Most marketing and business development firms provide services in one or maybe two of the five critical areas. In describing themselves as marketing and business development companies, they forget that it is vitally important for market research to link to strategy and strategy through to execution.

Rarely will you find a firm that has the ability to provide the market research, create the advertising, place the ads, and then make sure that everything is running smoothly by managing a Strategic Marketing campaign.

Chances are that if you’re reading this web page, you have established a business (or are in the process of doing so) and have come up against the realization and challenge of driving customers into your business. While it is likely true that you are an expert (or fledging expert) in your chosen field, it is likely you have succumbed to the philosophy of ‘build it and they will come’ in relation to marketing and sales lead generation. You know you’re good at what you do. Your customers should know that too, right? All you should have to do is ‘open’ for business and customers should come rushing through the door. Right?

Wrong.

The fact of the matter is that you need to devise a system to communicate the unique value you bring to the marketplace AND to find the best way to communicate this value to your prospective customers.

Market Research

One of the most critical things to consider when exploring a Marketing and Business Development Firm (or even an Advertising Agency), is their philosophy relative to researching the marketplace. You need to make sure that you align yourself with a firm that strongly believes in ensuring that the right message is reaching the marketplace. More often than not, marketers and their clients send messaging into the marketplace without ensuring that it is targeted to a specific audience (and backs up that targeting with solid empirical evidence). When looking for a marketing firm, ensure that market research is a critical component of their project process or you could find yourself investing heavily in marketing that ‘misses the mark’. At Ramsey & Associates, we deal with this by ensuring that we verify the messaging through testing and by surveying your target customers. We apply sound statistical techniques to ensure that the messaging and ‘hot buttons’ are on target for your target client. This focus will lead to stronger messages – and more leads and sales!

Ability to Creatively Reflect What Your Buyer Wants

Creativity, while not the only component in a marketing and business development campaign, is a central component to ensuring that your messaging is received well. Too many marketing companies spend the majority of their effort in this arena, churning out content that may (or may not) work for a specific market and for a specific demographic. At Ramsey & Associates, we have award winning graphic artists and producers to take the messaging and produce content that is uniquely targeted to your client group. Whether it is print media, radio, Video/DVD, web, or simply sales training and scripting; we have the skills and the experience in house to ensure that your project is prepared professionally without breaking the bank!

Media Placement

Media placement is a key component in moving a strategic marketing plan into a tactical one. Because we link media placements to your budget, your objectives, and the research (that tells us where your prospects expect to see your message), we ensure that your advertising is placed in the most appropriate media. We also do something a little different from the ‘typical’ Agency. Most agencies make enormous amounts of money off of the placements of advertisements in different media. If something doesn’t work, most agencies suggest running it again. We never will.

Where most agencies make money on the media placements (through commissions), we negotiate the best possible deal for our clients and then we have our commission applied to the price – creating a further reduction. At Ramsey & Associates, we are interested in driving the best possible value for you, our customer.

Proven Expertise in Creating and Implementing Return On Investment Based Strategies

One of the biggest challenges for businesses who engage in marketing, advertising, and business development (and we all need to be doing this!) is the ability to measure our efforts and track it back to a concrete return on investment. The name of the game in marketing and business development is leverage. You need to ensure that every dollar you spend on marketing and on business development has a verifiable return that is greater than the cost of the campaign. If you can’t do this then you may not be making the most effective use of your marketing dollars. At Ramsey & Associates, we believe that every campaign needs to be measured and you need to apply the same rules to marketing as you would to sales staff – you wouldn’t keep a non-performing sales person, why would you keep using marketing that doesn’t work? In order to make the return on investment measurable, you need to test and change what isn’t working for you.

Ability to Create Growth Strategies That Will (in a fiscally responsible way) Allow You to Meet and Exceed Your Targets

There are many marketing agencies and business development firms that can create good, solid tactical pieces. However, there are very few that specialize in the ability to create an overall strategy that will, when executed properly, lead you towards the fulfillment of your goals. At Ramsey & Associates, we take this component very seriously. All out consultants are specialized Business Growth Strategists, with experience in many different industries and multiple media formats. We ensure that before you spend (or heaven forbid -- increase your spending) you have a solid strategy that is backed up by specific tactical pieces. It is only through solid business growth strategies, tied to empirically proven research, married with creativity and effective media placement – all wrapped in a solid return on investment formula that you can be sure that the marketing firm that represents you is really planning an effective campaign. At Ramsey & Associates, this is our goal.