Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

Marketing Consultants

What does good performance mean to you?

What does good performance mean to you?

I ask this question during sales conversations and again during my new client onboarding process. I look for something measurable and specific.

My goal is to make sure their version of reality overlaps with mine. Last thing I want is to find out in six months we had completely different ideas of success.

Their goal will determine what we do and how we do things. It refocuses us if we get lost in the weeds. It’s our anchor to keep coming back to.

It also helps to know when we’ve accomplished what we have set out to do. When there is no clearly-defined end goal, nobody wins.

Do you ask this question? It might save you (and your clients) a lot of heartache down the line.

Design sends a message

You don’t need the most beautiful website in the world. But the quality of your website’s design is a signal for the quality of your services.

You’re a marketer, for one. Potential clients will expect that if your site isn’t professional-looking, theirs won’t be either if they hire you to help them.

It’s also off-putting to read a piece of content when the site design looks unprofessionally put together. You can get away with it, but it’s not ideal.

Good design says you’re a serious professional. That you take care of your craft and will help your clients do the same.

It’s one of many credibility signals. And your prospective clients will be picking up all the signals when deciding whether to hire you.

Spend some time and maybe even a little money to get a simple, clean, well-designed website.

It’s an investment worth making.

Work that lights you up

You can treat your work like a job.

You don’t have to like it, either. You can punch the clock, run the time out, go home, and call it a day.

You can do that for fifty years or more if you want. You can earn a good income and have time to do other things that make you happy.

Or, you can build a business that lights you up.

You can be genuinely interested in solving the problems you work on each day. It can have meaning for you.

There’s no wrong way to do it. But there is only one life.

Which path will you choose?

Cleaning up

I cleaned my office today and I felt a lot better. More clear-thinking.

Strange how your environment can affect your mental state. And to me, this is analogous to all areas of your life and business.

Cleaning out expenses you no longer use.

Or services that are not profitable enough.

Or clients who are not the right fit for you.

Or emails left unanswered for too long.

Or tasks that you’ve neglected and need to be dealt with or deleted.

Or decisions you have been putting off until today.

This is your reminder to reserve time, clean up, and work on the things that excite you most in your business.

Or, just take a nap. Either way.

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Meaningful work

Lately, I’ve been helping the marketers I mentor find work that means something to them.

I didn’t start out trying to help them do that. But it ends up happening more times than not.

The goal is to find something that fires them up. Something that will sustain them long after the shine of the new thing has worn off.

Ideally, it’s a problem they solve, a type of client they help, or both.

If you haven’t found meaning in the work you do—but love the practice of business and marketing—that’s totally normal.

Your business is an evolution. You can shape it into whatever you want. And it will be a lifelong process.

The best advice I can give you is to try to find meaning before you scale.

The last thing you want to do is climb the ladder only to find out it’s been put up against the wrong wall.

Keep following your curiosities until something sticks.

You’ll know it when you find it.

How to switch your niche or business model with less risk

In 2008, Netflix announced it would begin phasing out its DVD delivery model to begin focusing on streaming services.

They said they would continue offering DVDs by mail for the next five to ten years while they built the new streaming service.

Netflix still offers DVDs via mail, by the way.

Switching business models—or niches—can be a risky proposition. The best way to do it, in my view, is to phase out of one and into another.

No need to make sudden and non-reversible changes. That’s too risky for me.

When the time is right, you can phase out the old model/positioning, reducing your risk in the process.

It may take longer, but it’s far less risky.

And if it works for Netflix, it can work for you, too.

The benefit of being solution-agnostic

One of those reasons I believe advice and execution are best sold separately is that advisors get to remain solution-agnostic.

As an outsider, you’re not limited to any one way to do things. You’re only interested in the result.

Sure, you bring your worldviews and biases like everyone else. But whether your clients pick one way of executing or another, it doesn’t matter.

You’re agnostic to everything as long as it works.

That doesn’t mean you bend with the wind. Your job is to take a stance and advocate for your ideas on behalf of the client.

