All Audiences

When times are good, companies spend more on marketing.

When times are hard, they spend more carefully on marketing.

Either way, somebody is getting paid. Marketing, like tax or accounting, is a non-negotiable for most businesses.

So how can you make sure it’s you that gets paid in all weather conditions?

The way to be an all-weather consultant is to be positioned as an expert in a narrow vertical or horizontal service.

Simple to say, harder to do.

It’s easy to sell when times are good but you have to be able to survive when times are bad, too.

So how do you pick your specialty?

The best approach is to build around the kinds of clients you get the best results for—assuming you enjoy working with them.

Don’t try to imagine a niche or horizontal specialization. It never works as well in practice as it does in theory.

Sure, test your hunches and run campaigns to areas you think you can win at, but don’t bet the business on them until they’re proven.

Instead, double down on your actual best clients and most profitable services (for you and your clients).

The more specific your vertical (ideal client) the broader your services can be. The more specific your services are, the broader your vertical can be.

It’s a balancing act that takes time to master.

But one thing is for sure: the fluff doesn’t sell in hard times and being a specialist in moving the needle for a specific type of client and/or with a specific set of services will make you a compelling all-weather option.

If you optimize for what moves the needle for you and your actual clients, you’ll probably be fine.

—kevin

 

P.S. Closing doors to the membership again early next week. Now is as good a time as any to get in.

 

The other day, I mentioned how the long tail of execution work is a commodity… and that the real value was in knowing how to execute to get business results—not necessarily doing the execution yourself.

That doesn’t mean if you’re freelancing you should suddenly stop everything and outsource your projects. It just means your hands are the least valuable thing you could offer.

Let’s say you could outsource (or even refer) the hands work and still get the same outcomes. People would gladly pay for it as long as you gave it your strategic input and stamp of approval on the final product.

And thus you would begin your path to greater leverage…

A big part of why people hire you specifically is because they like your taste, worldview, experience, and ability to get the outcomes they desire.

It doesn’t need to be you doing the hands work. It could be, but it doesn’t need to be.

Let’s say you write content for a living.

What’s stopping you from figuring out how to teach someone else how to do what you do so you can delegate that part to them, freeing you up to learn, market yourself, and get more clients?

As long as you achieve the desired outcomes in the process, that’s all clients really care about.

Of course, how you do that without using your hands is another question. That comes through refining your process, documenting it, and making it easy for someone else to replicate.

When you eventually do get to a place where you no longer need to be hands-on-keyboard, you can then take your methods, templates, and processes and teach, advise, or give them away as marketing.

Now you’re creating even more leverage around your expertise.

The key thing to remember here…

If you can get the same results without using your hands—and either mark it up, do the strategy, or teach the process—you get to capture 80% of the value with 20% (or less) of the labour.

Every minute you spend with your hands on the keyboard—in a way that isn’t documenting, advising, or teaching your expertise—is a minute of unleveraged time.

It’s fine to do that for as long as you need to so you can learn and master your craft.

But eventually, it will hold you back from earning more and helping more people.

Have a great weekend,

—kevin

P.S. If you want to sell and scale your marketing expertise, then the membership is for you.

I’ll be closing the doors to the membership soon, then I might make some changes to the pricing/model again.

This is a good time to join if you’re at all interested!

Some people aren’t going to like hearing this, but it’s true.

Execution is a commodity.

Phew, I said it. But before you unsubscribe in rage, please hear me out to the end.

Technical crafts can be learned (and taught) by almost anybody.

Designing pixels, writing words, coding websites, analyzing data—they are difficult to learn, sure, but they’re fairly easy to hire for and even AI can do much of the legwork without much input.

The real value is in knowing how to get business results.

It’s the strategy. The process. The unique combination of elements that shapes the execution. It’s your taste. Your style. Your experience weaved together.

These parts are expensive to hire for and almost impossible for AI to replace.

But let me backpedal just a bit for clarity.

You still need to learn how to execute before you can successfully lead the strategic side.

Mastering the fundamentals is critical.

And having deeper expertise in all areas of marketing will absolutely help.

The better you know the fundamentals, the easier it will be for you to get results on the strategic side.

Beyond that, the actual doing for your clients is not where most of the value is created.

The person who can combine the right ingredients, instructions, and sometimes people to execute is the person who will capture most of the value of a project. 

