Marketing Your Consulting Services.pdf - epiheirimatikotita.gr

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to fit on a business card. I am now expanding that idea to make the entire front of
the business card a replica of the book cover. The business card will be folded,
opening on the side like a book, and the contact information will be located on
the inside.
The advantages of this latest idea are that it is creative and looks like what it is
meant to market. The drawbacks are that it will be costly to print and a pain for
people who like the traditional business-card shape and size. The next step is
whether I take the risk (see the second creativity technique above, risk taking) that
people may complain that the business card is too far outside the box. The reason
that I mention this example is that you can see that you can shrink and expand the
same idea: shrink the picture of the book cover to fit on a business card, then expand
it to be the entire business card.
Your Challenge Imagine that you want to do something that will be remembered
by your clients for its size. It might be larger than life or it might be miniature.
What could you do? In the first instance you might consider spending all your
budget on a billboard advertisement. Or you might say, “What if my staff size expanded
by fifty tomorrow. How would I market?”
In the second, you might consider going to a novelty shop to find miniature anything.
For example, right now we have a box of miniature dice in our marketing idea
box. We have no ideas for how we will use the 1 ⁄8-inch cubes. Perhaps to accompany
a card that reads, “You won’t be gambling when you use us....”Your turn. Take
something you are doing at this time in the marketing arena and expand it some way.
Then take something else, perhaps a product or a client effort, and shrink it.
4. Ask What’s Good? and What If?
Probably two of the most important questions you can ask to generate a bundle
of ideas are “What’s good about this situation?” and “What if we did something
differently?”
In my workshops I like to ask the question: “What’s good about being fired?” At
first people look askance at me, but then the creative ideas start flowing: “I could
get a job I really love”“I would have time to finish painting my house”“I would get
away from the office politics”“I could sleep late every day”“I could move closer to
my grandchildren.” Although this example is wishful thinking, it can pay off. The
engineers at Conoco asked, “What’s good about toxic waste?” and discovered a substance
in the water that could be turned into a lubricant.
Marketing Your Consulting Services