In order to grow his business, we started by looking at why he wanted to grow the business, what was his compelling reason. This gave me insights into his values, what was important to him. I needed to know this to help me to determine how quickly he wanted to grow the business as well as how growing the business would change his business and his life.

We also reviewed the structure of the business, to determine whether he was working on the business or in the business. Since he was working in the business more often than he wanted to be, the way we structured the growth through our marketing efforts would be different than if he had been working on the business. He considered whether he would sell his business as part of his retirement plan or he would continue in the business, setting up the structure to support his ability to be absent or work less when he wanted.

To meet his goals for this particular project, we designed a marketing campaign to target a specific group of companies. This included multiple ‘touches’ throughout the campaign (‘touches’ are defined as the number of times a potential client hears from you in a variety of ways). We discussed the process his company needed to have in place before we began sending the marketing, to ensure both customer service would be maintained throughout the promotion and business processes were prepared to handle the influx of new customers.

We examined: who in the companies would be receiving the item we were sending; what their age and family circumstances were; how long they’d been working at the company; what amount of time before they themselves retired; what values did they have (finding out what’s important to them); what timeframes would be expected for delivery of the product; what the potential client’s approval process would typically be; and key words to use to show that we understood them. We even went so far as determining what the triggers would be to make the potential customer respond to the offer. These are important steps to go through before developing a marketing piece, since it can save the business owner money by knowing exactly who the ideal customer is.