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This month’s BrandingWire offering asks an interesting question. A B2B consultancy that works primarily with high-tech and health care clients is losing market share. What should they do?
Here’s their current situation:
- They are losing contracts to lower pricing and bigger firms.
- They’ve stopped growing.
- If they do land a client, they usually only buy one project and don’t return.
Here’s how they describe their client profile:
- Revenues: $1 million to $25 million
- Employees: 150 or fewer
- Verticals: High-tech and health care
- Location: North America
Sometimes the best advice we need to offer a prospect or client is — you shouldn’t market anything right now. To jump into marketing tactics at this stage with this particular client would be putting lipstick on a pig.
There are questions that need asking long before we pull the trigger on any attempt to help them attract new clients. They have problems that marketing cannot fix. And it would be irresponsible of us to encourage them to spend money that’s just going to perpetuate the problem.
This is a classic mistake many businesses make. They’re struggling so they throw more marketing dollars at the problem. But what if the problem has little to do with marketing? Here are some harsh realities that this client needs to face before they launch any new marketing initiatives.
Your target market is too big
The range between $1 million and $25 million is huge. Companies on each side of that size spectrum behave completely differently. My guess is that our client needs to drastically narrow that range to find their sweet spot. Right now, they are aiming at much too wide a target.
You don’t know how you are perceived
We need to have some in-depth conversations with past clients, current clients and those clients who opted for a competitor. We need to understand, from their perspective, how this company is coming across.
The biggie: You can’t sustain business
But, without a doubt the most glaring problem we need to solve is the company’s inability to keep current clients happy and coming back for more.
If you can’t earn a current client’s trust and more business, then you are destined to fail. No business can be profitable with a revolving door or clients. The costs of acquisition is just too high.
Bottom line:
This year’s marketing budget is going to be dedicated to identifying and fixing the problems that have gotten our client into this situation. We can’t market them out of the hole they’ve dug.
As is the BrandingWire tradition, there will be several other marketing pros who will weigh in on this scenario. Check out their posts as well!