we needed to break through the clutter in the C-suite to get noticed and to actually engage these busy executives with our message.

    While the list is still king, the package is gaining in importance. We’re not talking about a simple A-B test between red and blue carrier envelopes, we mean a full blown package – a box of some type – that contains illustrative media, video, audio, print collateral or other physical, three dimensional object that requires time and thought to understand. It takes a few moments to open, to pick through the parts, to see the story unfold as you peel away layers and get to the meat, the point, the main message. Once you get there, it’s got to make sense to the recipient, to be relevant, to be personal in a way that says “hey, these people know my business and are here to help me run it better!”

    Personalization plays a large part in these packages. Good use of personalization has been shown to boost response significantly, and the combination of personalization and 3D engagement means your target spends a good deal of time with your message, enough to thoughtfully consider your offer and put it in the “investigate further” pile. Now, it’s time for the follow-up!

    The dimensional package is a great way to bait the hook, it’s intriguing, interesting and gets people thinking about your message. It may not be enough to close the sale by itself, few DM packages are when there’s a service or high-ticket item in the mix. But by pushing personalized, strategically-timed follow-up messages through different media, your product is now what we call “Self-vetted” – it appears to come from a variety of directions, and sources, so that it appears to be very safe, legitimate and reasonable. Since top executives are generally a conservative bunch, financially and emotionally, this plays on their natural caution and lowers their defenses, usually enough to make them receptive to a phone call, which is the knock-out punch of the campaign.

    So far this scheme is working for clients, and we have several variations in the works, tweaking timing, packaging, levels of personalization and frequency. The key to effective execution of these campaigns is the homework you do on the list of recipients – each of these packages represents a significant investment by direct mail standards, and you want to keep your waste level low and your responsive recipients ratio as high as possible. Better to send out 5 and have 2 hit with real sales, than to send out 20 and have that same 2 hit.

    A good list, an intriguing, personalized package, heavy follow-up and a persuasive phone call may seem like a lot to go through to reach a handful of individuals – but if they’re the right individuals and the sale is worth thousands or tens of thousands or more, the discipline and forethought is certainly worth it.

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  • The Battle Between Sales and Marketing Rages On . . .

    The Battle Between Sales and Marketing Rages On . . .

    There are many areas of ongoing controversy in the world – Alien v. Predator, King Kong v. Godzilla, Greece v. Turkey, Israel v. (Pick one) and Sales v. Marketing.

    I’m not going to come down on a side for most of the above, but the Sales v. Marketing one intrigues me, because the two combatants should be best friends. They share a common goal, they have separate methods and approaches, they both want more customers. They do compete for financial resources in some companies, so that may set off some minor turf scuffles, but I think each is misunderstood by the other, and it’s a case of walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes.

    Add to this the fact that management executives in many companies confuse the role of each in their organization, in fact use the terms interchangeably. This kind of thinking simply adds to the controversy, and pits one against the other.

    The functions are different, they have different ways of measuring success, have different individual goals on a small scale, and use resources differently. In some firms, the sales function is placed underneath a VP of Marketing, correctly or incorrectly depending upon the structure of the company, it’s size and the product or service being sold. My guess is that if that VP had to actually go out and sell to a lead list, they would not fare very well. That doesn’t make them an inappropriate manager for that function, but it does weaken the case for non-peer review. On the other hand, if the leading salesman were asked to assess the company’s current brand health, determine their most likely next move in entering a new niche vertical, or have to craft an outreach marketing strategy, they would likely come up with something that might have some value, but not the whole ball of wax.

    The reason is that they are different skill sets, not interchangeable and with different focus points. The salesman focuses on customers one at a time, creates and environment where they can use their powers of verbal or written persuasion to tell people what they want to hear about the product in a way that motivates them to make a purchase, big or small, right then and there.

