• Need more qualified leads and sales?
• Need to market your business but have minimal staff to do it?
• Are you leaving money on the table with existing clients?

Why do businesses need a Merge Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)?

• Most small to medium-sized businesses are cutting what little marketing capability they have due to economic conditions. This can lower badly needed sales and make acquiring new customers much more difficult.
• MergeCMO solves this problem at a cost small businesses can afford, even in this down market.

MergeCMO will help you:

• Acquire new customers
• Reduce marketing cost
• Improve marketing return on investment
• Launch new products and services faster and easier
• Increase customer value
• Increase customer retention

What is Merge’s CMO service?

• You “lease” one of our Merge CMOs, a highly experienced C-Level marketing executive who will help you develop and execute a measurable, return-based marketing program.

How do we do it?

• Merge only hires seasoned CMOs with a solid track record of producing results. Experts in research, technology, and marketing execution support every MergeCMO. Our average CMO has over 20 years experience leading successful marketing programs.

What do you get?

• Your own, MergeCMO
• Marketing plan with specific metrics and milestones
• Oversight of your marketing execution against your business strategy
• Quarterly performance results (CMO Scorecard)

What can you expect?

• Better results for less money
• A strategic, measurable, results based marketing program
• An immediate advantage over your competitors

To learn more contact

• Michael Taylor 404-724-4942 ext. 4525, michael.taylor@mergeagency.com or
• Judy Willis at ext. 404-724-4942 4502, judy.willis@mergeagency.com

A few years ago I hired an independent research firm to find out what our customers thought about us. I had them interview our current and past customers. Then, I had them interview our own people to see if there were gaps between our company’s and our customers’ perceptions. When our own people were asked the question, “What do customers value most about Merge Agency?”, our people listed our “skill sets”, good marketing strategy, good interactive execution, good creative execution, research, good writing, project management, etc. When we asked our customers the same thing, they had a completely different list of what they thought was the most valuable reason they chose Merge. These were the top answers: trust, patience, flexibility, easy to work with, forgiving, smart solutions and good under pressure.

I knew there might be a gap, but nothing this far apart. After reading this report, I realized something significant about my business and found this same disconnect exists in most businesses. We see our value as what we do, but our clients buy what we mean to them. Your clients likely have hundreds of alternatives to your product, features or “skill sets”. This means these things do little to differentiate you.

Ninety Seconds take away:

Unless price is your single tool for beating your competitors, stop thinking of your company as a product, service or collection of “skill sets. Stop articulating your business as a meaningless list of things you sell or do. Start thinking of what you mean to your customers. Think of how the experience of buying from you is easier, better, deeper and more meaningful. If you think of your meaning first, they will be open to your list. If all you are is a list of services, features and functions, then you certainly have lost perspective as to why your customers will want to buy from you instead of your competitors.

An old man fell into a raging river. Onlookers watched in horror, powerless to save him as he disappeared into the raging waters. A few moments later, the old man popped out of the water downstream unhurt and calm. When asked how he could possibly have survived the raging water, he simply said, “I accommodated the water and did not try to control it. It delivered me peacefully here.”

What does that little story have to do with marketing? Quite a bit. So many businesses knowingly or unknowingly force their customers to accommodate their way of doing business instead of the other way around.

The problem with control is that your customers are growing less patient with things that don’t make sense or work immediately. So, they give up faster than ever. Why? Because customer customization is the biggest trend in the past decade. That means your competitors are accommodating your customers better and better, on your customers’ terms, as they want it, changing when they change.

If you were to visualize the market today, would it not look a lot like the river that old man fell in? Would your business be the old man, or are you trying to change the direction of the river? The best answer to this question will come from the customers you lose and the competitors that win them.

Ninety Seconds take away:

Build in feedback mechanisms that keep you in constant touch with your customers’ changing needs, and build flexibility and consistent improvement into your offerings by using what you learn. Be open, curious and vulnerable to the truth about your company, your services and what you offer. Don’t force your customers to do it your way; find out what they want, be willing to change your position, and see from different viewpoints. Flow with the change and you will never know obsolescence.

I am CMO-at-large for several companies. One of most important things I am doing for each company right now is finding the absolute greatest impact for the least possible investment – in some cases, no investment. If ever there were a time to put on the Zen monk hat, this is surely it.

So, with this hat on (or head shaved – whichever you prefer), let’s look at the essence of what we are dealing with right now: Less. Much less. You could say scarcity is our most abundant resource this year. Scarcity is your raw material, so get real, dump waste and focus like a laser beam on what matters most to you and your customers. If you handle this resource well you will not only survive, but you’ll also have a far better, more meaningful business in the long run. Here are a few thoughts for using scarcity as a marketing resource:

Ninety Seconds take away:

• Look at every line item in marketing. If you cannot tie it to something that addresses a fundamental need or shows a specific return greater than the investment, eliminate it.
• Consider dumping traditional advertising altogether. For example, opt, for more targeted and measurable social media and online marketing tools(such as the eBlast/blog you are reading now) over expensive, hard-to-track print ads instead.
• Look at your customers, potential customers and those with whom you do business. Focus on your lowest cost to acquire sales and new leads: your existing customers and those with whom you do business.
• Zen Master take away: “Pay it forward” with your clients. Think of what your customers are facing in this market and find a way to help them. Don’t worry about making a sale – just help. If you take this approach, the goodwill you generate will find its way back, especially if you don’t weigh your efforts down with expectations of how it will return to you. Just know that it will. Everyone I know who has run a successful business for more than 20 years knows this is true. It not only feels good, but it is a way to take scarcity (something we have always thought of as lack) and turned it instead into goodwill – the stuff that long-term companies are made of. And yes, sales, too.