Every client interaction starts off as a debate. Do we need to start by putting the foundations in place or can we just start doing social media and lead generation campaigns asap?
Marketing agencies would be happy to start off with the latter because that’s the visible part of the work we can tell the world about. Sometimes it’s possible too, if there’s reasonable clarity about at least the competitive advantage the product has.
But more often than not, when a client articulates what their differentiation is, we find that every competitor says the exact same thing. “Nobody else has the extra level of safety, personalisation and customer support that we offer.” Except every single business in the domain.
And that’s fine. We can find a different way to say the same thing, and make sure people notice. But it will at best generate a website visit that leads to a trial or a minimal purchase. After that, it’s up to the product and the after-sales experience to bring the customer back. If they do come back, it means the experience was built with care and clarity, which can only come from strong roots. When that’s the case, the urgency to get going with comms is so beyond fine, it’s earned.
In business, roots are everything a business is from within: its inherent strengths, its people, its products, its ethos, its understanding of the market, the care taken at every point of the customer experience. Not that the whole business crumbles if one or two of these are missing, but it weakens the foundation and adds to the cost of running it, one way or another. Wings are everything it does to go places. Showing up, saying things, connecting, engaging, partnering, selling.
Many businesses that are built just on the strength of the founding team’s network grows to a considerable size without ever doing any of this. Especially in B2B products and services, almost every business we meet wants to start marketing because they’ve exhausted their network. Referrals can only do so much for so long. It works great to sell to small businesses when the link to the decision maker is strong. But this computes to a small number that doesn’t grow that much even with active networking. Simply because the competitors are networking too, and then it all boils down to what the business really has in its roots and how far it has gone with its wings.
Today, the focus on wings is the default. Foundations are assumed or hurriedly built on top of without close examination because “move fast break things”, “done is better than perfect”, and funding makes growth at any cost not just possible but ideal.
Roots only come into focus when something goes wrong, or when an important decision has no easy consensus. This approach needs a relook.
Wings can take you anywhere you want to go, to do anything you want to do. But roots make sure you know where to go and what to do – important when anywhere and anything are options.
Wings can help your product find its audience real quick. Roots make sure they come back looking for it and bring others without you having to pay for every visit.
With the whole world accessible at our fingertips, wings are a given, always there if you want them. But it’s roots that give them purpose, direction and make sure you’re not just flapping for effect.
Without roots, you might as well not have wings. In fact, if everyone has mighty wings and only a few have strong roots, roots are the real wings.