And this is why some level of expertise in execution helps.

You can be specific, speak the technical lingo, bring in quality examples, and facilitate the outcome to create repeatable results.

But the long tail of execution is, in many cases, easy to find online. The entire agency model depends on this fact.

Upwork is full of capable people to execute tasks to perfect specifications at increasingly low cost. AI is only increasing that downward price pressure.

So yes, learn to execute. But master the art of getting business results as a strategist. 

Document your processes. Create templates. Provide examples. Create frameworks. Be good at briefing. Know the lingo of the craft. Practice as much as you can.

But sell the strategy and hire out or refer the execution.

People don’t want shiny pixels. They want business outcomes.

—kevin

P.S. Join the only place online where marketing strategists go to learn, connect, and grow their businesses while doors are open.

Getting paid on time is just one of the hundreds of things we need to worry about as marketers.

Personally, I get paid in advance every month for all of my services. My invoices go out automatically and my clients typically auto-pay via credit card or bank transfer.

But it’s not as simple as having software to automate this process. It begins at the very first invoice. That’s where expectations are firmly set.

And frankly, I seldom have an issue when I set these expectations upfront.

If getting paid consistently on time isn’t happening for you, and you don’t want to nag your clients about overdue invoices, I created a video breaking down exactly how I handle that.

Check it out over on YouTube (and subscribe to the channel!).

—Kevin

P.S. Doors are still open for the membership.

It’s not just group learning.

It’s not just the dozens of hours of training and supplementary templates.

It’s the best place I know that you can get experienced feedback and advice on your business.

Learn more: https://indiestrategist.com/membership/

If you’re just starting out, please hear this:

It takes time to build up your client roster. But it does get easier the longer you’re doing this.

You might be able to fast-track your initial progress by reaching out to people or having a stacked network.

Publishing daily on LinkedIn and other platforms will definitely help your chances. Publish even more than you feel comfortable with.

You might even be able to sub-contract work from more established agencies and consultants. Let them know you’re available.

But more likely than not, if you’re starting anything from scratch, it will take time to build.

Sell whatever you can to the people you speak with. Double down on offering more of what sells. It’s a signal that the market needs more of that.

Lower your prices if you have to. Do whatever work people are asking for. Nothing is beneath you.

Eventually, you’ll build up a roster of repeat and ongoing clients who will stick around.

And by then, won’t need to get so many new clients to keep the lights on. You can afford to be picky.

But until then: get busy, then get picky.

—kevin

A better way to frame value-based pricing:

Business case-based selling.

Value pricing, to the client, sort of feels like price discrimination.

Like a person saying, “What’s this worth to you?” and then trying to charge as much as they can get away with.

To me, making a valid business case for an engagement feels more reasonable, collaborative, and aligned.

You’re a co-buyer seeking to help the client find the right solution that meets their business objectives. Not too much, not too little.

You help them make a business case for your scope and price based on reasonable performance expectations.

Just my random thought of the day. More mindset and semantics than definitions.

Agree or disagree?

—kw

Strategists are example seekers.

We find things that work and store them in our mental and digital databases to borrow inspiration from later on.

The examples we find inform our unique combinations of tactics and strategies to be used in our client work.

Whether it’s landing page structure, pre-selling methods, or design inspiration, great strategists constantly source, gather, and reference the best materials in their work.

That’s why swipe files are so important. We can borrow inspiration from a variety of sources in a few short minutes—without having to go hunting every time we need good ideas.

The goal is never to copy but instead to combine inspiration into something new that fits our client’s specific needs.

We are curators and combiners. Our taste matters (a lot). So does our ability to combine concepts in unique ways to solve problems for our clients.

If you’re into the strategy world, whether as a marketing strategist, freelancer, or consultant, keep a place to store your best finds. I like Trello and Apple Notes for this (they’re easy to save from on my phone).

Use it in your client work. Share what you find and teach what inspired you as your marketing.

Heck, you can even sell access to your swipe file later on if it’s good enough.

No need to reinvent the wheel every time. Be the example seeker. The archeologist. The observer. The combiner.

Then share what you find as part of your own marketing. Teach what makes your discoveries interesting. People will seek out your “in-the-know” curation style and strategic thinking.

Create your own well of inspiration and insight.

Your clients (and you) will benefit greatly.

