Everyone, it seems, is rushing to reinvent a new business strategy in the digital marketplace, often becoming overly enamored with all the latest and greatest technologies available. But when it comes to social media marketing, it's not about the tools, says Ari Kaplan, founder of Ari Kaplan Advisors and author of Reinventing Professional Services: Building Your Business in the Digital Marketplace. "Ultimately, I want people to determine what it is they offer that is unique and who they are offering it to," Kaplan says. "Once they figure those two things out, then they can start applying the technology that will help them achieve their goal. Not the other way around." Kaplan will share more of his thoughts about strategies in the digital marketplace as part of his "Reinvent Your Consulting Practice in the Recovery" presentation at the Consulting Summit on Nov. 9 at the Union League Club in New York. Kaplan sat down with Consulting One on One to share his thoughts on building a successful business in the digital marketplace.
Consulting: How will consultancies reinvent their practice?
Kaplan: The process of re-inventing your firm and the practices you use to develop and grow relationships are really based on a system of targeting who your audience is and how you can better connect with them. Once you make that identification, you then start building momentum in terms of how you can reach out to them. But what I want people to do before they start thinking about specific technologies is to think about the content these technology tools will be used to distribute rather than the other way around.
Consulting: How are consultants doing in this new digital marketplace?
Kaplan: Actually, I think consultants have been more successful than their other professional services counterparts because consultants tend to support a broader array of projects and are brought in for their ability to come up with creative solutions. That creativity is what is driving a lot of this new productivity paradigm. As a result, consultants are simply bringing skill sets to address a client problem and applying it to a new market model in terms of growing his or her own firm.
Consulting: Do you advocate a firm-wide policy approach to digital marketing or do you think the approach depends on the individual?
Kaplan: Here's an opportunity for leadership to lead by giving their people the freedom to express themselves. Part of this whole movement is about freedom of expression and that's a key point—specific policies may thwart some of the innovation or potential innovation in your firm. There should be some guidelines, however, which include issues related to conflicts for clients.
Consulting: Why aren't firms being more innovative?
Kaplan: My philosophy is one I call 'perfect imperfection.' We have this fear of attempting innovation because our standards for innovation are so extraordinarily high. When someone thinks of innovation they think about Steve Jobs and the iPad. I certainly don't have the ability to create the next iPad, but it doesn't mean I can't be innovative in an incremental way or in a way that will allow me to make some changes to my business without the massive overhaul. So, I really want people to think of innovation in incremental terms or as something that is perfectly imperfect rather than wait for perfection and miss out on opportunities along the way.
Consulting: What are the biggest mistakes consultants make?
Kaplan: We all try to stay on the cutting edge, and we all try to use certain tools because everyone is using tools. I alluded to this earlier—the model should be to use the tools your clients use. Digital marketing isn't about the tools, or how many hits or clicks you get. If I'm a consulting firm and my efforts only achieve me a single client, but that client is worth a tremendous amount of revenue—that's success, even though I may only have a handful of hits or a handful of followers on Twitter. We've become a society obsessed with numbers, but we need to start thinking of it in a different way. We need to stop trying to figure out how to get more people to read a blog, or follow us on Twitter. It's better to figure out how to use your blog to get the handful of people that you want to and need to connect with rather than getting tons and tons of readers or followers. That should never be the goal.
For additional information on the Consulting Summit or Ari Kaplan's presentation, please visit www.ConsultingSummit.com.
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