Why Are Existing Customers Your Best Place to Get New Business in 2012?

Posted by Jami Mullikin on Jan 9, 2012 in agency, B2B, Database Marketing, email marketing, Marketing, Social Media | 1 comment

Break out the Rolodex, as we kick off each year we often forget about our greatest and most affordable marketing opportunities – existing customers. As we start 2012, focus on your customers first for two reasons:

1. Statistically, professional services firms may lose up to 20% of their clients each year. This attrition alone means that you need to retain more clients and replace what you lose before you ever consider a growth plan.
2. Existing customers are the most affordable to reach. A common problem is that clients always view your offerings based on the services that you provided them when they hired you.  A regular marketing program to existing customers can expose clients to the leadership that you offer other clients and allow opportunities to cross-sell additional services that they may not currently lean to you for. A basic CRM program, email marketing and social media are three great ways to do this.

With some signs of economic recovery, it is important that your customers understand the full breadth of your services and that they see the wins that you provide your other clients on a regular basis.  This way, when they decide to come out of their shell and increase their marketing investments you are the first ones that they call.

What are the best strategies that you have found for retaining existing customers?

Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of Good Design.

Posted by Jami Mullikin on Nov 10, 2011 in creative process, Design, Marketing | 1 comment

Good design is:

1. Is innovative – The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.
2. Makes a product useful – A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

What is Marketing?

Posted by Jami Mullikin on Oct 27, 2011 in B2B, Marketing, Sales | 0 comments

I had a good discussion with a friend yesterday who is making a career change from education to marketing.  Afterwards, I started thinking about how to start a discussion about marketing at a foundational level.  So I started thinking about a conversation with Brad Majors back about 10 or 15 years ago where he gave me the simplest definition of marketing, and I adopted it as my own.

Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines. Don’t Let Them Kill Your Best Work.

Posted by Jami Mullikin on Oct 12, 2011 in agency, creative process, entrepreneurship, Marketing, productivity | 1 comment

In marketing, our worlds often revolve around the deadlines.  In the good ole’ days we called it “Chasing the FedEx truck” and at least we got to go home at 8pm.  But once bandwidth increased and we were sending work over email, we had 24 hours in the day to worry about deadlines, like it or not.

Although deadlines often drive our inspiration, on occasion arbitrary deadlines cause us to turn in less than stellar work.

Why I don’t like Creative Briefs.

Posted by Jami Mullikin on Jul 23, 2011 in creative process, Marketing, productivity | 2 comments

In concept, the creative brief serves a great purpose but in the throws of getting work done it is often overlooked and great opportunities to do great work are missed. There are many different formats for a creative brief and I am a believer of simpler is better – and actually, I am not a fan of the creative brief at all.