All Audiences

An interesting question came up today on a Mindshare group coaching call.

The topic was essentially why someone’s long-form educational content via email wasn’t converting any leads—even though the list was big enough to think it would.

If you tend to teach hard with your content, this might be for you.

You’re writing for the wrong audience

If you’re consulting, the people hiring you are in a leadership role—i.e. CEOs or other executives.

Those people don’t want to get deep down in the technical weeds. They want to know if the problem affects them, and if so, how to approach solving it.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to sell to people who do the execution work, then you can give away parts of the solution as a deep-dive technical article or email. Implementers like step-by-step instruction.

Most consultants are trying to reach leaders, not implementers. Thus we need to focus on the former kind of content.

Problem identification vs. solution instruction

To sell to executives, you want to help people identify the problems that may exist and then tell them what to do, not necessarily all the details on how to do it.

It’s not that you’re trying to withhold anything to make them hire you. It’s simply that they’re too busy and/or disinterested in learning the technical solution.

They’ll tune you out if you try.

That’s because the implementation part is not their job. Their job is uncovering problems and getting them solved in the best way possible.

People will generally trust you can help if you can help solve the problem if you can clearly identify and articulate it.

It’s just like how I don’t want to learn what steps to take to file my tax return or reconcile my books each month. I’d prefer to delegate that to my tax professional.

The people you want to speak to also don’t want to learn all the technical details of what you do. They just need to understand the problem so someone like you can fix it for them.

But first, they have to be aware of the problem. It’s your job to educate them about it at the leadership level.

The key mindset here is to operate like a peer, not a contractor.

If you’re trying to overly teach the implementation side, your content will resonate with people who implement. And those people aren’t likely to hire you.

But if you can articulate a problem people have better than they can—and explain how it affects their business in terms they care about—you are much more likely to resonate with the buyer.

And if you resonate with the buyer, you’re more likely to have them consume your ideas and eventually hire you.

In closing…

Speak the language of your buyer and guide them at their level of thinking. The leadership and strategy level.

You do that by writing as a peer, not a contractor.

That’s how you get hired as a peer, not just a contractor.

—kw

As a marketing consultant, designing your business model can be a tricky process.

Do you do some form of execution work? Advisory retainers? Managed marketing (CMO)? Strategy calls? Education products? A hybrid approach?

The truth is, you may want to do some… or all of it! The question then is how to package, sell, and deliver those things.

But fret not, for I have something you will love.

Whether you are a freelancer or agency owner looking to create more leverage and profit, or a consultant trying to diversify your revenue streams, these trainings will have plenty to offer.

What You Get

The Business Model Design Bundle gives you lifetime access to the following workshops:

• How to Package, Price, and Sell Custom Consulting Engagements (1.5 hours)
• How to Design Productized Advisory Services (2 hours)
• How to Sell and Deliver Single Strategy Calls (1.25 hours)
• The Right Way to Sell Fractional CMO Services (1.5 hours)
• How to Create Your First Education Product (Coaching Call – 1 hour)

In total, it’s over 7 hours of comprehensive training and supporting templates, examples, and resources for the five core ways to package your expertise as a marketing consultant.

It’s based on my experience as a consultant after selling over US$1M of these products and services since I began this type of work in 2017.

You own these trainings for life. And if I update any of these trainings in the future, you’ll get newer versions, too.

No subscription. No upselling. No funny business.

You can get the entire bundle for only $297 $197 from now until Tuesday at midnight using promo code BF100.

You’ll ALSO be invited to the private Slack community for marketing consultants.

But here’s the catch

I’m limiting the sale of this product to 15 purchases. After that, the bundle goes away.

If you think your business model could use a little juice, this bundle is for you.

This product has been moved here.

—kw

 

Are you mildly terrified of niching your marketing practice?

Fear not, for I have a solution for you.

One that lets you go deep on a niche while de-risking the process and removing some of the fear you might feel at the same time.

This one is in a video format. If you recall, I’m dabbling with YouTube.

So check it out over there and be sure to like, comment, and subscribe—or whatever the kids are doing these days.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE →

—k

The purpose of positioning isn’t just to help the market see you as a credible option.

The purpose is to give you a competitive—and defensible—advantage. To be uniquely qualified to help.

A big part of that process is reducing your competition.

Good positioning focuses on key factors others can’t easily replicate. You go tighter and deeper. More specialized in the areas people care most about. You make the necessary—and difficult—trade-offs.

The more suitable alternatives there are to hiring you, the less leverage you will have.

And the less leverage you have, the less you can charge, the fewer deals you’ll win, and the harder it will be to earn a highly profitable living.

Pick a game you can win.

Pick something you’re uniquely qualified at. Find your sweet spot. Make it your thing.

If you can’t tell the difference between you and your competitors, your clients certainly can’t either.

Reduce the number of suitable alternatives.

—kw

Selling to other companies who serve your target market—not just the end companies themselves—can open up an entirely new market you may never even have considered.

The key is to establish yourself in the niche before trying to expand to other parts of the ecosystem. It helps a lot if you have a strong track record and if you’ve already built a little following in the industry.

