Marketing and an Old House

Those close to me — actually, almost anyone that’s met me — know that over the past few years, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with tools. The idea of the “marketing toolbox” likely spurred from very literal (and neverending) experiences with tools as my husband and I fully renovated our home.

I live in a very old house. When we bought it in 2006, we knew it needed a lot of work, though we may have underestimated just how much work. Then the gas company showed up and turned off our gas line — not only did it need work, but it was dangerous! It was then that renovation (and some demolition) began.

Somewhere along the line, I saw the parallel between the process of fixing up our house (have you seen “The Money Pit”?) and the process business owners go through when marketing their businesses. Just like a home, a business needs constant maintenance. Sometimes, it even needs a complete renovation!

The core of our clients at Werkshop is made up of small businesses, with owners who steer the ship. As entrepreneurs, their business is their baby, and they’re generally emotional about it. So when it is time to grow, change or evolve, marketing suddenly becomes scary. Sometimes, in fact, the owner has been a part of the business for so long that strategic problems — much like our gas leak — come as a complete surprise!

That’s why we don’t just storm into the house and start tearing down walls — we first have to develop a plan. We evaluate the history of the business, then survey the industry’s landscape. And we find out lots of things this way. Is someone else utilizing the same (or similar) brand name? Has the competition started taking marketshare with a new pricing model?

We work with the business owner to show them that if we move a wall two feet this way (pricing), and update the plumbing (logo mark), that everything will make more sense, work better and become the home they once loved all over again. Over time, the rest of the plan can be put in to place, and the business owner’s goals become realities. And while it might not be cheap, it doesn’t have to be “The Money Pit,” either.

Four years into our home renovation — even though we may never quite be “done” — we’re loving our home. Likewise, I’m loving what it has taught me about small business.

Around here, it’s all in a day’s werk.

Building Werkshop (or “How We Learned to Practice What We Preach”)

Giving advice is easy… taking one’s own advice, however, is a little tougher.

Recently, I’ve taken a dose of my own medicine: For the first time in several years, I had to re-evaluate the marketing strategy for my own company. This was painful. The reason for the dose of self-prescribed marketing strategy was huge – Fresh Dirt was merging with a complementary company. The news was BIG — and we had to keep it a secret.

Wait… Let me backtrack.

Many people have asked Werkshop CEO Tim Earnhart and I how we met. The answer is that we didn’t, at least initially. Tim first met Jenn Sheets (Werkshop’s VP/Creative Director, who at the time was one of my Fresh Dirt team members) at an AAF Nashville meeting, and they struck up a conversation. When Jenn found that Tim owned a creative agency in nearby Bowling Green, Ky. — a boutique agency that could help our boutique strategy firm — she demanded that I sit still long enough to call Tim and introduce myself. Well, I did, and found that not only did we need the help of Earnhart + Friends’ creative geniuses, they were in need of a dose of strategy. It was a perfect match.

So after a few months of working in tandem (sharing clients, employees and processes with one another), Tim and I decided to tear down the walls — or, in other words, to get hitched. This not-so-simple decision was the beginning of the journey to a new name, a new brand, and opening the marketing toolbox to work on our own big project.

Since very few people outside the agencies knew what was going on, that made the process especially difficult. What did I learn? I learned to appreciate how personal marketing strategy can be to a business owner. Here are some thoughts from the journey toward the new brand.

When a marketing agency brands itself, it starts by looking inwardly. In all honesty, we subconsciously thought we were better than the strategic process that we tout so loudly, and attempted to immediately rename ourselves. (Bad marketers!) After many weeks and a half-dozen bad ideas, we settled on a name that we thought made sense. Tim and I then rolled out the name and brand design to our staff — without asking for their thoughts or getting their input — and soon realized we had made a big mistake. We were settling! The brand we’d come up with was internally focused, and that’s not what our company is about. But, like many of our new clients, the two of us basically worked in a vacuum; and, as always, the vacuum yielded poor results.

Thankfully, we realized our mistake soon enough to fix it, and took it as an opportunity to start over. This time, we brought in an external facilitator — a former Fresh Dirt client and one of the smartest marketing-process people I know — to walk us through our own strategic exercises. It was during that session that I realized how it felt to be my own client. I had many “aha!” moments that afternoon, and that “getting out of our own way” event allowed the E+F/FDM marriage to take a much stronger form.

We thought about our core business, about where we really provide value. We thought about what people say about us, to us, and how they engage. And we recommitted to putting the client first, opening up our vocabulary to explain the distinct set of services we can provide.

Our “use your tools wisely” mantra took hold. New yet natural language of “blueprints” and “building” and “foundations” bloomed. And the marketing toolbox that I ramble about so often found a home.

The tools, and the builders, now have a Werkshop — and every single one of us can see that we’re in a much stronger position because of it.