    The marketer is in the mass communication business. They set up a virtual environment in the mind of a predetermined prospect type without ever having met them, make a case in a variety of ways for that product or service being the best choice among many, and motivate through written or spoken word (radio or TV) to create an impression that drives huge numbers of prospects to understand that product or service in a certain way, and helps them decide to make a purchase at some point.

    Success is determined for the sales person by dollars driven in, or clients gained, or products moved. Success for the marketer is about more product moved over time, a rise in brand awareness, the number of conference attendees at a tradeshow, and a host of other metrics determined by the goal of the exercise.

    But these two can each do their job better in the presence of the other! They should be buddies! But they’re often at odds within the organization. They each think the others’ job is less important, likely because they’ve not done the others’ work for any length of time. But by working together, they can each improve.

    Sales, you need to understand that the marketer’s mindset is more focused on hitting the most common denominator the most often, because it’s easy for prospects to ignore their messages – delete them, throw them out, hang up, you name it, it’s a one-way conversation. Marketing, you need to hold onto the understanding that if the prospect hangs up on or ignores pleas for a meeting, Sales takes it personally, because each one counts for a lot! They invest a lot of emotion and time into each approach, planning, investigating, researching, so they “know” the prospect much better – therefore when things to get accepted right away, it’s a bigger loss.

    A little understanding goes a long way. If Marketing took the challenges Sales faces to heart when creating one-sheets or promotions, they’d be simple, answer the most often asked questions, and be nearly weightless so the briefcase-carrying arm doesn’t drag on the ground at the end of the day. If Sales realized how much time it takes to say things in just the right way, how hard it is to determine what the most often asked questions are, and how long it takes to “just redo it”, they’d make their wishes known early and often, and get better tools to work with in return for their efforts.

    We can’t fix Greece v. Turkey, or even know whether it’s Godzilla or King Kong that wins the battle for Tokyo, we do know that when Sales and Marketing work together things go much more smoothly and there more money all around.

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  • Sometimes the Question is More Important Than the Answer . . .

    Sometimes the Question is More Important Than the Answer . . .

    There are times in a marketer’s career when asking the right question spurs the next great idea that turns into a campaign that turns the corner on profitability and launches a whole new direction for the company or the product.

    Having the curiosity and the courage to ask that question – although to you it might seem obvious, so obvious in fact that you’re sure someone else must have thought of it, analyzed the result and discarded it as unworkable – is what good marketers do. How many times have you been in a meeting and another employee asks a seemingly innocent question, and suddenly the room is on fire with ideas, and more importantly, positive feelings and agreement to trying the idea immediately. Have you kicked yourself for not asking the same thing? Why didn’t you – because you thought it was too obvious. It was obvious to you, because that’s the way you were trained to think – but most of the other people in the room were not trained that way, and that’s what makes you special!

    Think it through quickly, end to end, and go ahead and bring up the obvious – you’ll be surprised at the reaction you’ll get. Curiosity and courage linked together will get you a long way in marketing. A famous marketer I know is fond of saying that there are no bad ideas, just those that don’t work under the current circumstances. His approach is to try almost anything that appears viable, and if 6 out of 10 of them fly, he’s a winner! Indeed the margin on a good idea is pretty high, so it doesn’t take much for a good idea to bring in far more than all the bad ones waste. Remember the old campaign,”Try it, you’ll like it”? Not a bad mantra in these tough times. Businesses are desperate for good paying customers, and ideas that will attract them are in short supply.

    Step up, state your idea, and let the chips fall – you’ll likely be applauded and the chips fall your way – if not, at least you put something viable forward, and if it doesn’t work now, circumstances will forever change and it might work at some other time.

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  • Internet Not The Only Media – Yet

    Internet Not The Only Media – Yet

    In a recent study of college freshmen, it was revealed that the skills we once assumed to be vital for business success – research using books and journals, proper grammar when writing letters, crafting informational documents or publishing and the like – are now obsolete, and that over 90% of college freshmen don’t possess them. They also noted that e-mail communication is already deemed “too slow” by today’s college freshmen, who have no concept of television with less than 250 channels, having been born in 1992, long after the cable expansion and the introduction of satellite TV.

