Picking the right ideas

Coming up with marketing & business development ideas is easy. Right!?

I mean, there are so many things you can do to improve your marketing & business development. Ranging from client feedback interviews, to composing wish lits, mapping out the DMU at your ideal clients, creating a podcast, or publishing a magazine.

But, how do you pick the ideas that are most likely to deliver the highest return?

Start up coach Matt Lerner developed a way to figure out which ideas to focus on:

1. Make sure the idea stems from a unique observation made at one of your key / ideal clients. Something they said, may give you a new angle for the content you’re contemplating to develop. Or maybe, they mention a channel that you had disregarded up until now.
   
2. Work together and rally the team around 1 client goal. Is it marketing? Is it sales? Or is it service delivery? The truth is, the client doesn’t care. They just want to be helped in the best possible way. Adjusting the way you deliver your services may give you that competitive edge that your marketing can hugely benefit from.
   
3. Consider the potential impact of your idea. “If it works,” Lerner encourages us to ask ourselves, “How big can it be?” If the maximum impact of your marketing idea is low, don’t bother. Go for the ideas with the highest possible impact.
   
4. Scariness. The more nervous you get, the more reason you have to test your idea. “Breakthrough ideas contradict our beliefs, push us beyond our abilities, and carry significant risk of failure,” says Lerner, “That discomfort is a signal that you’re breaking new ground.”

Hope this helps!

Thank you for reading Nudge #041, sent to busy subject matter experts on January 21, 2024.