In a group yesterday an attorney expressed the frustration that all the marketing people she spoke to only seemed to be promoting their service and not understanding the big picture of what she was trying to accomplish.
The irony is that the real problem here is best described by a term commonly used in law (or, at least the LSAT exam).
The vast majority of marketing vendors are selling a particular service that may be NECESSARY, but not SUFFICIENT.
In the law, it means something like a piece of evidence may be necessary to prove an argument, but that piece of evidence on its own doesn’t do it.
I know my kids were at home when the cookies went missing, but I still can’t prove they were the ones who ate them.
On the farm, we’d say to grow a crop it’s necessary to plant a seed. But especially with as dry of a Spring we’ve had so far, just planting a seed is not sufficient to generate a yield.
It still has to be cultivated and harvested.
When it comes to marketing, we might say it is necessary to have a website.
But a website alone is not going to be sufficient for generating clients.
Neither will social media content.
Neither will having amazing intake or consultative sales skills.
Branding, marketing, and sales all have to be working in concert.
Undoubtedly, this attorney (who was wanting to expand a very niche practice beyond just referrals and word of mouth) was meeting with folks, explaining her goal, and then having to listen to them narrow in on how their specific offering was the answer when it was obvious to her that it wasn’t going to get her all the way there.
There are plenty of shady marketing vendors out there. But there are also plenty of great ones.
But you don’t go to a tactician for a strategy.
You understand the strategy, THEN you find the tacticians to properly execute the stages or component pieces.
Unfortunately, there’s this gap where you have tacticians at the ground level, and then you have general business consultants that talk about sales and marketing from so high up, all they can really do is set goals and review metrics.
There are not many of us that focus on sales and marketing from a strategic level, where we are close enough to understand how all the pieces fit together, and high enough to create plans to get there…
There are no silver bullets. And if something in your marketing isn’t working, it may be because it’s underperforming, but it may also be because you don’t have all the other pieces in place to make it work.
Plan, Prepare, Plant, Cultivate, Harvest, Propagate.
If one piece isn’t in place, the others will be pointless, no matter how necessary they are.
#clientcultivation
