All Audiences

Something in your business isn’t working. It’s small.

Maybe it’s a service you offer, or a client you work with, or an idea that isn’t taking off. And it’s causing disproportionate downside for you.

Maybe the downside is stress, or high time commitment with minimal reward, or nobody is buying. Whatever it is, it’s worth noticing and dealing with.

The flip side is also true.

Smaller parts of your business are working extraordinarily well.

Maybe it’s the type of clients you work with or a service you offer that you love selling and delivering.

And compared to everything else, it brings disproportionate returns. Whatever it is, it’s worth noticing and doubling down on. 

Of course, this is the 80/20 principal at play. 

The more you remove the 20% of things causing 80% of the downside, the more you free up your time and energy to do more productive things.

The more you do the few things that are causing disproportionate benefit, the more your business will grow and the happier you’ll be.

You know this already. I’m just here to remind you to actually evaluate any part of your business for this pattern and act on it.

Most of business and marketing can be reduced down to numbers.

It might be number of blog posts you published, number of leads you got, total revenue, cost per acquisition, or a whole range of other metrics.

You can then use statistics and analysis to make assumptions or give you an indication of directional success.

Running a business requires a combination of numbers and some degree of subjectivity and gut instinct.

But if you really want to improve your situation, the best way is to break things down into numbers.

Could be dollars, hours, inputs, profit, or even subjective things like quality score.

Our gut instinct is important, but it’s even better when you have numbers.

And without numbers, you’ll always be surprised. Usually, not in a good way.

Track, measure, and improve those numbers.

I like to ask people where they see themselves in 12-18 months. The answers I get are often surprisingly below their potential.

The reason for that is we all carry limiting beliefs about what’s possible. What’s possible for tomorrow feels contingent on what happened yesterday.

The best way to fix that is with outside perspective from someone who’s done what you’re trying to do. These people can tell you when you’re just plain wrong.

This happened to me today with someone I mentor.

I asked them where they wanted to be in the next year or so and they said they could imagine having three advisory clients at the most.

I said they could do more.

They recently starting using my consulting framework, which allows me to handle up to 10 clients at a time, plus some group coaching and membership programs.

Why not them, too?

You can serve more than three people as an advisor at one time if you’re doing it right. A little experience, belief in yourself, and the proper design of your services can go a long way.

So as you’re planning your 2021, I encourage you take a moonshot.

Ask yourself, if I could hit a higher target, what would need to happen in my business to do so?

And what am I making harder than it needs to be? How would I design my business in a way that makes even more profit AND more impact?

Those are questions of value. Ask them to yourself, talk to someone who’s done it before, and raise your targets.

You might surprise yourself.

Your business is a system.

Maybe it operates haphazardly, or maybe it runs like a swiss watch.

Either way, it’s a system.

And anything new you take on, whether it be a client, project, activity, or task, becomes a piece in that system.

The key is to assimilate things slowly so they fit into your system. And almost nothing fits by default.

You have to be intentional if you hope to run your business (and life) like a well-oiled machine. It means considering each new input and idea, scoping it out, and seeing if it will work in your machine before taking it on.

Too often we take on new responsibilities and assimilate things that don’t fit into our business. Which then creates a system breakdown.

Your goal is to keep your system running smoothly. Doing that means being judicious about what you let into it in the first place.

Guard your system, run it smoothly.

Toddlers are funny. You pretty much can’t make them eat food they don’t like or at times when they’re not hungry.

You can dance, since, cajole, and plead, but they ultimately do what they want.

Their minds are too young and stubborn to reason with. At least mine is.

Marketing is no different.

Instead of trying to convince someone to buy what you sell, the better way is to serve a hungry audience what it already wants. To tie your products and services to existing demand in whatever way possible.

They key is picking your ideal target market before you try to sell something. When you already know who you’re trying to serve, you can easily find out what they like and create something ideally suited for them.

The process should look something like this:

1. Know who you want to serve
2. Find out what they want
3. Offer things they want
4. Build trust and awareness for your offer
5. Be around when they’re ready to buy

Marketing isn’t about convincing people to buy your thing. It’s about knowing what they want, when they want it, and then delivering on it better than anyone else can.

