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Business Planning
Consulting Client Story: Attract New Funding
Results of operations in previous years had produced wide variations in profits, and in order to ‘smooth’ cash flows, they needed bank financing – a line of credit secured by their healthy government receivables. Achieving the ramped-up growth plan would depend upon their ability to close this new funding.
Business Planning – The Basics
My client had all the basic elements in place (see “How Banks Think”). It was a pleasure to work on a business plan that would support bank financing when the key elements were strong. The core management team consisted of several Founders, who had worked together successfully since before the startup. They knew the industry inside out and are highly respected leaders. The niche they now dominated was growing, as was demand for their product. Competition wasn’t even close. Although everything wasn’t exactly perfect, the most important fundamentals were solid. That’s highly unusual. In fact, it’s really quite rare.
While they had been profitable since their first year, they (surprisingly) did it without projecting financial performance on paper. They said that they just naturally did the projections ‘in their heads’. My new client attributed their long time success to many things, including; their early vision for continually improving their products based on customer feedback, their gut instincts, their laser-focus on superior customer service, and damn hard work. Year after year.
Results of operations in previous years had produced wide variations in profits, and in order to ‘smooth’ cash flows, they needed bank financing – a line of credit secured by their healthy government receivables. Achieving the ramped-up growth plan would depend upon their ability to close this new funding.
Business Planning – The Basics
My client had all the basic elements in place (see “How Banks Think”). It was a pleasure to work on a business plan that would support bank financing when the key elements were strong. The core management team consisted of several Founders, who had worked together successfully since before the startup. They knew the industry inside out and are highly respected leaders. The niche they now dominated was growing, as was demand for their product. Competition wasn’t even close. Although everything wasn’t exactly perfect, the most important fundamentals were solid. That’s highly unusual. In fact, it’s really quite rare.
While they had been profitable since their first year, they (surprisingly) did it without projecting financial performance on paper. They said that they just naturally did the projections ‘in their heads’. My new client attributed their long time success to many things, including; their early vision for continually improving their products based on customer feedback, their gut instincts, their laser-focus on superior customer service, and damn hard work. Year after year.
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Social Media Marketing
Consulting Client Story: Need Online Marketing
Early on, certain flagrant abuses of social media have cost mental health practitioners their licenses.
Of course, no flagrant abuse is even a fleeting thought for any of my clients, with their unwavering commitment to high professional ethics. Nonetheless, my clients must be crystal clear about it, including their employees and clients.
One-size-fits-all just doesn’t get the job done in social media marketing. And why would it? It doesn’t work in any medium. Social media marketing strategy for mental health practitioners provides a great illustration of how each client is unique, with important differences in industry, customer, and marketing dynamics.
Social Media and Mental Health Professionals
Many mental health professionals know that they need to embrace social media. It’s the ‘new marketing’. Since referral patterns are changing, client turnover is increasing, and the old reliable marketing tactics aren’t so reliable anymore, social media offers the promise of increasing their client base.
However, many practitioners have shied away from adopting social media because they fear that any social media activity might violate their professional Code of Ethics – patient privacy and patient confidentiality in particular. However, this is positively avoidable – by knowing exactly how to use it.
Early on, certain flagrant abuses of social media have cost mental health practitioners their licenses.
Of course, no flagrant abuse is even a fleeting thought for any of my clients, with their unwavering commitment to high professional ethics. Nonetheless, my clients must be crystal clear about it, including their employees and clients.
One-size-fits-all just doesn’t get the job done in social media marketing. And why would it? It doesn’t work in any medium. Social media marketing strategy for mental health practitioners provides a great illustration of how each client is unique, with important differences in industry, customer, and marketing dynamics.
Social Media and Mental Health Professionals
Many mental health professionals know that they need to embrace social media. It’s the ‘new marketing’. Since referral patterns are changing, client turnover is increasing, and the old reliable marketing tactics aren’t so reliable anymore, social media offers the promise of increasing their client base.
However, many practitioners have shied away from adopting social media because they fear that any social media activity might violate their professional Code of Ethics – patient privacy and patient confidentiality in particular. However, this is positively avoidable – by knowing exactly how to use it.
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Search Engine Optimization
Consulting Client Story: SEO "Get Found" Online
While my client focused on doing what she loves (writing), the online world continued to evolve - fast, becoming highly competitive and much more difficult to “get found” in search.
Optimizing for the Giants
To complicate matters for authors, search not only involves the major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, but it also involves the giant online book retailers Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble, among others. Getting found on the book retailers’ sites requires a complementary strategy, further challenging our SEO work.
Google alone serves 1.1 billion unique visitors each month, followed by Bing (345 million), Yahoo (300 million) and Amazon (164 million). My client’s online presence needed to be very carefully search engine optimized in order to be positioned to achieve page one placement on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and attract readers from all these sites. Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
Google, the most-used dedicated search engine, conducts about 17 billion searches each day. Their search algorithm constantly changes as they makes about 5 tweaks each week to their search algorithm, which currently has over 200 elements that determine what content gets returned on the SERP.
While my client focused on doing what she loves (writing), the online world continued to evolve - fast, becoming highly competitive and much more difficult to “get found” in search.
Optimizing for the Giants
To complicate matters for authors, search not only involves the major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, but it also involves the giant online book retailers Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble, among others. Getting found on the book retailers’ sites requires a complementary strategy, further challenging our SEO work.
Google alone serves 1.1 billion unique visitors each month, followed by Bing (345 million), Yahoo (300 million) and Amazon (164 million). My client’s online presence needed to be very carefully search engine optimized in order to be positioned to achieve page one placement on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and attract readers from all these sites. Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
Google, the most-used dedicated search engine, conducts about 17 billion searches each day. Their search algorithm constantly changes as they makes about 5 tweaks each week to their search algorithm, which currently has over 200 elements that determine what content gets returned on the SERP.