    These same freshmen have never possessed a record album, or conceivably a pre-recorded music CD, having come into their teens after the original MP3 file format was introduced. Fax machines are obsolete antiques, land-line phones passe, and with them phone etiquette similarly out the window. Pay phones are a mystery, a story told around campfires . . . you get the picture. Technology, especially in the communication world, has accelerated at a remarkable rate, leaving behind what seemed to be perfectly viable formats and forms of communication.

    These same college freshmen, who don’t know from cassettes, will be entering the workforce in four short years, and a small percentage of them potentially taking on tomorrow’s marketing challenges. By that time, full media integration that has been trumpeted as the be all and end all of communication technology may be in place on a national or global scale, and there will essentially be one, web-driven media, all played wirelessly through whatever monitoring device happens to be handy, be it a plasma TV, the screen in the car, or the front of the refrigerator. Everything will have an IP address, from the phone to the washing machine. Everyone will have to be a web producer, a video producer, or designer, and every speech or form of communication will be measured in megabytes or terabytes, not in pages or words.

    Grammar is already slipping at an alarming rate, with proper forms of English dropping off the cultural map like electronic flies, to be replaced by slang, initials, acronyms and emoticons – we’re slowly sliding back to early Egyptian hieroglyphs. How do you diagram the phrase “LOL :)!” ?

    The ads of the future will only have to be produced for electronic consumption, and will be a mix of images and scrolling, hopping, swinging and fading text, compressed down to the smallest file size possible and distributed through 3 big outlets. Print will be an anachronism, copywriting a dead art, direct mail reserved for senior citizen newsletters and billing inserts in large print, with ads flashing on big, wall sized screens in all the retirement homes, which will automatically change to match the information emanating from a chip in their forearm as the seniors walk by, ala Minority Report. Well, maybe not that last one in four years, but you get the idea.

    With only one medium to consider, media buying will consolidate into a government function controlled by the FCC, and time will be bid on in auction style on E-Bay. Marketers will no longer have to consider paper stock weight, envelope size, postal rate case, number of sheets on a billboard, magazine doubletruck gutters, facing page competitors, color fidelity, dot gain, screen density, and a host of other routine, mundane production detail-oriented skills required by the marketers of yesteryear. Freed from those details, will the ads be more persuasive, more effective, more targeted, more efficient? They will certainly be trackable, which is an advantage, but my guess is that how that tracking can be used will have to be heavily regulated to prevent rampant abuse.

    I’m not much of a futurist, but I am a student of history, and you can easily compare the current communications integrity status to that of the latter stages of the Roman empire – I’m breaking out my fiddle as we speak . . .

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  • Converting Prospects to Members (or Customers)

    Converting Prospects to Members (or Customers)

    One of the biggest challenges non-profits and other small to mid-size businesses face is converting leads to sales, or for non-profits, a common challenge is to convert prospects to members. There are many different ways to approach this issue but they usually have a few things in common.

    If you have a good list of well-qualified prospects, compiled recently, with a high-deliverability quotient, and fresh information, you’re already halfway there. If not, but wish to start compiling one, there are several good ways to do that, including referrals from current members, industry indexes and directories, publication lists, and prospecting campaigns at tradeshows.

    If you have e-mail addresses, this might be the least expensive place to start. If not, you’re left with mail or phone campaigns to reach out to prospective members. If you have a really solid profile of your members, based on research, and can categorize them accurately into industry segments, title profiles and other segmentation to make your communications more specific. One factor to consider when making your selection is based on that profile, how do your current members like to be communicated with? Are they tech savvy, do they stay at their desks all day and have constant access to e-mail or social media? Do they only read e-mail at home? Do they get their mail at the office or did they give you a home address? The method deserves almost as much consideration as the message, in these highly overloaded, busy times. It’s to easy to delete, discard or filter out messages delivered in inconvenient ways.

