Jeff Stevens, as a Zombie.I have a friend who is one of the most engaging people I’ve ever met. When he tells a story, you are captivated. After one conversation with Jeff Stevens, you will be convinced that you need to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse. Follow his ZomBlog, and you’ll be drinking the zombie juice too.
The way Jeff explains how to identify sustainable trends not only makes sense, you’ll find yourself fired up and ready to get zombified. Building a sustainable business means utilizing tools that will not only keep you relevant, but will sustain you in an ever-evolving marketplace. Once you understand the importance of sustainability, you’ll survive no matter what market changes come your way. How? You’ll be prepared.
What are you going to need to survive?
For KBK, we wanted to find a way to not only sustain our own business, but also to help keep our clients relevant, successful, and growing. We knew how to manage social media. We knew how to develop and run ad campaigns, we knew how to create and manage websites. How were we going to really quantify our efforts? This was a real leap for us. We went from high-priced media buys as our main source of income, to diversifying with an inbound marketing strategy, which is now, our main source of revenue.
Here was our approach, that transformed our business and, to Jeff’s point, helped us in sustaining our business and our clients’ businesses:
●Identify: Who were we targeting? We needed to develop personas.
●Prepare: What types of productivity tools did we need?
●Sustain: How were we not only going to sustain our business, but how were we going to sustain our client business?
●Keep informed: How were we going to manage our clients lead generation and keep on top of/implement new technology and tools?
●Stay engaged: We needed to keep ourselves, and our clients relevant. The best way to do this for our clients, was and still is to practice what we preach for our business, as well. What’s trending in the industry, and what are some solutions?
●Deliver Value: We all want to receive value for what we purchase. We wanted to make certain we were delivering value to our clients. Are they experiencing the outcomes we promised? We committed to open communication, continuing education to keep on top of the best tools available (and to keep them and ourselves relevant along the way.)
●Repeat: This meant we would have to do this over and over, educating ourselves and our clients, letting go of tools that become irrelevant or unsuccessful, and expanding our abilities and ideas, certifications and networks.
How are you identifying sustainable trends? Is the Zombie Apocalypse on your radar screen?
