Consultation, ‘the action or process of formally discussing’ is what we now do with all our potential new clients who ring me because they want some ‘marketing help’. We run these days for the benefit of both of our clients and Push Start Marketing.
Benefit to the client
Clients can spend the day looking at their marketing activities and understand and plan for a way forward. They can understand why things have/have not worked in the past and build a plan, with a set cost for the day if this is all they require. They are under no obligation to use Push Start Marketing in the future and can take all ideas/IP from the day to use as they wish. Lunch is on us and you are encouraged to take as many notes, and photos of the white boards as you want.
Gentworks, at a recent marketing consultation day
We can really get to the bottom of a company’s marketing strategy, their expectations and, as importantly, their resources. If companies have the budget but not the manpower or vice versa we can identify this and discuss a plan to combat it.
I had a client come into a consultancy day, a husband and wife team, and it wasn’t long before we identified that there was a definite lack of resource - no one whose role it was do any of the follow up where marketing was concerned. When we drilled down into previous activities that they considered ‘failures’ it was the lack of follow-up that was the problem not the activity itself.
Benefit to us (or spotting the crazies)
As my clients get bigger I realised I needed to get more discerning on whom I wanted to work with and get a crystal-clear idea of the challenges I have to face as the relationships grow. I can think of two clients I would not have worked with if I had spent that initial day with them instead of ploughing on once tasks and budgets were agreed.
We might not be for them
Similarly, clients can get a measure of who we are and how we work. If they don’t want to work with us again then that’s fine but their time and money has not been wasted as they will have a re-focused understanding of their marketing, ideas and plans to move forward and where we need to, or can, we will teach them on how to do tasks for themselves.
Marketing consultations - On the day
A day’s consultancy with Push Start Marketing is priced at £550 plus vat, provided you come to our office, and includes lunch. We run from 9.30 – 3.30 generally, longer or shorter depending on the stamina of our clients, a lot start to fade from about 2.30pm despite tea and biscuits.
We always have three outcomes in mind:
Where are they with their marketing and what is it they want to achieve
Set out ideas, plans and budgets for the next three to six months to help them achieve these goals
Discover if we are suited to working together in the long-term
We start with an audit on where they currently are with their marketing, with props and prompts to help. You’ve heard of the five P’s of marketing? We have 15, and these act as a prompt to ensure nothing is missed.
Multiple whiteboards are generally used to get ideas down, look at a SWOT analysis if needed and thrash out all and any ideas that might range from segmentation to priorities and draft video story boards.
What we are not about is idea generation with no solid back-up – clients are held to account as to whether ideas are achievable, who will action them and hopefully when. It is this addition of accountability that makes the difference between success or failure. It allows the client to think about their budget and timing priorities and explore in a no-pressure way the costs and mechanisms of out sourcing.
To date we have held consultancy days with a wide range of business from 25+ year established businesses to start-ups and across a wide range of industries.
If you want to work with Push Start Marketing this is the first step, one day, £550 and enough marketing insight, ideas, motivation and plans to keep you going for 3-6 months, or alternatively a huge sense of relief that you have found the company you’re going to move forward with longer term.
Dignity and integrity drives Push Start Marketing to work in partnership with businesses with similar ethics to achieve their goals. We only want to work with companies who share our ethics and meet our three client requirements, and a marketing consultation day is the only win/win way to ensure that happens.
“Lucy was recommended to us as someone who could help with our social media campaign. Wrong! She can do so much more. Starting with, a day’s consultancy provided a great launch pad for developing our marketing strategy in a coherent way.” – Richard Hare, MD Peopletime Ltd