—kw

P.S. My Swipe File for marketing consultants is included in the membership. It includes things like landing pages, websites, emails, ads, strategies, manifestos, About pages, service pages, and more. If you want to get notified when doors open, be sure to get on the waiting list here: https://indiestrategist.com/membership/

 

As I wrote about yesterday, getting a new business off the ground requires a lot of work in the content department.

Or at least, that’s the best way to enhance and de-risk the process while you do other things like outreach and networking.

But when you have been in business for a while, you might find you don’t need to work as hard to stay booked. If you’re like me, many of your clients stay with you for 1-2+ years, which means you don’t need a huge pipeline to keep busy.

Over time, you naturally build up word of mouth, referrals, and inbound opportunities without having to work as hard.

That’s why I’m able to spend so much time helping marketing consultants (like you) while my own consulting practice thrives. I have a stable group of clients and only need to do minimal marketing to stay fully booked.

With that said, you do want to keep marketing yourself as much as you can, even when your capacity is limited. Especially when your capacity is limited.

If you have ever bought a home and had a competing offer on your bid, you know it can drive up your price by a lot knowing there’s a second bidder on the table. Especially on a unique home.

All you need is a little more demand than supply to drive up prices.

When you’ve done the hard work of becoming non-interchangeable combined with having more demand (prospects) than supply (you), you get to find out what prices you can really command for your services.

When you have a surplus of opportunities, you can keep raising your prices until the market resists. And that can add significant profit to your business that you might otherwise be leaving on the table.

So – no matter how busy you get, try not to coast with your marketing.

You might just find your business explodes in profitability if you keep demand for your expertise higher than supply.

Food for thought…

—kevin

Picking up the thread from yesterday, the takeaway was that the best content—the kind that drives leads to your services—enters the existing conversation going on in the minds of the buyer.

It’s not even the specific topics on their mind that you have to join in on—although that helps. It’s really about the level of conversation.

Intro topics vs. advanced topics. Business problems vs. marketing topics. What to do (ingredients) vs. how to do it (recipes).

It’s tricky because you can be directionally right about your topics, but if it speaks just above or below your ideal buyer’s level, you won’t get any inbound opportunities from it.

Here are a few tricks you can use to make your content more resonant with actual buyers—without guessing or making up topics on the fly.

• Look at past sales calls to see what people are saying, asking, and wanting
• Write down questions your current clients ask you and answer them in your content
• Think about the projects you work on and what parts interest your buyers most
• Write with a real person in mind (an ideal buyer) to make it easier to connect at their level
• Share more of the kind of content that has driven people to hire you in the past
• Research communities where buyers are talking and see what they’re talking about

It’s almost impossible to get it right without some real data—ideally conversations with your target market.

It’s so easy to miss the mark by a sliver when you think you know what your ideal clients want to hear—only to say it at a level that doesn’t connect with their thinking.

I’ll leave you with this quote by psychologist Carl Rogers:

“What is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.”

Collect real conversations, transcripts, topics, questions, and stated goals directly out of the mouths of your ideal buyers.

What is relevant and important to a real ideal buyer is also relevant to many more like them.

That’s the secret.

—kevin

Here’s a mindset for you.

What if your emails (or social media posts) were designed not just to educate, but to build a relationship with people in your audience?

How would it change your writing style? How would it change your tone? How would it change the content of your emails?

My guess is you’d introduce more of yourself into your content. You’d tell more stories. You might even feel like you could relax a little.

You’d probably try to speak the language of your ideal audience. You’d probably write in your own tone of voice. You might even introduce a little personality in your writing.

A scary thing in B2B, I know.

Most importantly, though, you’d begin to think of yourself as an advocate for your audience—looking out for the people you genuinely care to serve.

For those wanting a deeper insight or execution of your ideas, you’d show them how they could pay you for those things. But that’s never the main point.

The main point would be to make people feel something. A connection with you—the real person behind the computer screen.

Yes, you want to give away your best ideas. Yes, you have to flex your expertise from time to time and not skim the surface.

But you want to do that in a way that people can consume: one small bite at a time with occasional deep dives to mix it up.

It’s not the only way, but it’s a good way if you plan to publish semi-often and don’t want to overwhelm your reader.

So what if everything you did was to further the relationship (not just the transaction)?

A little mindset consideration for you as we wrap up this week.

Safe travels,

—kevin