I saw an ad today on YouTube for solar panels. I normally skip ads, but this one sucked me in.

The video had a guy talking about the problems with energy bills and how much money I could save with solar.

His pitch was interesting enough to have me listening to the end. I was moderately intrigued. I may even buy solar panels some day in the future.

But that’s the key word here: future.

I am nowhere near ready to buy (or even investigate) solar panels right now. And it’s the same with most people with whom your marketing lands on.

Every time you reach someone, they’re either interested in buying something or they’re not.

If you’re lucky, some number of people will buy immediately. But most people (98% or more) won’t be ready to buy on first encounter with your offer.

However, a much higher number may one day be interested in buying from you. And that’s why it’s so important to keep showing up.

Marketing is not about getting a sale today.

Some percent of your efforts should be focused there, but most of your activities will land on people unwilling to buy now (or ever).

Your job is to keep showing up, adding value in a way that educates and leaves a positive impression, and then be around long enough so when they’re ready to buy, they choose you.

If you do this with a longterm commitment and an offer people actually want, you can’t help but succeed.

When things aren’t working for you, it might be time to pair things back and refocus on what actually is working.

Almost always, something is working well but isn’t getting our appropriate attention. We usually need to cut back in order to give it room to grow.

In practical terms, it might mean reducing your services down to your core skill.

It might mean focusing on a single marketing channel, ignoring the rest for a while.

It might mean saying no to projects so you have more time to think.

Whatever you do, avoid spinning your wheels on things that don’t work.

See where you’re getting any results and start there. Do more of that.

Analyze what happened. Nurture and repeat. Cut the rest.

I was speaking with someone recently who has been a marketing consultant for a few years but has seen their advisory work drop off recently.

When you lose most of your clients, you definitely begin to panic.

After all, it’s not a quick and easy process to get advisory clients. You need to be marketing yourself continually to keep opportunities available for when you need them.

So what do you do when your advisory work dries up?

To me, this is an opportunity to do a few things.

1. Go back to your core skills

Being a marketing advisor or fractional CMO requires knowledge of a wide range of marketing strategies and tactics.

Most marketing consultants (all) are somewhat T-Shaped. We are deep experts in one or two areas and have a wide range of knowledge on the rest.

When the opportunities are not around, it might be time to go back to the things you do best and cut the rest, focusing the what you offer so that you are clear about where you add the most value.

This will help reframe you as the ideal candidate for someone who needs exactly what you offer.

2. Start doing implementation work

If I lost all my clients tomorrow and noticed I was having difficulty getting new ones, I’d probably go back to making websites and build back up from there.

It’s a lot easier to sell implementation than it is to sell advisory work. Rebuild from your core skills, do the implementation work people need, then layer in advisory options in your proposals until people start to buy them again.

For me, I went from doing freelancing, to running an agency, to a “fractional CMO” role with a project management piece, to eventually pure advisory work.

Getting back into implementation work can be the quickest way to get your business going again.

Keep offering advisory work as well until people start buying it again.

3. Use your implementation skills as a sub-contractor

The most important thing you can do if you’re not earning enough money is to find some kind of work.

You have a responsibility to yourself and your family to keep getting paid—otherwise you’ll find yourself in a job quicker than you can say “CLIENT”.

When I was just starting out on my own, I did a lot of sub-contractor work for other agencies. Design agencies, IT companies,  digital marketing agencies all needed things like web development and content marketing to fill their gaps. I had those skills and more.

Sub-contracting is not a place you want to live forever. But if you have no other choice, one or two agency relationships can bring a bunch of client work if you stick to the things you do best.

4. Consider broadening your positioning

Another thing you can do, which is not what I would normally recommend, is go back to a more generalist positioning.

If you’re doing implementation work, and you focus on your narrow area of specialty (i.e. design or SEO), you’re bound to run into people who need a talented individual at that thing.

This is called horizontal positioning. It means you’re not focused as much on who you serve but what you offer. Keep it broad and/or mention several industries of expertise.

This isn’t a long term strategy, but sometimes you need to broaden yourself to make yourself more appealing to your general network, then build a tighter positioning on the side again.

