Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

Marketing Consultants

Collecting your insights

I’ve started collecting insights lately.

They cover a wide range of topics, including insights about myself, business, human nature, and a variety of other areas.

I’ve been trying to write them down in case I forget them. They feel valuable.

Here are a few examples I’ve collected:

  • Finding and hiring good people is a major pain—and therefore it’s a valuable thing to offer in my work.
  • I’ve always been more of a strategist than a technician—even since the days as a teenager when I recruited volunteers to create content and build technical areas of a website and forum that attracted thousands of visitors a month. I need to continue leaning into my natural skills and tendencies in ways like this.
  • Memes are an extremely effective form of marketing and communication.
  • More than anything else, people hire coaches to instil confidence in themselves—which also happens to drive results in the process (ideally combined good advice).

These are fairly personal to me. They won’t mean as much to you as they do to me. You may not even agree with all of them!

They’re just a few examples to show you what I mean.

Do you have an insights list? It might be worth keeping a note on your phone for the moments when inspiration strikes.

The real benefits of a well-defined process

Whether you know it or not, you have a process.

Maybe your process is to wing it with each new client. Or, maybe you follow a rough process from memory with each new client.

Or, if you’re really in the upper echelons of marketers, you have one written down and clearly-defined.

There are plenty of benefits to documenting a formal process, including:

  • More consistent and predictable outcomes with each new engagement
  • Less cognitive load and stress when delivering your expertise
  • More repeatable documents and systems you can use in your engagements
  • Better outcomes with less effort and time using those supplementary resources
  • Close more deals by showing clients you have a rigorous process to apply
  • It becomes a system that improves every time you use it, which benefits the entire cycle

If you want help building your process—or Methodology as I call it—hit reply or email me (hi@kevin.me).

I’m refining one of my offers and it might just be right for you.

—kw

Developing your own teaching framework

Mindshare Methodology

Do you have a core framework or way of categorizing all of your lessons and ideas in a way that is easy to remember?

I have a five-part framework helping marketing advisors build and run a profitable advisory business.

Those five pillars include:

  1. Niche/Specialization
  2. Credibility
  3. Methodology
  4. Business Model
  5. Marketing

Everything I teach or talk about can be organized into one of these buckets. Here are some practical examples of how I use it:

  • All of my blog and audio content is categorized into one or more of these pillars.
  • When I compile my book this year, I’ll organize chapters around these core ideas.
  • When I diagnose a challenge with one of my mentorship clients, I often look to their biggest bottleneck within this framework.
  • When I do a comprehensive course, you bet it will follow these five core pillars.

Core frameworks are valuable for you and your students. They help you organize your thinking and they help your students internalize your teachings more effectively.

To create one of your own, start with the outcome you promise, then figure out the big pillars involved in helping them achieve it.

It can be three parts, five, seven—it doesn’t matter as long as it’s not too many. I’d keep it under seven.

Try it out and let me know what you come up with.

(And for the record, this idea is tagged under Methodology.)

Marketing from a standstill

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What do you do when a client comes along looking for your help, but until now, they haven’t been doing much (or any) of their own marketing?

Do you take on the work, turn it away, or do you use this as a chance to educate them on what to expect?

Personally, I prefer the latter. And if it seems like they are bought-in to reality, I’ll consider working with them.

In this episode, I talk about how to be fully conscious when clients like this come along, how to educate them about how long things should take, and ultimately to manage expectations.

Slow results are the cost of marketing from a standstill. Like an engine, it takes time to rev up.

They either get it or they don’t. Better to know up front before you start working together.

Not niched down enough

Do you keep meaning to write for your blog but never get around to it?

And when you do sit down to write something, are you stumped about where to start?

If so, there’s a good chance you’re not niched down enough.

The smaller you focus, the easier the topics will flow.

In fact, all of your marketing will come more easily to you.

Counter-intuitive but true.

Show me the incentives

World-renowned investor, Charlie Munger, is quoted as saying:

“Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.”

Economics is almost entirely based on incentives. You could argue it’s the driving force behind all human behaviour.

Things like profit upside potential or de-risking a decision are examples of financial incentives involved in a purchase decision.

Hiring a “turn-key” solution might feel like the best option for a time-strapped entrepreneur with no bandwidth, even if a better-qualified (but more time consuming option) is out there.

In a lot of B2B purchase decisions, there’s the financial buyer and the consumer of a product or service. Those people may or may not overlap.

For example, the financial buyer (ie. the business owner) often has a different incentive than the marketing manager (i.e. the consumer).

You need to understand those differences if you’re going to sell into an organization.

Whatever you’re selling—be it for you or your clients—the better you understand the incentives of the decision makers and consumers involved, the better you’ll be able to sell and deliver it.

Good marketers are keen observers of incentives.

Best in the world at what you do

I was listening to the book, Almanac of Navl Ravikant, while doing some yard work today. One line in particular stood out, so I thought I’d share it:

Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

Interestingly, when I was Googling for the tweet to write this, I found the original Tweet from Naval’s now famous Twitter thread, and I noticed I had retweeted this specific tweet a long time ago.

It’s funny how you can read an idea, retweet, and then forget about it entirely. Discovering it twice was fun.

Regardless, it gets me thinking about how we position ourselves.

Could you define yourself in terms that make you best in the world at your particular thing?

What would that definition be? And who would value it?

Too niche or too broad

Mega streaming platform, Twitch, began as Justin.tv—a live 24/7 stream of site co-founder Justin Kan’s daily life.

Obviously, that’s a pretty niche idea with a relatively tiny addressable market. Nonetheless, the idea got Justin and his team featured in all kinds of media outlets for its novelty.

A while later, Justin.tv expanded to allow more creators onto the platform. Eventually, it became open to anyone who wanted to stream.

I don’t recall the specifics, but essentially the platform became somewhat of a nightmare to manage. People were streaming all kinds of unsavoury stuff.

And while the audience was bigger, it still lacked a clear direction and path to monetization.

Looking for the right business model, they noticed video game streamers were a particularly active and engaged audience on the platform.

So, one thing led to another and they decided to go all-in on video game streaming, naming the company Twitch.tv (which became Twitch).

Twitch was acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $1 billion and was reportedly valued at $15 billion in 2020, proving that the right niche can be a lucrative strategy.

So what is the moral of the story for you?

If you’re focused on too small of a niche, you’re probably limiting your potential. If you’re focused on serving “anyone”, there’s a good chance you’ll be too broad to be successful. 

The question is whether you start small and expand, or start wide and double down on your best opportunities.

That’s a topic for another day.

Where is the line?

We’re all tempted to chase revenue.

No matter how much you have, you will usually accept more opportunities that come your way if they present themselves.

At least for a while.

The problem with chasing revenue is that it has opportunity costs. Most importantly, it often limits your ability to build the business you really want.

Maybe you accept clients that require a lot of your time to deliver a result. Or you have to reinvent your entire process to get a result.

Or, maybe you offer a service that isn’t even profitable! But it’s revenue, right?

We all do this for a while. And it’s good to take on whatever work you need to survive.

But once your essentials are covered, maybe it’s time to stay a little hungry to allow you to build a business that you and your ideal clients love.

Where’s the line for you?

Permission to change your mind

Your thinking will get updated.

You will advise your clients to try things that won’t work.

You will pivot your strategies and tactics based on new information.

In this episode, I give you permission to change your mind and update your thinking—regardless of any sunk costs.

You and your clients need to expect it to happen.

In fact, it’s the only ethical way to operate.

Listen in to hear more.