Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator
Kevin C. Whelan
Today I recorded over a dozen videos for my upcoming course, How to Sell Advice. I’m super excited about it.
It’s all about applying specific mindsets, building your own methodology, designing your business model, and marketing yourself successfully as an advisor.
One of the lessons I recorded was how you can use the assets you create in your methodology as marketing material.
In very meta fashion, you can watch that lesson below.
—k
Ok, this is a break from my usual high-level content. A little tactical magic for you.
Do you have a podcast and want to give it more visibility on your website?
I discovered a way to add an Apple Podcasts banner linking to your show at the top of every page on your website (on mobile in Safari at least) using a single line of code.
It was hard to find the instructions on Google, so I thought I’d share this tip with you as well.
Here’s how it looks:
It only took one line of code and was installed in two minutes.
<meta content=”app-id=#####” name=”apple-itunes-app”>
Mine looks like this:
<meta content=”app-id=1615988146” name=”apple-itunes-app”>
And that’s it! I have no idea if it shows up on Android or if it only detects and shows it on Apple devices. I suspect it’s the latter, but who knows.
It’s only visible on mobile in Safari (I think, based on early tests) and takes you right into the Podcasts app, if it’s installed.
—k
I have two fiddle leaf fig plants in my house.
One is in rough shape. The other one beside it is doing quite well.
Whenever I pass them in my hallway, my attention always goes to the one that’s not working out.
My instinct is to water it. To check the soil moisture. To prune the dead pieces. Anything to help it thrive.
And while I have no problem doing that, it reminds me of something about working with clients who aren’t a fit.
You can always tell when a client isn’t a fit. You feel it, they feel it. There’s usually an element of stress and tension. That’s how you know.
I’m not talking about fledgling clients. I’m talking about the stressful ones. The ones where you just know it’s not a good situation.
And the problem is, if the situation becomes stressful enough, it pulls you away from your good clients. The ones who value your expertise, listen to your advice, put in the work, pay you on time, and trust the process.
So yes, do what you need to do to pay the bills. But know that when the poor-fit clients come around and create stress in your business, it draws you away from helping the people you are better suited to serve.
And there’s a very real cost to that distraction.
I did a 4-minute video on this today and published it on Twitter if you feel like going deeper on this idea.
—k
If you need clients and you’re not sure what to do about it, start by writing something. Put it on your blog. Send it to your email list.
You do have an email list, don’t you? If not, start there.
There’s almost no form of communication more powerful than a letter to a fully-opted-in subscriber. It’s direct, personal, and keeps you top of mind.
Make email the center of your marketing and keep chipping away at it. Create a daily or weekly habit. Or mix it up if you want to. Remix your content in other places, too.
As a consultant, the format is yours to create. You get to decide what style and structure you want to use. Curated or created, it doesn’t matter. Just keep chipping away.
But the worst thing you can do is nothing. Posting on LinkedIn will only get so far. Doubling down on Twitter will only help if you’re really good at it already. Outreach is only so effective for a marketer seeking to maintain credibility.
Make your email list a priority this year and keep at it for the rest of your career. Aim for base hits, not home runs. Especially at first.
Nothing fancy. Just a little focus and some faith that email can work for you. The rest of your marketing system can be layered in on top.
(It helps, by the way, if you serve a specific audience or focus on a specific topic).
P.S. If you haven’t signed up for the Google Analytics 4 training later this month, be sure to register so you have access to the live workshop or recording. A few early bird coupons left to save $10 (members get access for free): https://lu.ma/ga4
Do you ever stop to wonder what it is we are really selling as consultants?
Are we selling a website, strategy, or brand identity? Yes… and no. Those are features of our work.
But people don’t really buy features.
Maybe we are selling new customer growth? Better retention? Ease of use? Those are all great benefits of our work.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
What is the emotion behind those benefits? What feeling are we really creating with our work?
People buy based on how they feel about the purchase. It aligns with logic, yes. But it’s driven by emotion. So it makes sense to explore that emotion people are really seeking inside of what we sell.
Most consultants are selling confidence. Not in a kumbaya motivational way. But in a very real and pragmatically beneficial way.
So how do you create confidence in your clients through your marketing, sales, and delivery? Have you ever considered it from this angle before?
Get this right and it will be a lot easier to sell and deliver the true benefits of your work.
Listen here or subscribe via your podcast player.
—k
One of the most important things I help my consulting clients with is understanding their numbers.
We look at what the inputs were—things like number of activities, expenses, time spent, etc.—these are the things that go into their marketing.
They’re the leading indicators.
We then evaluate each month what the outputs–were. Number of followers, number of subscribers, number of new leads, website traffic, new customers, engagement—whatever metric we’re looking for.