But definitely build that tighter positioning on the side ASAP so you can get back to running a proper advisory business,

5. Ramp up content marketing efforts

I’ve succeeded primarily through content marketing.

It’s why I blog daily and will continue to put out as much content as I can. If things aren’t working, try ramping up your blog and social media presence.

Broaden your surface area.

You may also want to start a podcast and invite your ideal target market onto it as a guest. I know a few people doing this and they seem to rave about how effective it is.

It helps to have a niche, though.

6. Talk to people 

The next and final step I’d recommend is to simply talk to people in your network and let them know you’re looking to take on X type of implementation work or even do sub-contracting if they wanted to mark up your time.

If you have relationships, this can go a long way towards getting money in the door to let you build your advisory practice back up in a niche where you can be effective.

I’d also talk to people in your ideal target market. See what they are working on, add value for free if you can, and be first to come to mind when work becomes available.

In closing 

If your consulting work dries up and isn’t showing signs of improvement, go back a few steps in the ladder and build things back up the way you did the first time. Try some of the ideas I mentioned, too.

Usually, if you’re not selling advisory work, it means there is an awareness, positioning, or trust problem.

Go back to the basics, do whatever work you can to stay in the game, and rebuild your business again from scratch, tightening your focus as you go.

 

P.S. If you’re a marketing professional and need help with your consulting or freelance business, definitely join Mindshare, a private podcast and community with resources that will help you do great work for better clients.

The only way to know the ROI of your marketing is to know two things: customer acquisition cost and lifetime value.

Your acquisition costs are relatively easy to determine. It’s ultimately the total amount spent on marketing divided by the number of new customers you signed up.

Where it gets tricky is the lifetime value.

As a marketing consultant, you need to know this stuff for your clients. So let’s let into it.

There are several ways to calculate lifetime value. It varies depending on whether you have a recurring revenue business, sporadic repeat purchases, one-time purchases, or several other factors.

Your goal is to create a fair estimate at the total amount your clients or customers will net your company over the lifetime of their relationship with your business.

That is your lifetime value.

But most people stop the calculation at the expected lifetime revenue or profit of that new customer. They don’t account for referrals. 

Referrals are a funny thing. One customer may refer you to two people over the lifetime of their relationship with you.

And then one of those two people may refer you to two more people over the lifetime of your relationship with them.

You get the picture.

Suddenly, the lifetime value is not anything near the original revenue- and profit-based models.

Each client has their own lifetime value, and the initial referrer has a much higher one.

The real question is, should you calculate those into your lifetime value calculations?

Maybe, but I’d rather not put it into any spreadsheet or budget calculations, personally.

I’d rather aim for a positive return on investment scenario even if nobody ever refers anybody.

Why? Because then it gives buffer if things go wrong or you miscalculate. 

Referrals are an extremely valuable and important source of new customers, regardless of who you are.

You should absolutely know how many of your new clients come from referrals, and if it’s a lot, you might justify adjusting your customer lifetime value accordingly.

But for the most part, I like to plan ROI scenarios conservatively and treat referrals as a bonus.

That might just be

The more marketing you do, the bigger your surface area becomes, and the more people will likely find you.

But there’s another half to the equation that is equally important. And that’s selling something people actually want.

It doesn’t matter how broad your surface area is, if what you’re offering isn’t compelling to the people who discover you, you don’t have a business.

And while positioning is very important, it takes more than good positioning to attract clients and customers.

You need to also have a compelling product or service. 

Luckily, there’s a straightforward approach to creating products and services people want to buy.

Here’s how it works, in very specific order:

1. Get clear on who you want to serve
2. Learn everything you can about them
3. Create solutions to their problems
4. Evolve your offerings and/or adjust your target market (if needed) based on what works best

A lot of people skip to the part where they create solutions and then look for people who have problems they can solve.

That’s a recipe for failure, and yet it’s our first instincts as entrepreneurs.

As Seth Godin says, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘don’t make a key then look for a lock that fits’.

Pick your ideal target marketing, get to know them extremely well, create solutions they want or ask for, and then iterate forever in a continuous loop. 

That’s what customer centric means.