You just can’t be good at everything. Sad but true.
I recently read an article by Barb Pfeiffer called “Why One Size Does Not Fit All in Marketing” in the Summer 2017 issue of The Partner Channel magazine. And my reaction was: ‘I couldn’t agree more’.
We all want to know the one “magic” marketing tactic that works for other technology partners. But just because it works for them doesn’t mean it will work for you. She points out that 1) every business has different resources and 2) who (and where) you are targeting matters a lot.
Several years ago, I had to take a long hard look at the company I work for. I had to choose to acknowledge our weaknesses and use our strengths when developing a marketing plan.
We have wonderful people at this company. But we are not good at events and public speaking. We just aren’t. It is a painful ordeal to try to cajole someone into giving a presentation.
Other VARs tell me that they get tons of leads by hosting prospect events. Another VAR I know is known as an expert because he presents sessions at user events. It is tempting to copy them. But likely they have people on their teams that shine in the spotlight and give great presentations. We don’t have that. But there is nothing wrong with that; we are good at other things.
We are good at writing and we are good at SEO. So that is the basis for our marketing strategy. I do the writing. And we have an SEO consultant that consistently gives us great advice. Because that is the strategy we have chosen, we do our best to excel at it.
Perhaps someday this will change and we will develop other strengths within the organization. But for now, I believe that it is better to be really good at one thing instead of being mediocre at a lot of things.
This doesn’t mean that we should stop pushing ourselves and get stuck in a rut. We should look for new things that we can be good at. We should look at what we already do and find ways to do it better.
But we don't need to try to do everything. Just because it works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for us.
So, my suggestion is: do an honest evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses as an organization, choose the marketing tactics that maximize your strengths and do them well.
By Anya Ciecierski, Collaboration Works Marketing
Follow me on Twitter: @AnyaCWMktg