The start of a new year provides the opportunity for a clean slate and moving forward on your resolutions. It’s also reality-check time.
A lot of businesses and organizations talk about change but many don’t really want to deal with it. In other cases, the best of intentions give way to daily demands and brushfires. It’s very common to hear business leaders – particularly in professional services such as Law, Accounting and Engineering – say they had the right ideas in their strategic Marketing plan but just kept getting pulled away to other priorities.
Effective Marketing requires sustained activity in three phases:
1) Planning;
2) Implementation; and
3) Reassessment. Each one of these areas presents its share of challenges. Each is essential for clearly communicating who you are and delivering your unique selling proposition to the right audience.
Planning: Often outside perspective, offering objective assessments and focused, concrete steps to achieve specific objectives, can be the necessary catalyst for meaningful change.
A Communication Audit conducted by a consulting professional is a cost-effective approach that brings fresh eyes to marketing activities. It will yield a fuller, more candid SWOT analysis than you are likely to gain from an in-house workgroup. It will also offer solid ideas and insight into using existing resources more effectively, while identifying blindspots.
Implementation: Many go through the ritual of assessment and visioning but find it’s a lot harder to keep moving forward and implement. Change is difficult and the dynamic process needs determined management. Inertia is a powerful force but so are daily distractions and challenges.
A good consultant with focused responsibilities as a project manager can keep the implementation process on track, saving time, money and headache. Professional help adds value by establishing a programmatic purpose and procedures to marketing activities that can survive a dynamic work environment post implementation.
Reassessment: Setting up a marketing program with specific measurable objectives is commonsense business in today’s competitive marketplace. Reassessment and adjustment are required activities on a regular basis. Consistent review and fine-tuning to keep you on-message with the right audience is another value-added dimension that a consultant can bring to your Marketing efforts.
All of this is forward thinking: Commitment and followthrough today means you won’t be revisiting the same old resolutions again after another year of missed opportunities.