If you arrived here looking for advice on choosing the right underwear, then I apologise in advance – this blog post is actually about getting the most from your strategic marketing partner! Stay on though, its’ good reading and may be useful to you in some aspect of your life.
When we sit our ‘chemistry’ meeting with a new client/prospect, we always ask the question ‘what does success look like?’ Some clients have an immediate answer and a clear vision of what success looks like but others needs some guidance.
From our perspective, if we can agree on an answer to this question our work is far easier and much more enjoyable because we are delivering against a clear goal. So the tighter the brief from the client, the better we can respond.
A prime example is one of our current clients who gave us a very clear challenge. “I want to make more money out of my product, without having to make more of my product”. It may sound like a Utopian view of the world that most business owners would subscribe to, but this clear ambition, once broken down, has been an exciting challenge for us. We have had to think outside the proverbial box and come up with a range of new ideas and following an update meeting with the client today, it is clear we are making good progress.
We have introduced a series of strategies from moving a portion of sales from the wholesale channel to a new direct to consumer channel (nearly three times the price to the client for the same volume of product) to considering how the brand value can be put to good use as a licensed product, supporting other people’s product in return for a small commission.
The client is happy with the approach and really likes some of the opportunities it presents and we have really enjoyed working on some different ideas mixing traditional elements of marketing theory with some more modern aspects of our toolkit.
So whether you are working with us, or another agency, make sure your marketing strategy (and briefs) is tight – it keeps everyone focused!
#freerangethinking
