"We try to recommend only programs we're confident will work well for you," I assured the prospect. "Our reputation matters, and that reputation is based virtually only on how well we perform for clients."For a quarter century, we've worked with entrepreneurs or top management of companies (of all sizes) who have both the privilege and the burden of being in charge. They may have gotten where they are because they invented or improved a product line, because they are financially savvy, because they are outstanding in understanding technology of one type or another, or any of so many reasons. Many times, the leader's expertise is not in marketing. What's more, now, many older marketing maps might as well be torn up and thrown away today.
"You can't get there from here" if you don't know the new rules.
It follows that upstream consultative marketing and sales support have become key van Schouwen Associates offerings. Rather than getting a call when a company president or marketing VP knows what he or she wants to say or do, we often start out at the business strategy level. That is as it should be.
Our clients will always understand their own products and services intimately and will know where they want to take their businesses. Our marketing expertise lets us be valuable at the very next step: drawing the road map for marketing. Sure, we can just drive the car and follow a route mapped out by the client, but that's not generally going to yield the most successful trip. In fact, the more a good marketing firm and its client work together at the inception of planning, the better and less lonely the trip will be.
A few tips for "starting at the very beginning" with a marketing partner:
-Find a good partner with experience in where you are going right now. Maybe you can work with a marketing firm you already know or trust. But maybe you have outgrown them. If so, get recommendations for a new partner from businesses that have done something similar to what you are undertaking now (be it product launch, new vertical market entry, repositioning, or even salvaging a troubled brand).
-Start yesterday. The right marketing firm can provide sound counsel much earlier than you might think. We've worked on product launches even while the product is still in early engineering. We've helped firms change focus just as they were first seeing the black clouds on the horizon themselves.
-Don't worry about the medium. You don't need to decide how to use the Web, advertising, public relations or whatever quite yet - not until you get the message right. Until, in fact, you get the premise behind the message right. Then and only then is it time to talk about how to conduct that outreach.