    Once you’ve decided on the best medium, now you have to craft a message that resonates with this group or groups. Your research profile will be of great use here, as it tells you what they are likely to be concerned about, what issues hit home for them, what keeps them up at night. Once you’ve discovered that key issue, now you can formulate a message to deliver that shows how their membership will take care of that pesky problem, solve that challenge, meet that need and make joining a solid investment. Solve a problem, and you’ll get them to join up just for that – show them the unique value of your organization in solving that problem, they’ll stay members for years.

    Now you just have to mate the message with the right medium at the right time and deliver it cleanly, accurately and in timely fashion. But before you hit that “send” button or pull the trigger on the mail drop, make sure your customer response, receipt, fulfillment and registration infrastructure is in place, and ready to accept the new influx of calls/e-mails/hits/members – there’s nothing more frustrating than receiving inquiries or orders and not being able to activate them or monetize them – it’s a woeful tale of opportunity lost. It’s not overly optimistic to expect good response to your offer after taking the time to craft it so thoroughly and specifically. The better your homework and more thorough your preparation, the more likely you are to generate significant response and you have to have the structure in place to accept them.

    Find your best list, do your homework, know your prospect, find out what they need, show how your organization can solve their problems and make life easier, get them the message in a form they’re receptive to, and make sure you can accommodate all the requests quickly and efficiently. If you can pull those elements together, your chances of success soar, and so will your organization!

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  • Five Things About Branding We Can Learn from Geek Squad

    Five Things About Branding We Can Learn from Geek Squad

    I’m always in search of particularly effective branding efforts, just to enjoy a job well-done. Knowing how hard it is to carry out brand development on a daily basis, and how important the initial thinking is in springboarding the brand forward, I’m always looking for those that put in the effort up front and got it right.

    This week’s winner is Geek Squad, the computer service firm that operates out of Best Buy stores. These guys thought about EVERYTHING, and live the brand every day. I’ve had the opportunity to try these guys out several times in the last year, and they are nothing if not consistent.

    Each technician is called an “Officer”, and they always come in full uniform, including a badge and ID card, and arrive in a branded car, usually a white Volkswagon Beetle with black fenders and the logo on the doors – further reinforcing the quasi-police image. Their delivery is rather police-like, definitely gentle, but no-nonsense, they are extremely respectful of the customer’s home and work-space, touching as little as possible, asking few questions that are not directly related to the job at hand, and get right to work. They solve the problem or make a recommendation to repair at more extensive facilities or replace the machine, they come armed with a full bevy of software diagnostic tools, all branded, and get the job done, transact payment, and disappear to the next jobsite.

    There was so little variation in my three experiences it was spooky, like I said, these guys are consistent. Given the labor pool from which the company draws for this position and the human factors that have to be accommodated in any national company, I’m still astounded how well they carry the brand. I know when I see those little cars on the road, that they’re on their way to help some other poor computer-illiterate victim of Microsoft, and the feeling associated with the brand is always extremely positive.

    They set out with a good idea, they went full tilt toward fleshing it out, and they train the employees to clearly live and transmit the brand effectively with EVERY interaction. That’s why they’re this week’s EFFECTIVE BRANDING AWARD winner. Write to me about effective brands you’ve seen, and I’ll share them . . .

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  • Your Name – Self-Branding At It’s Finest

    Your Name – Self-Branding At It’s Finest

    Your own name plays a huge part of your personal brand, but how many of us really get to determine that element and as an adult actually go through with it? Apparently, if you’re in a gang in Baltimore and likely elsewhere, you get that chance, and sometimes it can backfire!

    According to a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, gangbangers all have nicknames, ones that are so ubiquitous, that they are actually used in court filings! Unfortunately, the thought given to what that nickname is might be a bit lacking and can come back to haunt them when they get into the “System”.

