Get A Second Opinion

When you get a diagnosis from a physician, it's always a good idea to get a second opinion. The same holds true for your business. In the vernacular of marketing, we call this a "marketing assessment".

A marketing assessment is a detailed report from an outside source looking in on your business. Think of it as an impartial opinion on what your business is doing right, doing wrong, and areas where you can improve. This blog's purpose is to help business owners see their business from their customer's perspective. A marketing assessment does the same thing.

Let's face it—you're too close to your business to give it an objective review. You know how things are supposed to work, and, being human, you have a blind spot to failings. Consequently, you can be hyper-critical of things that have little or no bearing on your overall success. You're in business for a reason. Your product or service is unique, desirable and appealing. If not, the free market would have taken care of closing your business already. The fact that you're still in business even after terrific struggles is testament to your success. But you can do better. Billy Joel said that sometimes just surviving is a noble fight, but you're probably not interested in just surviving.

A marketing assessment is akin to planning a trip. You have a destination in mind—perhaps a sales goal, perhaps a new product or service launch—but without a plan to promote it, you're heading out on the road with no direction. A marketing assessment is a little different than a true market assessment, although a complete marketing assessment will include information about the market at large and your place in it. A marketing assessment addresses how your business currently operates and how it's perceived from a customer's point of view. After all, isn't that the most important perspective?

Here are the things to look for in a useful marketing assessment:

1. CURRENT CLIMATE. What is the position of your business in your market? What is your current client base? Who is your competition? What marketing initiatives have you undertaken in the past 6 months? What has been the success of each? Where do you stand in sales volume from comparable months, either the previous year or previous months? What are your best selling products? Lowest selling products?  What does your web traffic look like? Do you regularly have repeat customers?

2. LOW-HANGING FRUIT. What are the top ten things your business isn't doing that it should be doing right now? What items have the lowest outlay of funds or time, with the highest potential return? How's your infrastructure? Are there any long-term investments you haven't made that can be made? Are there issues with order placement or fulfillment that need to be addressed? Are there quality control issues? Is your business operating past its capacity? Do you have personnel issues? Are there too many decision makers, or too few?

3. SHORT-TERM SOLUTIONS. With infrastructure, personnel, capacity, quality and low-hanging fruit addressed, what are the top ten things your business can do in the short-term to increase traffic? What is a reasonable traffic increase to expect, and how do you measure it? What are the best venues (traditional and non-traditional) to get your message out? Is your business prepared to handle a sudden increase? Does your current brand effectively tell your story? Is your brand too broad or too narrow? Are there any potential customers to whom you're not speaking?

4. LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS. Does your marketing strategy allow for new products or services to be added on a modular basis? Does your brand have staying power or is it transitory? How will you handle new competition, both locally and on the web? How well will your business handle another downturn in the economy? Or an upswing? What is your long-term marketing strategy? How will you continue to build your brand?

Each of these questions are tip-of-the-iceberg things. A marketing assessment will address each of these impartially and with market knowledge. This is certainly not a DIY project. It's important to get an outside opinion, and to listen to it.