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In preparing for an upcoming wealth advisory workshop to assist firms in defining how best to maximize their business development efforts, we prepared a slide that took less than 30 seconds to make.
Every square inch was filled with unique titles. What was the page? It was a single day’s worth of inbound ‘top tips’ and ‘must read’ article titles. Each title had an aggressive call to action and the promise of immediate improvement if you only ‘implement this’ and ‘try that’ and ‘don’t miss this’ and by all means ‘avoid that’. Just putting the slide together made us want to hire the nearest zen master. Were the tips helpful? Maybe. Were they overwhelming? Absolutely.
We talk to firms all the time about how best to build their businesses. There are always various opinions and ideas from passionate representatives of each firm suggesting more or less digital marketing, more or less branding work, more or less team work. What we know for sure is that throwing a lot of _ _ _ _ against the wall and waiting to see what sticks is not a strategy. Hope is also not a strategy (but its a useful perspective:-). So, what is a viable strategy?
Feel free to take in all of the market’s ‘idea soup’, but in the end, decide what matters most to the firm. Where does the firm shine? What attributes best define the firm? What unique value proposition does the firm have? Once defined, determine the best avenues to deliver that message–both time and medium.
Most importantly, don’t be side tracked. Commitment to a well structured, clearly defined game plan that the whole team is on board with is the first bite, and the last bite, you should take. Feel free to keep collecting the ‘idea soup’. Place interesting articles into a repository and once per quarter set some time aside to review them. If there is something magical you’ve missed, revisit the game plan. Perhaps a slight tweak will be in order, but the firm will ultimately be best served by the consistent application of its time and resources towards the defined game plan–not bending with the wind. Most initiatives will take a solid 1-2 years to truly produce results. Be consistent, stay the course, and take the daily onslaught of ‘must do's’ with a grain of salt (and maybe a bit of tequila on the side.)
Related: Marketing in Volatile Markets