“So I see you have values like creative space, and rest… but you also have impact and decisiveness,” an accountant said to me this week. “One is slow and measured; the other gives the sense of speed and movement. How do you see those fitting together?”
What a great question. It’s one of my favourite things to be asked a question that, moments before, I didn’t really know the answer to, or had never considered: but as soon as it’s asked, things in my mind come together and I do know.
The answer is, our entire lives (as well as our businesses) are a beautiful and frustrating combination of these two sides.
You cannot “hustle” or “crush it” all the time; and equally, living an entirely calm and paced life doesn’t quite fit with the world we live in. (Maybe some other world, where things don’t break or change or actually happen, ever.)
We were looking at the approach my agency, PF, use whenever we take on a new client, and discussing how these two – creative space, and decisiveness – work together at the start of a new marketing relationship.
Always we start with what’s called “Foundations”: a series of four intense sessions to make sure we know what marketing we need to do, and why. To build the plan which is based on more than “I guess I need to do social media” or “Everyone else is recording videos”.
Foundations can be a tough sell sometimes.
The accountants who come to us are usually coming from one of two experiences:
- They’ve had a bad experience with marketing, or marketing agencies, and they’re tired of ‘strategy’ and planning and reports. They want to get. shit. done. (and I don’t blame them)
Or,
- They haven’t been doing any marketing at all, really – just referrals and word of mouth – and they are realising that pool is going to dry up soon (or already has).
Either way, but especially if you’re coming from a prior negative experience (or many), it doesn’t feel exciting and motivating to do “Foundational” sessions.
“I already have all that,” you tell me. “The logo guidelines, the marketing plan, the strategic work – it’s all done. I know exactly who we serve, I know our values, and I’m ready to Do The Marketing.”
Sometimes you do have all those things.
And always, without exception, there are gaps.
After all, that’s why you’re coming to us, to a conversation about how we approach marketing and how it might help.
What gaps do we have? How big are those gaps? Who is it preventing coming to us, or enquiring with us, and which gaps need filled first?
Sometimes it’s a brand gap. The logo, or name, or colours were created for a former version of the firm – one where it didn’t matter what you were called because all their business came from referral, anyway.
It can be a website gap. The website looks and sounds like Every Other Accounting Firm Ever™, and although you don’t believe it’s actively sending anyone away, I can almost guarantee it is. Even your amazing referral who has been told you’re great is going to hesitate when your website looks like the other three (or thirty) they’ve already seen.
Or an assets gap. You actually have a great brand and website, but there’s no content other than “we are accountants and doing accounting-y things call us today”. No unique blog posts, or PDF guides, or video series, or graphics.
And so on. There are social media gaps, or team gaps, or strategic gaps. But always, every time, without exception, there are gaps in your marketing: or else you wouldn’t be enquiring with someone about addressing it.
And whilst you know all of that, it’s still really frustrating to be like “RIGHT SERIOUSLY NOW, marketing”, only to be told you need to go through six sessions and get a plan put together.
You’re tired of plans. You just want to move.
After all, you can see your destination ahead of you. Why not just put on the shoes and start walking? What’s all this “sit around looking at maps” malarkey?? LET’S GOOOOOO.
As it turns out, we’ve walked a lot of these paths with a lot of different accounting travelers. So when someone wants to throw on the shoes and start walking, I know for a fact that they might need different shoes, or a different path, depending on which destination they really want to reach:
- This path is really mucky and it would be better if you started with hiking boots
- That one looks straight, but a few minutes in you’re hiking up a hill that feels like rock climbing
- This one doesn’t actually go anywhere: you’ll go round and round in circles and end back at the beginning
- That other one does lead you straight to that destination you see, but from what you’ve told me, that’s actually not going to be a helpful destination. It’s the one “everyone else” seems to be walking to, yes, but it’s not what you want.
Whatever the path, it’s critical to take the time to stop.
Breathe. Think. Look around. Make sure you know the destination, the path, the type of walking shoes, who’s going with you and who’s coming later.
That’s what the four sessions do.
They insist that you take the creative space, take the breath, before you get to the decisiveness, the impact, the movement.
And once you do that, you’re good! You’re off and going. You have the right shoes, the right people with you. Your path veers off here to the left, but you know why.
You need both the pause and the movement.
