Why should agency owners worry about marketing? The answer is simple: To make payroll. That means the money to pay the most important person in the world, which is you, and then to your team.
First, let’s define terms. By marketing we mean the process of generating new client leads and then converting those leads into clients. This is also known as business development.
Certain business development activities get prospects to raise their hands and say they are interested in what you do. Other activities are designed to take that interest and convert it into a signed agreement with a deposit.
What does classic research say about how prospective clients decide if they trust agencies? Here are the five ways prospects judge you and how marketing applies, according to the book Strategic Market Management by David Aaker:
Competence. Knowledge and skill of the professional or consultant and their ability to convey trust and confidence (You demonstrate and prove your expert knowledge by speaking and writing and by the questions you ask prospective clients.)
Tangibles. Appearance of physical facilities, communication materials, equipment and personnel (You do this by the appearance of your website, book, and how-to handouts.)
Empathy. Caring, individualized attention that a firm provides its clients (Educating people to solve problems before they hire you proves you care.)
Responsiveness. Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service (When you promise to give people things like special reports and white papers, do it promptly.)
Reliability. Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately (Prospective clients will judge you on how organized your seminars, speeches, and website are.)
When I was a client of Michael Gerber’s EMyth Academy, we came up with a different type of grading scale. Instead of a letter grade scale like A to F, or a number scale like 1 to 10, we used a scale that went from negative 10 to positive 10.
Now think about it for a moment. Not every business would rank in the positive territory on every factor. Many a business needs to make up negative ground.
In rating my agency, I needed to decide where we were on the scale based on observed behaviors.
For the empathy scale, for example, a positive 10 might be clients hug us each time they see us. For a negative 10, there might be a threat of fisticuffs when they see us.
At the time I thought I was exaggerating because a 10 should be highly rare. Today I have a vendor that actually hugs me every time they see me. They get a 10 rating. Luckily, no vendor is challenging me to put up my dukes whenever we’re in the same room.
Want another example? For the competence scale, a positive 10 might be a know-it-all. A negative 10 is a team that is dumb as a stump when it comes to your industry. You can see that most agencies would rate somewhere in the middle in either negative or positive territory.
Regardless of the score, it gives you a place to start. The next step is prioritizing the characteristics and deciding what to work on first. As you work on the characteristics, determine where you want to be and then come up with a plan for closing the gap.
The process of closing the gaps is what I call the game worth playing. As the Harvard Business School professor and author David Maister said in his book Strategy and the Fat Smoker, “Rome wasn’t built in a day; but make no mistake, we are building Rome here.”
Best wishes with your building work.