Does it pay to get lean — To cut the fat, overhead, waste, and excess baggage in your architectural, engineering and construction marketing? The answer, undoubtedly, is “yes” — and the solutions may surprise you, as they will be as individual as your business and personality.
The ideas here may provide some clues about a marketing diet sure to reduce your costs and increase your effectiveness.
Set a goal based on best practices and norms — but nothing too pie in the sky.
Say your ideal personal weight is 171 pounds based on your height/weight body-mass index, and the high normal range is 178 — and you weigh 188. Your initial goal can be to get to 178 — once you are on your way, you’ll find yourself motivated to carry on to achieve the second (ideal) goal.
In marketing, this means setting a good goal within reach of attainment. Maybe it will be to develop an effective measuring model — and then to target the number of leads you can fulfill, or amount of business development time you can have professionals in your practice achieve (by speaking, meeting old clients, or the like). Once you get past your first goal, you can go for something more ambitious. ?Look to industry benchmarks and possibly non-competitive successful peers (businesses in other cities for your targets.)
Match the strategies with your personality?and values.
It’s hard for me to suggest “what to do” for YOU here in a general blog posting — because, well, you know yourself better than anyone else. You may be an introvert or extrovert, be analytical or creative; entrepreneurial or systems-minded. Respect your own perspectives and personality in developing your plan and setting your goals. (If you wish some individual advice, here is where to start.)
Start now; Don’t wait for perfection or until another condition is met.
Yeah, I am not a great fan of New Years resolutions, because so many people make half-baked efforts to improve — but only after having one last binge on Dec. 31. If you are serious about this stuff, you’ll start on Dec. 31 and forget that last binge. (Wait, today IS Dec. 31 . . .)
Lean is good: Keep it simple, cut the waste and fat.
You’ll be amazed about the savings you can achieve with a little belt-tightening. Agreed, you don’t want to obsess with pennies at the expense of dollars — some marketing expenses are essential and you don’t want to kill everything good for the sake of a modest savings. But take a look at your routines, embedded practices, and old systems, and see if they work the way they should, or can be changed.
There — the foundations of a New Years Eve marketing diet. But how can you get started? This blog doesn’t provide a specific path, because you are unique. You could call on a marketing coach, of course.
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