No surprise – communication is key.

We’ve learned and relearned a couple of things. Honest, direct and informed feedback makes for a smoother, more efficient process. A smoother process often breeds mutual respect. And, with mutual respect, all partnerships can succeed.

Here are two-and-a-half tips to help build trust, foster innovation and achieve more in any successful partnership between you and your creative team, whether they’re in-house, an outside agency, or freelance contractors.

Define.

A professional creative team will guide you through the strategy-building process, but whether you’ve hired an agency, a freelance or an independent contractor, you may want to provide your own creative brief as well. A good creative brief or communications strategy will inform and direct the work at hand. It will answer questions about the project, its audiences, its purpose, its timing and its distribution or end use. Be clear and concise with your direction. Don’t just define the project – website content, print advertising, sales education iBook, inbound marketing; be clear about what you’d like the project to do for your company. Feel free to share the successes and shortcomings of previous projects and campaigns.

Trust.

Once you’ve clearly defined your objectives, explained your company’s vision and mission, and provided information about the intended audience’s culture, let your team employ its skills and talent to create on your behalf. When each conceptual draft meets the communications strategy, or answers the creative brief, you’ll know that you’re working with folks who get it; you’ll feel more confident trusting their professional expertise. And, when their insights and ideas gain your respect, you’ll have earned their tireless involvement and steadfast commitment.

Repeat.

Clearly, communication fosters confidence. When we gather good information, ask relevant questions, define where we’re going – together – and then deliver ideas, content and designs that reflect that conversation, we’ve created one of the keystones to a provable, successful partnership. We’ve heard each other, seen evidence of understanding, and trust that it can and will happen again.

Now, that bears repeating.

To help you communicate the details of your next project, contact us by email for a communications strategy worksheet.

“Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” Helen Keller

© Stone’s Throw, Inc. All rights reserved.

You’ve received an RFP. Great. Fantastic.

Oh, wait a minute…now what?  While helping clients weigh their options, and determining the value of responding to RFPs ourselves, we’ve come up with a few guidelines that help make this process a bit less stressful.

1. Scan for response deadlines.  Sometimes RFPs offer flexibility.  Don’t allow scheduling conflicts to dictate an instant no thank you response.  Before calling for extensions on deadlines or for alternate arrangements for pre-bid meetings, finish the Go/No Go decision process.

2. Scan for scope.  Do the services requested fall within your company’s core strengths? If the majority of services requested are peripheral to your primary area of expertise, or would have to be outsourced, this contract may only be right for your company if the industry, or particular client, fulfill other business growth objectives.

3. Scan for contract value. If the services requested appear to be out of line with the contract budget, you may not be the only respondent to notice.  If the scope of the contract otherwise appears to be aligned with your company’s core services, feel free to call the RFP contact (often the Contracting Officer) for confirmation of the facts presented. If your understanding is correct, you can choose either to decline or to modify the scope of services or the budget in your proposal. Including a succinct rationale for the revision in your proposal will underscore your professionalism and experience. It may also disqualify your proposal.

4. Scan for client industry, type and location. Do you have set parameters for appropriate clients? Audit current clients for industry, type and location. Edit the resulting list as a guide for business development. Add industries, business types and locations in which you’d like to grow business; delete industries, types and locations that have proven less desirable.

Okay, the RFP captured your interest. Should you respond? Can you respond well?

5. How did this prospective client learn about your company? Compare referrals from a trusted client to contacts made “blindly” through advertising or business directories. One of the comparison points should be the conversion rate (from proposal to signed contract to ongoing client relationship) of other companies contacting you in the same manner. Keep in mind that government agencies and some other organizations are required by law or institutional procedure to request bids from several resources.

6. Does the prospective client’s RFP process match your company’s standard process? How much customizing will the proposal require? What investment will you be required to make to deliver a quality proposal package consistent with your company’s image? (Employee time, resources, expenses, etc.)

From this point, you can either trust your instincts and your understanding of the project and its demands, or, if you’re still not convinced, use a simple rating process to help tip the scales.

Rate the following statements from 1 to 5 based on their accuracy. Award a 1 for statements that are not at all true and a 5 to those that are absolutely spot on.

__ The timing is right.

__ The services requested speak to your company’s core strengths.

__ The budget allows for the smooth and timely completion of all service requirements, advancing the client’s objectives, and providing positive revenue for your company.

__ The potential client requesting the proposal would be a good match with your company’s mission, culture, philosophy, industry focus, defining values, etc.

__ The RFP makes sense. It asks for information in a way that reveals good things about the potential client (intuitive, articulate, complete, industry-savvy, process-oriented, etc.)

__ Your company can follow its standard process for responding.

Once you’ve given each statement a rating, add ’em up.

A total of 24-30 means the RFP in question should likely get a green light. The client and scope of work sound like an excellent match for your company and its services. You should take the next step, which is to read the RFP thoroughly to ensure that the opportunity is as good as it appears at first blush.

A total of 20-23 may mean you need to dig a little deeper. RFPs that score in this middle zone may either require considerably more work to prepare, or require your company to make requests for alterations in budget, scheduling or approach. If alterations are not possible, or if they’d put your proposal at a disadvantage, RFPs with this score may not be a good match.