But regardless of what happens, you get to be perfectly flexible to all options because you’re not limited by what you or your agency can execute. You’re only limited by the results you’re able to facilitate.

Strategic advisors are solution-agnostic, and that’s good for everybody.

What does a marketing strategist do?

Marketing strategists have an interesting job.

We need to bridge the gaps between the business and the market—helping both sides get precisely what they want. Or, at least as close to it as possible.

Meanwhile, we aren’t usually the ones doing the execution. We’re guiding it. Overseeing it. Remaining impartial to anything but the results.

And that presents some interesting challenges.

Below are some of the questions I consider within the three core stages of the strategic process: strategy, planning, execution.

1. Strategy

During the strategy phase, our job is to get clarity on questions like:

  1. What are our goals?
  2. Who is this for?
  3. Who are the other stakeholders?
  4. What do they want, feel and believe?
  5. Where can we find our ideal clients?
  6. What do we observe about them in our research?
  7. What are their motivations and challenges?
  8. Who are our competitors?
  9. What makes us unique?
  10. What single thing do we want to be known for?
  11. What are our strengths and weaknesses?
  12. What unique advantages do we have?
  13. What are our opportunities and constraints?
  14. What resources do we have available?
  15. What observations can we make about the market and our place in it?
  16. What is our key insight that drives all decision?

These are just a few of the questions we consider at the strategic level. They put the “market” in “marketing”.

The better we answer them, the better we can do on the next parts.

2. Planning

Strategy and planning are not the same thing.

Now that we know what we’re working on and have a good idea of the landscape, we can begin to plan the tactics that will fulfill our strategy. In other words, we create a plan.

A marketing strategist asks seeks to define answers to questions like:

  1. What are our goals for each channel or activity?
  2. What is the timeline to achieve them?
  3. What measurable metrics can be assign to each goal?
  4. What can we systemize?
  5. Who will do the work?
  6. Who will manage the work?
  7. When will it happen?
  8. What channels will we use?
  9. How will we use them?
  10. Are the tactics aligned with the strategy?
  11. Who is responsible for the results of this work?
  12. What do we do in-house vs. outsource?
  13. Do we have the capacity to actually execute this plan?

3. Execution

A plan is only as good as the execution. At this point, the strategist’s job is to ask questions like:

  1. Are we executing this plan correctly?
  2. Are we measuring everything properly?
  3. Are we getting the results we expected?
  4. What is working and what isn’t?
  5. How can we adapt our plan for better results?
  6. Do we need additional resources?
  7. Do we need to do more research/find more examples?
  8. Was our core strategic insight correct?
  9. Are we helping or hurting the brand long-term?
  10. Are we documenting our learnings along the way?

There are probably a long line of other considerations, but these are the main ones I think about.

Strategists have a difficult job. It’s typically a leadership, not a management role. Usually, we’re responsible for the results—even though we’re not doing the tactical execution.

The better questions we ask, the better the answers we’ll get. Clear questions prompt clear thinking.

Good strategists write down answers to these questions to the extent it helps. But don’t write a book that never gets read. Keep it simple.

And remember: document the key insights about the market.

Insights drive strategy which drives everything else.

Some people need to hear this

I’d estimate that about 30% of my daily writing is any good.

The problem is, the 30% that is “any good” varies by who’s reading it.

For you, this post may not be valuable. For others, it may be just what they need to hear today.

My thinking is this: you’re probably better publishing consistently than waiting for the perfect post.

Some people need to hear this, others don’t.

That’s how it goes.

Optimizing for conversations

One of the fastest and most straightforward ways to get more clients is to initiate conversations.

Carl Richards would call this an example of “playing in traffic“.

Not in a spammy or salesy way, of course. You do it to connect with people and either begin or build your relationships.

Maybe you like to connect with new people in your niche on LinkedIn. Those connections might turn into conversations later on. No need to rush it.

Or maybe you like to DM people who engage with your content just to say hello in a more personal setting.

Or maybe you like to trade ideas with your peers or other non-competitive professionals who serve your niche. A lot of good intel and referrals come that way.

I’ve seen it time and time again, the more people you speak to, the more good things happen.