In fact, your following can even be part of your value proposition. You can vouch for your client and transfer trust by association (as long as you are transparent about your involvement).

One way I’ve done this before is by helping the industry association of the niche I serve. It opened many more doors for me and was mutually beneficial for them.

If I had more bandwidth, I’d be more intentional about using this strategy to expand my practice.

Have you done this before? Would love some other examples.

—kevin

P.S. You can see a video of me explaining this idea in more detail over here. Drop me a comment if you feel so inclined!

I used to play squash for fun in high school.

It’s not nearly as difficult as it looks. And it’s way more fun than tennis.

The thing about squash is, if you’re running around the court chasing the ball, you’re not doing it right.

The better player is able to spend most of their time standing in the centre of the court. The weaker player person runs back and forth trying to stay in the game until they eventually lose the point.

It almost looks effortless to the victor. Surely harder work would reap better dividends, no?

It turns out, not so much.

It’s the same with marketing. Most of what we do simply doesn’t matter very much. 

Roughly 20% of your efforts generate 80% of the results. But we often spend the majority of our time on the remaining 80% because it feels like the right thing to do.

We feel like we need to be busy to do our job well.

That’s where strategy comes in.

If you are doing your job right, you can focus your marketing efforts on relatively few key areas and do them extremely well. The rest becomes optional or unnecessary.

Good strategy makes the important activities obvious. Not just what to do but how you do it, too.

It also makes execution far less labour intensive—and most of it unnecessary.

The key is knowing what to do and what not to do. Strategy provides those guide rails.

If anyone is busy in an organization, it’s the marketing managers trying to do it all. It’s a tough job no matter how you measure it.

The most effective marketers spend their time sharpening their strategy and thereby make most of the tactical work they do optional or unnecessary.

After all, do CEOs want you to be busy or successful?

—kevin

There’s the age-old dilemma when it comes to niching:

Do you follow the money or your interests?

If you follow your interests, you get the personal satisfaction of doing work you enjoy for people you genuinely enjoy serving.

If you choose a niche primarily for the money, you can use your business to fund your interests outside of work. You might not love your work as much, but the money can be a lot better in some cases.

There’s no right or wrong way to do it. But there are risks no matter what choice you make around niching.

The conventional wisdom in consulting is to build a niche business. And it’s generally good advice.

It’s easier to market, sell, and deliver services that are the best in their category—and that can help you earn more money for less work than you could otherwise.

But what if I said you could also have the best of both worlds: to be a niche specialist and a generalist at the same time?

Would you believe me? If you know anything about my track record, I’m living proof that you can. And it’s served me quite well to do it this way.

Which is why I’m not convinced it needs to be one or the other. It can be both. At least for the vast majority of people. But I do believe it’s worth exploring your options so you can make an informed decision.

Tomorrow at 11 am EST, I’m hosting a members-only webinar, How to Choose a Niche for Your Marketing Practice.

As usual, this will be a deep-dive training that goes about 90 minutes with Q&A. It will look at both sides of the equation: pragmatic market opportunity AND fit with your existing interests.

The follow-up to this training will be How to Gain Traction in a New Niche, which will be available next month.

I try to make every workshop into a definitive guide you can come back to later on. You’ll have to become a member to attend.

Which brings me to a small announcement…

I’m opening a new membership tier for people who prefer independent learning, without the coaching component.

For a modest annual fee, you get access to all of it: my growing library of training, templates, private podcast episodes, and more—including this Wednesday’s workshop.

It comes with a 7-day trial so you can see what it’s all about before committing to a membership.

If you want to explore new ways to strategize, advise, and teach what you know, this is a great way to get started.

If you just want to get this and past training free for a week, that’s fine, too.

To learn more and sign up for the membership, head on over to howtoselladvice.com/membership.

Hope to see you there!

—kevin

P.S. I’ll be super honest with you—giving away a free test drive of all my content and materials feels risky. But I also know you have to take risks to grow, so I’m willing to take this risk. Are you willing to take the risk of a risk-free trial?

Value is a funny thing.

Let’s look at my assistant as an example. Let’s say I pay her an average of $1k/month.

But in that time, she does days of cumulative work I no longer have to do.

Did she create a more profitable outcome by her doing those tasks vs. me? Not directly.

On the one hand, the work does not directly generate more money than if I did the work myself. But by her doing it instead of me, my time is freed up to work on other areas of my business.

And my time is worth a lot more than hers.

It’s easy to get hung up on creating profitable financial outcomes for our clients—which, to be clear, is our primary job. But sometimes, value is created in other indirect ways.

It’s part of why fractional CMO/managed advisory work is so valuable. The value is still created in part by freeing up your client to work on other things. Or by saving them from having to hire a full-time person for the role instead.

Other times, your value comes from helping your clients avoid costly mistakes. Or by giving them clarity on a direction sooner—saving time and wasted energy heading in the wrong direction.

If you’re only looking at the immediate number of new leads or customers you generate, you might be missing a much bigger value calculation.

—kw