These are the lagging indicators.
We put it all into a spreadsheet once per month and focus on the key drivers of the business in these terms. Revenue, expenses, activities, results.
Every time we review these numbers, questions and solutions jump right off the page. Simply by seeing numbers trending over time, we can see where we need to focus, which levers are creating the best results, and which activities are not worth doing anymore.
I call it “reading the tea leaves” because not everyone is able to see the story within the numbers. It’s like a psychic art to some.
Really, it just takes practice. And a way of doing it so it doesn’t become overly complicated.
It helps to have a good KPI sheet, like the one Mindtrust members get or anyone can buy within the Mindshare Operating System.
It also helps to have a good understanding of web analytics—the kind you get from Google Analytics and from reports in other marketing tools.
The better you know your numbers, the better you’ll be at your job and the more valuable your insight will be.
Lean into the numbers. Pull the important ones into one spreadsheet each month.
They won’t tell you everything, but they will help you think. And that will make you more valuable.
—k
P.S. I’m hosting a live workshop with Jordan Choo this month with an over-the-shoulder look at how to set up, configure goals, and create client reports in Google Analytics 4. Use promo code EARLY10 to save $10: https://lu.ma/ga4
TL;DR: On Monday, August 29 at 2pm EST/11am PST, Jordan Choo of Kogneta will be doing a live workshop on how to set up, configure goals, and create client reports in Google Analytics 4.
As you may know, Universal Analytics (the current Google Analytics version) will be depreciated in July of 2023.
Now is the time to transition your clients over to Google Analytics 4 so you can begin to accrue data in both UA and GA4 to give you a good runway of data (and practice) before the transition.
In this live workshop, you’ll learn:
The goal is to help you prepare yourself (and your clients) in advance for when it gets rolled out next year.
Get your clients set up right today—and charge $500+ to do it!—using the lessons in this workshop. It will pay for itself many times over.
The first 10 people to register save $10 using promo code EARLY10.
—k
It’s incredibly easy to get sucked into being an employee-like figure when you do fractional leadership work.
When I first got started as a fractional CMO, I basically had two part-time jobs. The money was good but I worked HARD. I knew I needed to create better parameters.
In this episode of Mindshare Radio, I’ll break down the five main ways to avoid turning into a set of employee-like hands when you sell fractional CXO services.
We’ll talk about things like:
And a ton of nuance in between.
Listen in and let me know what you think—did I miss anything important?
Hit reply and let me know.
Listen here or subscribe via your podcast player.
—k
P.S. Need help transitioning into advisory/fractional CXO work? Check out my Paid to Think program or join Mindtrust, the no-brainer group coaching and training program for as little as $63/mo. when you pay annually.
[Listen to an expanded version of this post via Mindshare Radio.]
You can think about positioning in a lot of ways.
In many cases, the tighter you go, the easier it can be to sell what you offer. People are swimming in options, they want specific when they can get it.
So there are two angles to consider when deciding on how specific you should go with your business.
1. You can get specific about who you serve
The more specific your target market, the broader your focus can be in terms of what you help people with—while still being credible.
If I help multi-location coworking spaces do better marketing, that’s a specific target market and a fairly broad way of helping them. It can be reasoned that you can have rare knowledge about marketing in a way that is uniquely applied to multi-location coworking spaces.
If I said I help anyone do better marketing at scale, you can begin to see where the skepticism may come in.
2. You can get specific about the problem you solve
When you’re highly specific about the problem you solve, it makes sense that you could solve it credibly for a wide range of industries.
For example, I could say I help people sell their expertise through membership programs. And that could be a reasonably credible positioning given the specificity of the problem being solved.
I don’t need to say “I help faith-based dog groomers sell membership programs.” The market would be too small. And the same skills or lessons could be applied to far greater contexts.
And this is what strategy is all about.
There’s no perfect way to position your consulting business. Specificity helps—but how you apply specificity is where the hard choices are made.
So what trade-offs are you making? How are you being specific about either what you do or who you do it for?
As they say, hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.
I don’t position myself as a fractional CMO.
I might have a fractional CMO service. Or in a sales conversation, I may say that I’m like having a part-time CMO on your team. But I don’t call myself a fractional CMO as my top-level positioning.
I’m a consultant. I’m an advisor. I help companies with their marketing strategy.
But I’m not a part-time employee. I don’t want to be seen as one. Nor do I want their actual marketing team to be threatened by what may seem like a new boss breathing down their neck.
In this episode, I go into:
The topic is nuanced, but I think it’s important if you are selling strategic advisory services.
Note: Originally published this idea as a written article, forgot where I put it, then recorded it again. You can find a very similar original article here or read some of the benefits of fractional CMO positioning to see if it’s right for you.