K2M

Slip and Catch

So often clients connect with me when they are in a skyrocket mode…shooting up and fast, everything is clicking/working and they need the tools to be ready for when the emails start coming in and the phone starts to ring.  It’s such an exciting time for them.

There are many times though when a client comes to me, either after that skyrocket moment and they feel the lull of regular business, which feels slow compared to the exciting and fast rocket time. I also meet with clients who begin their first conversation with apologies.  They know they don’t need to apologize to me, but they are really apologizing to themselves.

“I have let my blog slip.” – Guilty here.

“I have not emailed my client list enough.” – So guilty here.

“I haven’t redesigned anything on my social media in forever.” – Guilty.

“I don’t use all of the social media channels I could.” – Guilty too.

A favorite was when a new client said, “I haven’t cleaned my house in months.”  Not part of the business discussion…but she needed to unload.  And by the way — Guilty too.

Yes, there is a level of therapy that can be part of the client relationship. So much about business and marketing is about relationships and interactions after all. So, whey the guilt about her home? People hold themselves up to unrealistic standards about running a business and a home. They get intertwined in our self-assessments – I find this especially true for women vis-à-vis their homes.

It is not only women. A male client told me that since he started his business his personal life had suffered, and he was hoping that as I took over some of the marketing responsibility, it would help him and his family carve out more time together. That was a priority for him because he felt like he was missing out.

However – NO guilt necessary. No self-blaming. We are a Love Yourself business.  First of all, nobody succeeds and sells as well when they are depressed, self-loathing or negative. Secondly, when someone slips in their own business goals and knows it, they have likely caught themselves before too much damage has been done. So, a business that starts out with a healthy and regular blog schedule that slips and falls off the routine for a bit, but notices it and reaches out for my help before it’s gone on too long, can usually get back on the blog wagon and fix it.

Did they lose possible business during the down time?  Probably. Does it mean the business is not savable?  Unlikely.

When the guilt is about not taking all available opportunities, such as not using all available social media channels, or not using all possible sales channels, again – no guilt needed.  Not doing enough, but doing some or a lot is still doing.  It is a great platform from which to build. There are times when a client will tell me in a hushed voice about what they have not tried. That’s ok. In fact, it’s great. It means we have a starting point to assess and perhaps work from.

The bottom line is that we focus on the achievements of our clients and on their inroads towards success as much as possible. People catch themselves and we create support to help catch them.

Life is full of Slips and Catches. We all slip and then catch ourselves. Expecting perfection and no errors is unrealistic and doesn’t lead to much more than stress and disappointment.  I think a goal of near perfection and no errors is great, as long as we understand that as people we are inherently engineered to slip sometimes. It’s more than ok. It’s just great. It’s real life. It is what gives us opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to try again, to work harder next time, to train more, to build, to learn.

People are perfect, but not because they are not flawed or because they err. It’s our mistakes and nicks and dents that make us interesting and experienced and wise. You’ve slipped? Bring it on – we’ve got you!

Analogy for the Week: Snow Plows and Marketing Plans

Small dump truck equipped with a snow plow on the front and with tire chains of two different types. TriMet (Portland, Oregon, transit system), Dec. 2008.

We have a friend who supplements his income plowing driveways in the wintertime.

I discussed his financing with him once. He stated that he prefers to have customers who hire him “for the season”. They pay a certain amount for the year and he promises to plow their driveways every time it snows. When the winter is rough, he may be around far more times than if the winter is mild. Either way, the cost is the same.

It stands to reasons that this retainer fee has benefits and drawbacks for the “plower” and the “residents”.

The snow plow owner may in fact have very high costs, both labor and supplies, in colder, snowier years. Residents, on the other hand, may feel like they are not getting a good deal in warmer winters, when they are paying the same amount, but aren’t requiring the same amount of service.

The snow plow owner is aware of these nuances. For him, the most important thing is for the homeowner to feel like they are “covered” for snow removal and not feel like they have to call every time the skies darken. Furthermore, for his small business model, it’s much easier to collect a seasonal or monthly check as opposed to trying to chase down his fees for snow removal on a “per event” basis.

We struggle with the same issues as a small, but growing marketing company. For some of our larger clients, it makes perfect sense for us to be “on retainer” all the time, knowing that there are regular tasks that we do like social media posting, blog writing, website management and updating, press releases and being a part of the fabric of these businesses. These companies would probably spend too much precious time (as would we) if we treated each service as an a la carte item, billing separately, and keeping track of what could be quite onerous paperwork. Of course, the onus is on us, the marketing professionals, to make sure our fees represent what we spend in time and staffing on the client.

However, not everybody needs monthly attention. Some people truly have “term limited” projects, like a website that needs to built or refurbished, an event that needs to be marketed and managed, flyers, email marketing or press releases that need doing.

We try very hard to spend our clients’ dollars efficiently and fairly. Although we understand the snow plow model, not all weather patterns are the same, not all driveways are the same, and no two clients’ needs are alike.

Hitting all the Channels: Marketing an Event

sandwich boardK2M recently was involved in a community event, a brand new event, one that a small cultural organization was putting on in a venue new to them. How do you get people to come to a one-time only event, especially if you are a small organization with few board members? What are the best marketing and public relations moves when you have no data on previous programs? What will work?

The answer we discovered, fortunately and unfortunately, is DO EVERYTHING!

We say unfortunately, because every idea takes time to execute. We say fortunately because we received immediate feedback that every little bit counts. So what did we try?

  • Paid advertisement in local community magazine. This lets your core group know that your organization is alive and well and doing programming. This is an expensive element, but it’s sort of counterintuitive. Even if the ad isn’t necessarily “money well spent”, not spending the money makes you look defunct and inactive.
  • Non-paid pre-publicity in community newspapers. We discovered that some people came from as far as Lansing from a tweet they received from Metro Times. So that worked, too!
  • Facebook posts. For the aged 40-65 crowd, this is the same as word of mouth and it’s free. The organizational Facebook post was important, but even more so, were the reposts and shares and likes.
  • Facebook ads: These are relatively inexpensive and our survey indicated several people attended and were at the event because of the ad.
  • Information on the website: Your website has to be accurate and up to date if the website address appears on ads. People will go to the website if they forget the address of the venue or the time. It is not “outbound” but it is dependable inbound marketing. And when they go, the website needs to look presentable and inhabited.
  • The sandwich board on the street with the poster and the arrow to your event. If a tired law school student walks by and realizes there is a concert around the corner with free cookies and water, it looks pretty tempting.

So, the takeaway: do everything you have time and money for.  And ask every attendee you can how they heard about the event, so you can use data-driven decisions in the future.

 

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