Couch Therapy - Is Your Business Strategy Depressed?

Depression hurts. We all see the commercials that we are bombarded with during the news. You are depressed. Take this drug and you too can go from being gloomy on the couch to running around in the park with your kids playing hide and seek. I watch these intently because I have battled anxiety most of my life and I just shake my head at how they paint what is a truly crippling disease for many.

Why make it look so easy? Because that is what we demand. We want the cure now. We want more customers today. We expect doubling of the revenue every month. Now. Now. Now. We demand it and we are fed messaging saying it is possible. I am here to say it is not.

Fixing and Growing a Marketing Strategy Takes Time

“I did not get my business into this position overnight. I can not expect to turn it around overnight. But - I have so much pressure to do just that." - a Pig & Rooster client

You got here through a number of factors that just were not firing on all cylinders - your strategy, changing with the market, true understanding of the customer, or the tactical blocking and tackling of digital marketing. It will take some time to diagnose, analyze and plan a fix. You have to dedicate the time to fixing it the right way or you waste more money, more resources and frankly more time.

Create A Plan - Then Measure And Adapt

From the diagnostic, build your business a plan. A good plan should include:

• Overall Strategy - What makes us unique in the market

• Ideal Customer - Who needs our unique selling proposition the most

• Channels to Reach Ideal Customer - What channels do they consume? TV, Web, Reviews, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Conferences, face-to-face sales? List them all

• Website - This is your home and gives you at minimum legitimacy if not more to drive your business. The website needs to have a plan.

• Prospect Generation - How will you attract more revenue possibilities? Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Media Ads, blogging, social posts? Each needs a separate plan based on its ranking of importance to your ideal customer.

• Lead Conversion - How do you make it delightful to do business with you? What information can you provide in the fastest possible way that will make the prospect stay with you through their decision making process?

Measure & Adapt

“Measure twice, cut once.”

Most agencies and consultants are pretty good at the planning stage. They are known for making them slick, complicated and full of "stuff". The gap is between talking about all the "stuff" and actually seeing results is establishing a rigorous measuring process. What are the KPIs that really matter to showing leading and lagging indicators to how well the plan is working. The second gap is is adapting and ACTING to change the plan through testing, experimenting QUICKLY. You must know what is working and what is not. What is the right timeframe to be measuring to see success or failure of each piece of the plan? Is it up-to-date the ever changing market, customer and your business objectives? Who is managing that process?

You Can Manage Depression

I have built a plan and a toolkit for managing my anxiety. Medicine is part of the plan. Meditation, prayer, journaling, professional therapy and study are all parts of the plan as well. I measure what is working and what is not on a regular interval and adapt when necessary. We can manage the chronic depression your business is in as well.