Upscale or downscale:  How to tailor any marketing plan to your organisation

I’m sure you’ve all looked at marketing and business development activities that are tremendously successful for a competitor and thought your organisation needs to be doing the same thing. But a critical mistake would be trying to replicate that activity exactly as the other firm did it. You won’t find the same results because you are a different firm and you have different resources. The good news is you can look at the elements of that project and tailor them to your own goals and strengths by upscaling or downscaling the initiative.

Upscaling and downscaling can also be thought of as tailoring. It entails looking at every component of a certain approach, and determining how you can add or reduce elements based on your resources and your organisation’s capabilities. To do so, you need to have an honest assessment of your budget (both time and money) and skill sets associated with the targeted area or niche. 

Begin this process by looking at your firm’s strategy and how this project could support those goals. You can set the ROI goals based on overall firm growth goals as a base point. For example, do you want to have a presence at a conference to grow your reputation and brand recognition within that region or specific niche, or do you simply want to meet five new referral sources? If the answer is the latter, you may want to attend as a guest the first year instead of taking a booth or sponsorship. If you meet your goal, consider adding a sponsorship or booth the following year, or possibly hosting a dinner for contacts you met at the previous event. 

A key factor in tailoring your marketing and business development efforts to your firm is your resources. That includes budget, time, and the most critical element, your people. For example, if you have a leader who would like to participate in more webinars but whose presenting skills aren’t up to par, start them with 30-second tax tips you can post to social media. It may help them grow more comfortable, and later you can upgrade to a full webinar. 

Another effective method to stretch your resources is to partner with firms with similar skill sets. By partnering with complementary firms for conferences, webinars, events, and even a video or whitepaper series, you can easily upscale your efforts and increase your reach by cross-promoting your marketing and business development activities. We recently partnered with a fellow GGI member firm at a Trust & Estates conference, creating a mutually beneficial collaboration, and we were both able to upscale our efforts for the event. 

The key to tailoring a project to your firm really lies in determining what elements you really like and how you can upscale or downscale those elements to fit your organisation. No firm and no project is too small or too big for you to be able to borrow those crucial components and use them to create your own successful marketing and business development campaigns.

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Diane Walsh is the Chief Marketing Officer at Prager Metis. She is responsible for all facets of marketing for the firm, including communications strategies, regional and global marketing strategies, events, business development, and media relations.