Often, taking the time to understand the core problem can lead to a very different solution – sometimes one that doesn’t need a consulting solution at all, or sometimes one that needs new / different skills. Being honest about the real problem and helping a client even if it curtails a revenue opportunity is a core value for us
Every so often I read a post by an advertising person extolling the value of spending money on advertising. Or one by an agency creative director talking about the value of creativity. AI aficionados will talk about how AI can solve every problem. Search specialists think the answer lies in optimizing SEO and SEM…
I’ve never seen an adman advise a client to pull back their advertising and do something else with the money that will have a better impact on the business. Or a creative director suggest that perhaps using influencers or search is a better solution than creating ads. Or a search specialist saying that TV (by which term I also include online video – I’m not that much of a dinosaur!) might work better in a particular case than SEM.
The world seems to be full of specialists who each think his/her special skill is the only / best / optimal solution to a client’s business problems.
We tend to approach each new client with a very open mind. The focus of our first few meetings is trying to figure out what they really need to solve. Sometimes, what a client asks you to solve isn’t the core problem that needs solving, which can lead to some interesting situations like the one below:
New user acquisition or heavy user retention? Or deeper organization / process problems?
One of our first clients was an online flower subscription service. People sign up for a year’s worth of weekly flower deliveries although there were also other one-off bouquets and arrangements you could buy for yourself or as a gift. The client approached us with a brief for helping them understand what their brand should stand for, how they should go about advertising to potential new users and grow their user base rapidly.
Despite their eagerness to focus on brand architecture and connections planning, we suggested that there was value in taking some time to look at their data and understanding their existing consumers before venturing out to look at potential new users. In the process of doing so, we realized that, for an internet platform that had tremendous data about each transaction and user, they had zero visibility on that data through the organization. Marketing decisions were being made on feel, nobody was keeping track of subscribers and the data was in a thoroughly unusable form with the IT department.
When we finally finished helping IT organize the data properly and analyzed it we found that the platform had peaked in user numbers about 3 years prior and since then, had been losing users steadily. Most worrying was the fact that they were losing about 18% of the heaviest users every year, each of whom spent an average of 2500 RMB / year, while new users typically spent less than 200 RMB / year.
When we started to explore the reasons why, we discovered an utter lack of focus on customer retention. The platforms helpline had a woefully inadequate set of responses to customer complaints, there was no tracking of when a subscription ended and therefore no reminders or renewal offers sent out and there were no KPIs around customer satisfaction and retention.
Although it meant an early end to our project, we recommended to the client that they focus on fixing these areas and blocking the leak of existing customers before focusing on any initiatives to attract new ones. We also had recommendations on restructuring the marketing team for a “one-customer” view and better internal systems and processes for making data-based decisions.
Now, think about it. Have you identified and addressed (or are you in the process of addressing) a core problem? Or are you doing something without being clear what the real problem is?
At Searchlight we help clients identify and address the core problems holding them back from success. We work on assignments ranging from market understanding, brand architecture, organization structure, sales training and other core areas of business strategy.
Reach out to us at enquiries@searchlightchina.com for more.
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