Today's Marketing Cookie - An Objective Opinion

Today's fortune came from Jim Kropp of Franklin, TN. Jim is the founder of Click Fundraising, an online fundraising engine for clubs, sports, schools, churches and individuals to raise money. You should follow Click on Twitter: @ClickFund

Today's Marketing Cookie is one of the reasons people hire a company like CommCreative. Companies are often comforted by what they "know" and have a difficult time adapting to changes in their marketplace. Is your company like that? Are your competitors suddenly coming out of the woodwork looking fresh, new, and current?

You're stuck in your old ways, you're slowly become irrelevant.  Eventually, you aren't seeing as many leads, the revenue is down, and you're beginning to lose customers. We both know that your company is smarter than the other guys. You're better than this and you've decided it's time to shake things up!

Next, you try and hold some internal meetings, but everyone is already so set in their ways, that the outcome of the meetings continues to look pretty much the same. You try to restructure the website, but the navigation looks exactly like the company org chart, with product silos rather than something more intuitive for the prospect. After a few internal cycles, everyone at the table realizes that you're all been too close to it for too long and you need an outside perspective.

This is the moment when we get the call for help.

We walk into your office and find all of the stakeholders sitting around the conference room table - with fear in their eyes. They are weary and battle-scarred from all the meetings you've had trying to restructure the company's positioning on their own. In some cases, a few of the people are frustrated and just plain grouchy. 

We kick off the engagement by peeling back the layers. We ask what is special about your company? Why do your customers love you? What makes your products and services better than the "other guys"? Rather than focusing on what is wrong, we help you rediscover your greatest strengths. Soon, people are smiling again.

After some time considering the strengths of your company, researching the competition, and working through some ideas back at our shop, we have that amazing "Ah ha! moment".  We love those moments. They make us giddy. Next, our creative team takes the new positioning ideas and something wonderful emerges. The whole thing simply comes to life. 

When we come back to present our thinking, strategy and the creative to you, everyone agrees that you never could have arrived at this point alone. Sometimes an outside objective viewpoint, focused purely on the needs of the prospect is required to get the fresh reboot your company needs. I believe there comes a time to let go of old thinking and consider new ideas ...but don't ask me. I'm biased.