“We’re a best kept secret so we’re forced to do business as a commodity. We’re losing sales and market share. What can we do?”
This was the lament of the CEO of a $30 million, family owned business that had been in business since 1914. What do you do when your legacy company’s operational expertise and distinctive customer advantages are assimilated across your industry by word but not necessarily in deed? As more competitors enter your market and sell customers that they do what you do at a lower price, but they really don’t, it’s hard to compete and win your share of the business when your customers are price-driven commodity buyers?
Our advice was to change the game so you can win serving on-purpose customers. This engagement involved:
- Re-affirming and updating the company Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values
- Providing Chief Marketing Officer services and assembled a specialized team to bridge gaps in marketing talent and provided strategic services: persona development, website redesign, social media design and posting, lead generation and follow-up, etc
- Defining the terms and conditions where our client and their customer could all win and profit
- Determining internal gaps in the customer journey and experience and fixing them
- Training to a culture of customer care and communication
- Codifying systems and repairing
Within a month of launching a new website, two new customers signed contracts that more than paid for the CMO Services.