    Imagine being the defense lawyer trying to convince a jury of your client’s innocence on a murder or assault charge when the young man sitting at your side has “Murder” tattooed on his neck for all to see, or is questioned by the prosecution and addressed by his nickname,”Bloody Dog” multiple times into the court record and read back repeatedly. Good luck with that . . .

    In their world, picking a scary sounding nickname gives you a certain amount of street credibility, and often tells something about you, just as any brand should. Unfortunately, that brand is designed for a very specific audience, and has a negative impact on those outside that audience. We’ll call these two-way brands, like a two-way mirror. One side reflects the owner’s identity, the other side is seen right through to the person underneath.

    Some commercial brands are two-ways as well, and this is usually a result of faulty or lack of consumer research when crafting the original identity. Brands that reflect too much of an “inside” perspective are built for insiders and those “outside” the circle just don’t “Get it”. Not a very good way to attract new customers, or even to spark curiosity – once you investigate the odd name that doesn’t resonate, discover it has nothing to do with anything you’re interested in, you ignore it, discount it, or avoid it altogether.

    One that comes to mind is “Go Daddy”. They created that brand from an internal meeting of some kind and simply forced recognition through effective creative advertising on a huge scale. But if you just mentioned the name prior to that, it certainly doesn’t sound like a domain name registration company – there are no reliable attributes that the words “Go Daddy” together evoke. Certainly they don’t bring to mind orderliness, convenience, permanence, cooperation, creativity, or any of a number of other characteristics that by definition such a company would embody. Yet, it’s a fast-growing company with high financial performance and a good chunk of market share – not bad for an upstart with a quirky brand . . .

    Your personal brand reflects the characteristics you want the public to see, regardless of who that public is. Every adult has the opportunity to create their own brand, and can have their name legally changed with a simple hearing by a judge and some basic paperwork – as long as the reason has nothing to do with your need to evade the law or debt of any kind, have at it. Entertainers do it all the time – would you tune in to watch Larry Zeiger interview celebrities? But before retirement, Larry King pulled in the occasional viewer on a regular basis. Go figure.

    Some internal reflection is in order when choosing your personal brand. Give it some thought, understand that it has to be viewed by the world at large and have some meaning, then back up the moniker with the attributes you hold in highest regard, consistently. Now you’re talking branding . . .

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  • Does Your Latest Campaign Pass the “Sniff Test?”

    Does Your Latest Campaign Pass the “Sniff Test?”

    I’ve been working with business clients to assist them in their marketing efforts for nearly 3 decades, and in that time, there have been very few rules that I haven’t broken, bent or ignored altogether. There is one, however, that no matter what your industry or line of business, needs to be present somewhere in the mix – The Sniff Test.

    Human beings evolved over millions of years, surviving due to an over-sized brain and an ability to use that brain power to adapt his environment to suit his needs. One of those adaptations is a facet of the primitive, limbic portion of the brain that senses danger. Things like the hair on the back of your neck standing up, or a queasy feeling in your gut, or a general uneasiness in the back of your mind that tells you there’s someone in the house or that you’re being watched.

    That’s instinct, it’s your subconscious processing what you see and feel and hear and smell, and putting out a primitive nervous signal that there’s something your conscious brain is missing, because it’s too busy working on what’s coming . . .That instinct was developed to keep you alive.

    That same instinct is useful in business, when reviewing partners, business arrangements, marketing strategy, new product development, and other areas where it’s easy to get caught up in the hype and the hysteria, and execute strategies that do not have a strong foundation in logic and data. That is the instinct I call the “sniff test”, and it’s really a jaded, realistic way of looking at a worst-case scenario by stripping away all the “possibles” and “maybes” in the scenario planning, leaving just the facts.

