Posts tagged: marketing consultant

How to Profit From Making… And Losing… That New Business Pitch

May 27, 2010, by 8 comments

In the world of mega ad agencies, new business pitches are intense affairs; jobs hang in the balance (and more importantly, egos).

For a freelancer or consultant, losing a new business pitch isn’t the same kind of catastrophe.

You’re never happy, but then, you probably don’t have hundreds (or thousands) of hours at risk (like a big ad agency might).

Just yesterday, I got the news about a small website project RFP I’d contested.

I lost.

The Project

As losses go, this doesn’t rank anywhere near my Top Five Most Painful New Biz Failures.

It was a small job, and I didn’t invest a lot of hours in the proposal.

And yes – I approve of the vendor the prospect eventually did choose. Nothing hurts worse than losing to the marketing equivalent of a charlatan, and local vendors almost always enjoy an advantage (this prospect was located at the extreme far end of the country).

Still, it was a project I wanted – an interesting project for an interesting client.

How do I profit from the loss?

Learn From Your Failures

Honest feedback from the prospect can only be useful in future pitches – provided you’re getting useful feedback instead of a simple brushoff.

If you’re on good terms with prospect – and receive any opening whatsoever – then it’s OK to ask a few questions, like:

  • What aspects of the competition were the most critical?
  • What did the winners do that led to the win?
  • What aspects of your pitch were off the mark?

We learn more from our failures than our successes, and what you learn this time will lead to success the next time – provided you take the feedback to heart.

(Helpful hint: a common mistake when responding to an RFP involves misreading the RFP or project spec, and missing the mark as a result.)

Second, Position Yourself to Profit

Profit? You lost, right? How do you profit?

Simple.

Projects rarely go as planned. Should the winner’s project hit a brick wall – a reality I’ve benefited from several times in my career – you may find yourself on the receiving end of a phone call.

For that matter, the project might be gone, but other projects beckon.

Aside from the local angle, one reason I lost this simple website project because I focused too much on the bigger picture stuff – the overall online presence.

I stressed content flow, integration of a stronger email program with social media, re-purposing content across multiple media channels and other concepts.

But I didn’t offer enough detail about the site project itself (I did offer several recent examples of similar projects, but that wasn’t enough).

The opportunity here?

The winner is a small design firm. They’ll do a good job on the CMS. But once it’s done, they are too.

I’m keeping in touch with the client (I asked for permission to do so during our conversation). After the site’s launched and things have settled in, it’s time to remind the prospect – preferably by demonstrating success with another client – that his membership-based nonprofit needs a stronger email program.

And while we’re at it, let’s get the social media ball rolling.

In other words, I lost the website battle, but I can still win the larger marketing war.

Keep marketing, Tom Chandler.

Today's Google Buzz(kill) Lesson: Be Careful What You Recommend

February 16, 2010, by 3 comments

Much of the online universe woke up last week to discover Google was involuntarily disclosing the names of their email contacts to the world, and if there’s a lesson here, it could be this: Making wads of money on other people’s content doesn’t necessarily render you omnipotent.

For marketers, there’s also a larger lesson.

The buzz about Google Buzz isn't great.

The buzz about Google Buzz isn't great.

Within hours of first seeing Google Buzz (I didn’t like what I saw and turned it off), I received two emails from online marketing “experts” (note the quotes); both were positively glowing about Google Buzz, and neither seemed aware of the firestorm brewing – or of the privacy risks to their clients.

Simply put, it’s never been easier to pass information to an audience.

Which is a poor excuse for passing bad information to that audience.

Especially if that audience is paying for your expertise.

Succumbing to social media’s “get it while it’s hot” time pressure entails some real risks – especially for marketing consultants.

After all, we’re supposed to know this stuff.

Which precludes recommending (or hyping) services solely because they’re a trending topic on Twitter.

It also forced me to ask myself if I ever recommended a product or service to client without wholly knowing the ramifications of that endorsement.