A total score of under 20 means there are too many red flags. These RFPs may not be worth pursuing unless special issues are at play. If you choose to say no thanks, be sure to decline by letter unless otherwise directed.

Let’s get good things done. Give us a call or drop us a line. We would love to hear from you.

© Stone’s Throw, Inc. All rights reserved.

For your small to mid-size organization, you’re probably not going to invest in a sustained national television ad campaign; you’re going to TARGET your efforts to more likely potential clients, members, donors, or customers. Do you have the tools to do that?

Those tools may fall into three major categories:

Foundation: Tools that help you create a presence for your firm that appeals to your target audiences:

• A revealing logo
• A tagline
• A CRM to track your customer and potential customer contact and contact information
• A website and online presence

Outreach: Tools that provide support as you reach out to your target audiences:

• Advertising
• Email marketing
• Direct mail
• Press releases

Engagement: Tools that provide support as you build stronger relationships with clients:

• Trade show or conference participation
• Blog contribution or white papers
• Social media and/or online communications
• Capabilities materials, like PowerPoint presentations, a quick snapshot of your capabilities, a brochure – all the things that you might share with prospects as you have conversation about what would help solve their problems, make their process easier, or otherwise assist them in accomplishing their mission.

Do you see any obvious holes in your marketing toolbox? Missing any tools? If you want to reach members of a particular trade organization, have you joined the association? attended functions? sponsored events? taken advantage of member outreach? What tools do you need to support those efforts? You’ll need tools from each category. Once you’ve identified any disconnects in your messaging (see “ Are you avoiding a marketing audit?”) and any missing tools in your marketing toolbox, it’s time to develop a communications strategy. A communications strategy serves as a guidepost to ensure that your messaging stays on track and is exposed to the right audiences in order to help meet your organization’s objectives. Learn more about a simple and fun technique to get started. (See “What am I?”)

Starting out, we at Stone’s Throw often coach clients with smaller and medium-sized businesses to use social media initially as a way to demonstrate vitality, interest, and enthusiasm by showing activity on social media platforms. Let the world see your public face – especially if your potential customers use social media. Ensure that your posts are consistent with your brand image and messaging, and please make sure that you have a system for post approvals, monitoring, and responding.

If social media advertising will indeed add value to your marketing efforts, there are a few terms you’ll want to know:

Awareness ads: Paid social media advertising is a way to create energy and push your posts into the newsfeeds of your selected audiences. These ads are often referred to as awareness ads; they boost awareness by allowing audiences to see your ad (“impression”). Awareness advertising is often the least expensive of social media placements.

Conversion ads: To encourage your audience to take some kind of action (visit your webpage, make a phone call, complete a form, etc.), social media ads have to work harder and typically cost more. They require the user to move from a passive audience member to someone who takes some kind of action. This is often referred to as conversion.

Engagement rate: Most social media platforms use metrics to describe the types of interaction your posts generate. Engagement rate refers to the number of likes, shares, and comments your posted content receives.

Hashtag: You can supercharge your posted content by tagging keywords with a hashtag (#) – what some of us used to call a pound sign. When a # precedes a word or phrase (without any word spaces), the social media platform sees the phrase as a searchable keyword. This can be especially helpful when looking for people talking about a particular marketing issue online. #smallbizmarketing

Should your business advertise on Facebook or LinkedIn? Here are a few things to consider.

Unlike traditional print advertising in which we pay for the amount of space on a page and the number of issues in which an ad will appear (for example), social media advertising offers many avenues to get ad messaging in front of potential customers. The costs are determined, not just on a set amount per exposure to that audience, but in competition with others vying for that same audience. If it sounds like we’re talking about an auction, we are. For much social media advertising, you actually bid on getting your ad in front of your audience. You will notice terms like pay-per-click (PPC) associated with bid-based advertising. Other options of setting fixed prices to reach verified target markets on social media require a larger investment and are available mostly to big brand advertisers.

Social media platforms often say that cost is both the overall amount you spend on advertising and the cost of each desired result. This is overly simplified. However, if your desired result is to increase your number of Facebook followers or garner more LinkedIn comments, you could say that if you spend $100 a month and get five new followers each month, the cost of follower acquisition is $20 per follower. (We say this is overly simplified because there can be many other factors that influence cost, including your time, messaging development, ad and artwork creation, etc.)

When we at Stone’s Throw think of social media advertising as part of the overall promotional activity of a smaller to medium-sized business, we focus much more intently on moving prospects closer to you. How can we get that prospective customer close enough to have a conversation? That conversation can happen on a social media platform, yes, but for businesses like ours, we want to have that conversation privately. We want to ask questions that reveal challenges, exchange ideas, and answer questions as the consultative souls we are. So, one of our promotional goals is to spur a one-on-one exchange, either through email, telephone, video conference, or an in-person meeting. If social media advertising can get us to that goal, we think it could be worth a trial run. Start small. Assess. Branch out.

Just starting out on social media? Here are a few things you should know.