Are you a small or mid-sized creative firm? (Design firm, digital agency, marketing communications firm, PR firm, social media agency, etc.) Then you most likely struggle with new business development because of the following:
Lack of differentiation. You are “strategic. You have friendly, professional-looking people on your “team page”. You have “award-winning creative.” You have a “proprietary approach” to solving marketing problems. But your competitors describe themselves the same way! You can’t be vanilla.
Your marketing decision maker has a 3-second attention span. This means your positioning has to be spot on and solution-oriented.
These decision makers need to hear your “stories.” You need to reach out frequently – and consistently – with stories on how other companies benefited from working with you.
What should a creative firm’s business development look like?
Well-positioned and differentiated offerings, a CRM, an ever-expanding target database, ongoing content development and re-purposing (case study, blog post, video, etc.), email marketing campaigns, inside salesperson and sales process.
This is what we do for our creative firm clients. Let me know if you’d like to talk more about it.
Resources:
- Case study snapshots.
- Tim Williams, author of Take a Stand for Your Brand, has some additional thoughts on how you might have to “shrink to grow”.
- 10 things creative firms usually say about themselves.