And sadly, the answer is yes.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: The Good Morning Silicon Valley site offers up a compelling argument explaining how Google might seem surprised by the frankly predictable reaction to their Google Buzz fiasco…

Have You Hugged Your Online Marketing Map Today?

August 24, 2009, by 2 comments

Lately, there’s been precious little writing going on here – an odd reality given that you’ll find the word “writer” in this blog’s title.

It’s not sloth.

It’s a slew of new Web projects. A little teaching. A rare fly fishing vacation/road trip. And the happy byproduct of taking my own advice (I know, it amuses me too).

That advice?

The Value-Added Copywriter, Meet the Online Marketing Map

Becoming an indispensable resource for your clients – the “value-added copywriter” concept I’ve plugged ad nauseum on the Underground – is a concept becoming more relevant to marketers, not less.

It’s where you apply knowledge and experience to your client’s problems, thereby transcending simple “word jockey” status.

My reality? Clients are happily paying me to craft their online presence instead of simply writing their copy.

In a purely economic sense, that’s a good thing.

The copywriting industry is not the rose garden it used to be – especially at the middle and low end – and after you’ve done something for a while (hint to social media gurus – a “while” is longer than two months), you might as well get paid for what you’ve learned along the way.

Tapping into a couple decades of marketing experience is how my recent teaching gig – which I expected to be a temporary, short-lived thing – became an ongoing concern. In fact, I just signed to do what amounts to a monthlong, fulltime classroom stint later this year.

I still write – and I’m not here to mourn the passing of my copywriting career. It’s alive and kicking. But it’s changing.

Have you overhauled your online marketing presence lately?

Is my online marketing presence changing along with it?

And more importantly to my gentle readers, is yours changing as your business does?

Now, The Inevitable Online Overhaul

I tell my online marketing students the basics of marketing remain in place, but that all the details are subject to change by the end of our class session.

They laugh, but only because they recognize the grain of truth buried there.

I’m simply recognizing the dynamic nature of our online world, and I mean it when I say marketing has changed more in the last ten years than in the prior 100.

Those that sit still too long risk becoming embarrassing dinosaurs.

That’s not to say you must embrace every new social media fad. Or abandon your current online presence after five minute’s thought. And in fact, if your current system involves sales letters and phone calls – and it’s working – then keep it.

Success trumps faddishness every time.

For example, this Copywriter Underground blog was first launched as an experiment; I didn’t feel right advising clients about blogs without really knowing how they worked.

The response was gratifying, and I quickly ended up on Google’s first page for “Copywriter” – a move which saved me a big chunk of change in Google ad fees.

Still, after 24 months, I realized the leads generated weren’t all that relevant to my changing business. So the Underground simply became a writer’s platform.

Regular readers will know I stopped relying on random leads, and began courting the clients I wanted to work for – often using personalized methods like my lumpy mailer.

The results haven’t been swift, but they have been gratifying.

Is this whole post a long-winded gloat? No (though yes, I’m perfectly capable of gloating).

How long has it been since you sat down and evaluated your online marketing presence? How long has it been since you’ve taken stock of your own marketing – and the media channels you’re using?

Are you working for the clients you want? Are you doing the kind of work you want do do?

The Online Marketing Map

When my small business students emerge from my Online Marketing Boot Camp, they do so with an online marketing map – a guide which directs their online marketing efforts.

It’s both aspirational and realistic; it’s used to define what marketing the business wants to happen (and how, and when), but also provides the kind of reality check needed in an era where already-stretched small business owner is told they need to foolishly commit to five blog posts a week.

Marketing is driven by business goals (not the latest technology), and yet an increasing number of small businesses are letting technology drive their marketing decisions, not their brains.

When the technology tail starts wagging the dog, trouble often follows.

In this case, my own online marketing map has fallen on hard times.

My bare-bones copywriting site hasn’t changed significantly for years. And it doesn’t reflect my new reality.

Time to follow my own advice. Time to craft a new Online Marketing Map.

What time is it for you?