contact us
15 Main Street
Hopkinton, MA 01748
T: 508.847.3660
Email Us
upcoming events
how much will that really cost?
July 10, 2008
Like the cobbler who neglected to provide his children with shoes, many of us deprive ourselves, our
families, and our businesses of the very things we are most adept at providing to others. Unfortunately,
I speak from personal experience on this topic.
For the past several years, this firm has acquired engagements based purely on word-of-mouth referrals and some limited marketing efforts on the part of its principals. Ironically, at the same time we were working with our clients to develop strategic programs and workplans for their organizations, we neglected to do the same for ourselves. So, having just completed a major engagement, we had a golden opportunity to do something about this.
Those of you familiar with our business model understand we strive to tie the majority of our compensation to performance benchmarks we help our clients achieve. As actual cash flow is often not generated until a liquidity event occurs, we face many of the same challenges experienced by our new venture clients -- too many initiatives on the table, and not enough time, money, or expertise to make them all happen.
At the end of the day, we decided that first on our priority list was the need to establish a basic web presence for our operations (yes, that's right, as evangelists for the smart use of technology, we were definitely coming up short in our favorite arena). Even though we haven't suffered from the lack of an internet presence, we certainly were not leveraging our expertise or our communication channels by remaining in stealth mode. The checklist for completing this task was pretty basic:
A small investment of time to convert existing marketing materials into website content and, presto, a web presence where once there was none. Does it contain the most effective marketing communications? No. Is the content optimized for search engine rankings? No. Does it communicate relevant information about our business? Yes. It's infinitely more effective than nothing. More importantly, for a total investment of less than $10, we completed the first of many SMART projects designed to not only enhance our business brand, but the personal brand for our principals and affiliated specialists (the latter of which remains a work in progress).
A colleague and I have a history of cobbling together easily scalable, high-availability systems using open source software, second-hand equipment, and a fair amount of ingenuity. In the greater scheme of things, putting together this website was pretty easy stuff. There's nothing like a simple example, though, to drive home the notion that a vision, a plan, and simple perseverance is all it takes to get things done. Consider this the next time your technology guru informs you it will cost $3,000 to upgrade your techno-widget.