    Say the marketing manager comes to you with a campaign idea that involves the buyer or customer to follow five or six steps in order to redeem an coupon in a product offer, and when you do the math on the offer, the numbers don’t really offer any advantage to the buyer after all the rebates, savings certificates and all the rest is computed.

    Take a step back, pretend your in the grocery store and have two products side by side, yours and your competitor’s. Now read the offer slowly and carefully, and add weight to your competitor’s product for every step you have to take, in order to get the savings the coupon represents. Now subtract weight for every ten cents’ worth of different in price you offer over your competitor’s product. If you product price doesn’t outweigh all the work needed to get it, the offer doesn’t pass the sniff test.

    Despite how it works on paper, in the real world, it just won’t smell good to the consumer. Even if it’s explicitly spelled out that the savings are significant, it will send up a flag for the consumer if it’s too hard to do – too many places for error to creep in, too much work, too many conditions, it will just feel like you’re trying to put one over on them, and they’ll pick the “safe” option – instinct at work.

    Unconsciously, you use the sniff test every day, to evaluate deals, employee performance, new hires, as a lie detector in presentations or meetings – anywhere you place a value judgement not strictly based in logic. If someone asked you after one of those decisions why you went the way you did, you couldn’t give them a solid, concrete, logical answer, you’ll likely think to yourself “it just doesn’t smell right” – you just implemented the sniff test, and whatever your were evaluating didn’t pass.

    Food for thought for the day – tell me your stories of instances where your business dealings didn’t pass the sniff test, and what was ultimately the real reason it was a good decision to pass on it. Enjoy!

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  • Do Your Clients Know You, or Just What You’ve Reminded Them Of Recently?

    Do Your Clients Know You, or Just What You’ve Reminded Them Of Recently?

    Service businesses are funny things sometimes. Clients tend to pigeonhole your service firm based on what service you first performed for them. They rarely actually read the literature you leave behind, especially if it’s a referral, and they usually don’t go back and search it when another type of job arises, no matter how closely related to the first. So your first impression, your first engagement and your referrals tend to shape your brand for you in the customer’s mind, unless you steer it, expand it and broaden it on an almost continual basis.

    It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially for smaller firms, who may appear more limited than they are. I’m no exception to this unfortunately, although I try and avoid it if I can. I have one customer who only thinks of me in connection with trade show displays, because that was the first part of a multi-faceted strategy we recommended for them when entering into a new vertical market. Not that she doesn’t KNOW we offer a full range of marketing services, from strategic planning out to campaign execution and executive guidance, it’s just that I don’t reside in that part of her brain and I’m not connected to her other needs in a way that immediately comes to mind when they arise – I have to make a concerted effort to “remind” her that we are a full-service firm, so that we get connected in that way.

    How many of your customers or internal clients only think of you when they need or have a question about a very narrow range of elements, the one you did for them last, or first? It’s something you might want to explore, and you can test it pretty easily: Call them up and ask “Do you know that we also offer . . .” and see what the response is. Call under the auspices of keeping in touch, a good thing regardless, but hunt for that specific piece of data during the conversation. You might be surprised by the result.

    It may seem strange, but that’s just how the brain works – humans learned to survive by recognizing and remembering patterns, and noticing anything that breaks the pattern, like sensing movement in the brush created by a prey animal. Once a pattern is established, ala your firm performing a certain service, that pattern is retained and it’s difficult to change that perception.

    Here’s the fix: broaden your marketing efforts. Don’t go against brand, in fact if you’re a multi-service firm, this will strengthen that tenet of your brand. But highlight a different angle, a different aspect or subgroup of your offerings in a series of marketing launches – it’s like baiting a fishing line with different baits at different parts of the line – you increase the odds of catching something from the same pond. Even if you think you only offer one thing, and one of your brand characteristics is that you do one thing and do it the best of anyone, there are still different angles and facets of that “one thing” that you can use to “bait the hook” with. Try it, see if you don’t get the phone ringing with new business from old clients who “Didn’t know you offered that”.

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