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?

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.
3. Is aesthetic – The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
4. Makes a product understandable – It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.
5. Is unobtrusive – Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.
6. Is honest – It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
7. Is long-lasting – It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.
8. Is thorough down to the last detail – Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.
9. Is environmentally friendly – Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
10. Is as little design as possible – Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

 More about Dieter Rams on wikipedia.

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.

Marketing is any effort that assists in the sale of something. Remember that old adage, “Nothing happens until somebody sells something”? Well nothing sells until somebody markets something.

So what does successful marketing look like? Regardless of the the type of resources invested – time, energy, and/or money – successful marketing is an investment of resources with a return greater than that investment before profit.

How do you define marketing?

Although deadlines often drive our inspiration, on occasion arbitrary deadlines cause us to turn in less than stellar work.  So the next time you are facing a deadline and you just aren’t there yet, ask yourself what the client really wants – great work late or poor work on time?

Clients will always remember that your work was wrong but they will rarely remember it was late.  The next time you know you need more time, be honest and tell them. Most reasonable clients will opt for better work and may even appreciate your honesty and transparency.

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.

Over the years, I have always stressed the importance of a brief to maximize the effort put into each marketing project and to identify those projects that appear to be small but may actually be a really big opportunity. To accomplish this, I developed a simple Project Brief and dropped the word creative from the title. Why do that? Because in the essence of time, many project managers and account execs try to say that a revision, maintenance, or low budget job may not require the thinking that a “creative” job does. To me. this is where many marketers miss big opportunities.

All projects share the same considerations and I recommend a Project Brief format that I call O.A.O.A.O. It is easy to remember and teaches less experienced marketers the key components of every project.

O.A.O.A.O – Five key components of a successful Project Brief.

Objective - What are we trying to accomplish with the budget provided? What will success look like? Frame the big picture.

Audience - Who specifically will this campaign target? Top customers? Existing Customers? Prospects? 37 prospects in Houston? Go deep and be specific here.

Offer - What can/will you offer this audience to do what you ask? What is in it for them? If you don’t have an offer, don’t spend the money.

Action - What do you want them to do? Call? Click? RSVP? Make it obvious.

Opportunity - This is where you get to be creative in a Project Brief. Are we doing this because that is what we always do? Then the biggest opportunity may be to do something new and different. This is where you find the stories of the Eat Mor Chikin or the Priceless campaigns. You seize opportunities to look at projects in a different way than your customers and offer creative solutions that meet the objectives of the budget, resonate with the audience, entice them with an offer they can’t refuse, and then tell them where to get it.

Try it. Make creativity a part of every project by making the details easy for your team to understand. If you like it, please let me know.

What ways have you found to seize the opportunity in every project?

Very few brands succeed by trying to serve all three. Pick two. Stick to it.

Ask yourself this:

I am trying to ___________________ but ___________________ .

The first blank represents your goal. The second represents the problem.

Sometimes finding a problem is harder than finding a solution. This makes it so simple its scary. How do you break down complex problems?

Smart work takes time. Time to think through the problem before we ever get to a solution. Sometimes it even takes more creativity to find the problem than it does to come up with solutions. So make sure that you give yourself enough time on the front end of a project to identify the real problem and then concept a smart solution.

Good work looks nice but often solves the wrong problem. Smart work defines the problem, and then delivers a great solution that drives results.

I was fortunate to get a chance to participate in Brains on Fire’s 2010 Fire Sessions today and, as usual, they put on an extraordinary event. I started my career with them almost 15 years ago and over the last 10 years have remained great friends with them all and enjoyed watching them spread their passion and find their voice.

Their work is phenomenal and their attitudes are contagious. But they are not great for what they do, but for who they are. They are an all-star team of smart, creative problem-solvers that practice what they preach and do not settle for compromise. Congrats BOF crew on a job well done, and on the book which I look forward to reading this weekend.

In no particular order, here are 35 key points I took away from Geno Church, Steve Knox, and Max Lenderman.

1. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes.
2. Practice. Practice. Practice. Start small and accept failure.
3. Go where your customers are.
4. Everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
5. Engagement and depth, not numbers.
6. Average tenure of a CMO is 19 months: tough job!
7. Advertisers, media companies and agencies all have to change but can’t.
8. Victory is celebrated in advocacy, not sales.
9. Advocates beget other advocates and decrease marketing expenses. This is the business case.
10. Advocacy marketing is the new practice in marketing.
11. Harness the power of third party independents.
12. Talk about people and human beings, not technology.
13. Not consumers. But people.
14. Reciprocal altruism – give something with no expectation of return.
15. Social and transactional can not coexist.
16. Interact, listen, respond.
17. The brain is designed not to think.
18. Break Schemas – mental models that provide assumptions so we do not have to think.
19. A brand must be congruent most of the time, but not all of the time.
20. Connectors have social networks larger than normal and represent 20% of society.
21. The concept of “The Influencials” can not be validated by P&G. There is only a core group of people that talk to more people.
22. Deliver gifts of unexpected knowledge!!!!!!! The big idea of the day.
23. Cooperation brings happiness.
24. Advocacy vs amplification. Buzz is worthless.
25. Have a purpose higher than selling something.
26. 300 people is statistically confident at 85-90% as a representation of all of the US.
27. Don’t fight everything. Learn to let go.
28. The web will never be asynchronous, face-to-face conversations.
29. A Word-of-mouth purchase buys 200% more and sends 2x as many referrals.
30. Scale based on existing resources.
31. IBM employees can use whatever they want to start conversations and have dialog.
32. Establish centers of excellence.
33. KPI is measured in the same way as other business units.
34. Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Engage me and I will understand.
35. Create experiences and expect nothing in return and your customers will follow.

If I missed anything, let me know.

Wow, it is a great time to be a marketer. So, we may have missed Madison Avenue, Ogilvy and rubylith, but this could be one of the greatest times ever to be in advertising. Although the foundations of good marketing cross all mediums and are more important now than ever, the ability to deliver low-cost, high impact messaging has been revolutionized with youtube and handheld HD. This video is amazing and should inspire us with endless possibilities for video on the web. If you are not using video to promote your product or service yet, what are you waiting for?

Credits go to Michael Koerbel at http://www.majekpictures.com and can be seen here on vimeo.