The ABC of MARKETING

To be successful you must have assessed your situation, built a client base, and contacted potential clients. I call these the ABCs of Marketing. With these in place you will safeguard yourself against the potential perils of owning your own business.

            Let me introduce each of the ABCs here, as shown below 

                                                  A: Assess the Situation

             Assessing the situation means examining from an internal and an external perspective. Internally you will examine your consulting company. Externally you will examine your competition and your customers. Why an internal assessment of you and your consulting company? A solid marketing plan will be based on where you are today and where you want to be in the future. Before developing a marketing plan, review your business plan and strategy. They will provide a foundation for your marketing plan. If you have recently completed or updated your business plan, you may not need to do much here. Starting with who you are, what services and products your company offers, what unique position your company holds to set it aside from your competition, as well as what financial situation exists, creates a basis from which many assumptions are made. For example, if you are the only computer consultant in your small city, you have a unique advantage that probably allows you to charge a premium price for your services. On the other hand, if your specialty is time management and your local community college offers a time management class for 35000,you will need to keep its competitive price in mind when you set fees and when you determine who you will target as your audience. What strengths and weaknesses define your present company? What opportunities and threats could define your future company? 

            Why assess your competition? You may be surprised about who your competitors are. In addition to consulting firms that are the same size, in the same location, and who deliver the same services, you will want to consider those that are larger who can offer more services and those in other states whose employees don’t mind traveling. You may want to consider other organizations such as colleges, associations, and retail stores that provide consulting with the products they sell. You will want to examine your competitors’ positions in the marketplace and how you might position yourself against their weaknesses or in spite of their strengths. For example, a waste-management consulting firm may have a national reputation and employees who have written a book that is respected by the industry. You may be able to underbid them if you have a smaller organization with lower overhead. Consultants frequently overlook college professors as possible competitors, when in fact they can be a strong competitive force for several reasons. First, they have a university name behind them and second, they can easily underbid you, since they already have a full-time job and no overhead. Frequently, universities encourage their professors to consult to obtain practical experience and to gain community exposure.

             Why assess your customers? You will want to assess your present as well as your potential clients. Examine your present clients. Where are they now? Where do they want to be? And how can you help them get there? What services do they use now and what services do you offer that they have not utilized? Is there some opportunity for cross-selling? For taking your services to another department? Look for new clients. Who is in your geographic area that you have not contacted? Perhaps you have been reluctant to call on the larger companies in your area. What can you offer them? If you focus on a specific industry, have you marketed to all the companies in the industry? How about related industries? An assessment will remind you of the many marketing opportunities available to you.

After completing an internal and external assessment of your firm, your competition, and your clients, you will want to assess the messages you are already sending to clients and potential clients. The message is your image or what the client sees and hears from you already. It is important that the image be clear and consistent. Your assessment provides the input you will need to build a strong client base.

                            

                             B: Build a Potential Client Base

Building a potential client base will require that you complete three key actions. First, you will analyze the data you gathered in the Assessment Phase. Second, you will develop a marketing plan. Third, you will target and identify specific clients or groups of clients. This phase can be a lot of work. It can also be confusing. But it is also exciting.

It is a lot of work because you will analyze what you learned in the Assessment Phase to determine which clients you should target. You cannot pursue every potential client in the universe, so you will need to make difficult decisions to narrow the field. Put everything you learned in Phase A about you and your company, about your competitors, and about your potential clients in the mix. Then begin to look for the opportunities. The analysis will lead you to the answer.

This phase can also be confusing. Unless you are a  marketing major, you may have many questions about all the marketing tools available to you. What’s the difference between advertising and publicity? What are promotional activities? What’s the relationship between PR, publicity, and a press release? What’s a media blitz and do you need one? Is there a marketing mix that’s best for consultants? Should you buy a mailing list? What about a brochure? Business  

 cards? Pricing? Direct mail? Telemarketing? Trade shows? Or does any of it matter? There are many marketing

 Tools available to you. Try to see this as many opportunities rather than confusing. Consulting is a unique profession that requires a unique marketing plan. Although all of the options can be confusing at first, a little common sense and a lot of creativity will help you make practical decisions.

In the end, however, this phase is exciting. It is now that you will prepare a marketing plan putting your ideas on paper. Don’t be dismayed if you have a small (or even non-existent) marketing budget. You will be surprised about how much you can do with very little money. You will also begin a plan for prospecting for new clients and new opportunities. Starting something new is always exciting.

                                             C: Contact Potential Clients

This is actually the sales part of the marketing process. In this phase you contact potential clients and convince them to use your services. You will come across concepts such as opening and closing sales, cold calls, client-centered selling, and rain-making. This is the place in the process when you will also want to figure out how you can get your clients to market and sell for you and how to find more repeat business.

As I stated, this is the “sales” step in the process. In a sense, selling is the culmination of the marketing process when you are increasing work with present clients and convincing new clients to use your services. The words “sales” and “marketing” are often linked. They are separate and distinct activities, and yet they are so related that it is difficult to tell when one ends and the other begins.