This week I was really pleased to chat with a business owner who attended a session I presented to Condon Advisory’s Parramatta Accountants Discussion Group (PADG).
The session was about the relevance, value and the trust you build in your brand – especially in the professional services segment, which people turned to as they went looking for help, advice and support as they scrambled to navigate their way through subsidies, support packages, shutdowns and structural change brought on by Covid. My bottom-line message to the group was about using marketing to hang on to the Covid upside, instead of sliding back to the set point.
I had written the program last month – so it was kind of weird to be talking about moving on (via Zoom, of course) – right in the week we found ourselves again staying put.
But I digress… back to the business owner. Let’s call him Bob. Bob called with a question not unlike many of you have probably had in the past. “I’m doing marketing, I know I need to shift the business direction – but what do I do next?”
This is where some businesses may start recommending a range of solutions – a revamped website, boosted social to drive audience growth, an advertisement in a particular publication – but these are all just Band-Aids, and we know how easily they fall off.
You have to step back and do the inside work first.
What is “inside work”?
In my chat with Bob, we talked about things like understanding his unique selling proposition (USP), how on-board his people might be for the journey ahead, what work Bob personally found inspiring and uplifting that he could grow the business on, understanding the customers he has, and how he might segment them including who he might need to stop doing business with, to focus on his ideal client and so on and so on.
We offer a session in our business we call the Strategic Shakedown. It has more rigor than the chat I had with Bob, takes about two hours and gets us on our way to providing clients with a solid, strategic and effective marketing solution instead of just a Band-Aid.
If you feel like you need a bit of shakedown for your business, why not get in touch. I’d be happy to be a safe set of ears for an initial chat which you can book via our website here.
Sue Hardman