Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

Marketing Consultants

5 ways to level up your strategic messaging skills

Clearly communicating the value of your products and services is essential to getting people to buy from you.

This is what strategic messaging is all about.

That’s why I invited Billy Broas to present on just this topic next week for members of my email list, the Mindshare Community, and any other marketing professionals who wish to join (feel free to bring a friend!).

Billy Broas is a marketer and copywriter who has worked with some of the top online course creators and coaches, including the likes Tiago Forte, David Perell, Ali Abdaal, and Ryan Deiss.

On Friday, March 11th at 12pm EST/9am PST, Billy will present on his 5 Lightbulbs Messaging Framework for about an hour, with some room for Q&A at the end.

You can register for free here: https://lu.ma/mindshare-x-billy

Here’s how Billy describes this framework:

The Five Lightbulbs model creates a supportive structure for your marketing message. Using this system, the messages you write will provide value to your prospect and tie back to your core messaging.

That second part is important. Each piece of marketing content should advance the sale. When we take this approach—and turn on all the Lightbulbs—we notice a number of benefits, including:

  • Attracting more serious buyers and fewer tire-kickers
  • Having customers who “get it” and don’t question everything
  • Enjoying less friction and higher conversions when the pitch is finally made

During this session you will:

  • Draw the framework along with Billy (bring something to draw with—coloured pencils are ideal)
  • Run your product (or a client’s) through the framework and see how it strengthens your marketing message
  • Hear the ways Billy is using the framework with clients & his vision for its future

One of the common reactions from entrepreneurs and marketers who learn this model is a feeling of relief.

They are relieved because they finally feel a sense of control over their marketing. And because they know how everything ties back to their main goal: Getting a new customer to say “yes.”

Does this sound interesting to you? 

Register here and feel free to bring someone who may also be interested: https://lu.ma/mindshare-x-billy

Everything is feedback

Paying attention to feedback from your target market is critical to your growth.

If you’re not getting any feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting positive feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting critical feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting lukewarm feedback, that’s also a form of feedback.

You can either fight against what you’re seeing or you can keep shifting what you do until most of the feedback you see is positive.

You’ll never get perfect feedback on everything, but you can remain detached so you can see the feedback you’re getting for what it is.

Keep your eyes wide open so you can shape and grow your business.

Don’t settle for the easy stuff

I heard this quote recently when looking for something else, and it got me thinking…

“You are paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of the problems you solve.”
—Elon Musk

As a marketer, I’ve always clung to the more technical areas of marketing. Web development, analytics, technical integrations, SEO, ads, and other similarly technical aspects of marketing were my focus.

I realized early that these skills were difficult for most people to grasp. And this made my skills more valuable to those who needed them.

The thing, you don’t need to be highly technical to be successful as a marketer. It certainly helps, and you should continue pushing through the difficulties of learning technical skills.

But there other ways to solve difficult problems. Strategic problems. Hiring problems. Creative problems. Communication problems.

If you can figure out how to solve difficult problems, you’ll write your own future.

Don’t settle for the easy stuff.

Where real innovation comes from

It’s hard to innovate if you’re paying too much attention to your competitors.

The best you can hope to do by watching them is to differentiate.

And while differentiation is a smart strategy, innovation is what will make you a market leader.

Real innovation comes from working with your ideal clients, not from watching your competition.

Strive to serve your ideal clients better and better every day. Remove any pre-conceived notions about what your business can for them. Think outside the conventions (and limitations) of your peers or industry.

You’ll be more able to innovate—and therefore lead—when you watch your ideal clients more closely than your competition.

Show, don’t tell

Most people don’t know what you do. They’re not even sure if you can help them.

It’s your job to help them understand it, and the best way to do that is to show, not tell.

Consult a little during the sales calls. Open up your methodology Trello board to an interested prospect. Teach what you know as part of your marketing. Give away templates. Build case studies.

Words won’t sell what you do. Showing people will.

How I plan to write and publish a book

I’ve decided to start writing and self-publishing a book.

Actually, it’s mostly written already. I’m selecting my “best” 100 posts from the last year—I have 365 posts to choose from—and turning it into a book.

I’m hiring someone to help me organize, edit, and refine the posts to make it into a worthwhile read for marketing advisors.

There will be more to it, but that’s the general idea right now. It could turn into something else, who knows.

I think I’m going to use Tablo to help me do it. I heard about it via Paul Graham and it seems like a great combination of convenience and quality.

If you’re thinking about writing a book, check out Tablo to see if it’s right for you.

And if you’ve written and self-published a book before, any advice you have is appreciated!

Hit reply and let me know what you think.

Productized services are not permanent

Productized services are not designed to be set in stone forever.

They should be treated as fluid offers, adapting to the needs and requests of your best clients and ideal prospects.

Double emphasis on best and ideal, respectively.

They can and should change with you over time—phasing out work you no longer wish to do and becoming more valuable in other ways.

Create productized services if you wish, but be ready to change, eliminate, or/or add new offers whenever you see fit.

Follow the value, not just your ideal vision of what your services should entail.

Have you ever considered being a mentor?

Have you ever considered offering paid mentorship to people “like you” from earlier stages in their journey?

I’ve heard this desire come up a few times lately, so I thought I’d ask.

Clearly, I’m one of these people. I’ve spent the last two years doing just that. It’s highly rewarding and worth pursuing, though it does have some nuances.

Some of the factors you’ll need to think about include:

  • How to know whether it’s a good idea for you 
  • How to test the waters without going “all-in” on the idea
  • How to package, price, and deliver your offering
  • How to offer it publicly without confusing your existing clients
  • How to find clients who actually want to pay for it
  • How to handle your first few mentorship clients
  • The tools and mechanics of delivering a mentorship program
  • Whether to do individual or group mentorship
  • And a variety of other non-obvious factors to consider

In my eyes, mentoring is a little different from coaching.

It’s typically aimed at people who are a few steps behind you on the journey and want to get similar results to what you’ve accomplished.

Coaching tends to be a little broader in terms of who you help and what you help them do. It’s not always about following a similar journey to yours.

My question to you: If I offered an inexpensive workshop on how to create, sell, and deliver a paid mentorship service, would you be interested in that?

Hit reply land let me know so I can gauge interest and possibly ask you a couple questions to help inform it.

If I get enough interest, I’ll put this together.

—kw

My unofficial definition of strategy

There’s a lot of definitions of strategy.

None of them are particularly clear or obvious. So here’s the way I think about it:

To me, strategy is about having one or more insights that you believe will give you a competitive advantage if applied, making many of the tactical decisions easy or obvious.

How you get to those insights is a story for another day. It might be a combination of research, data, knowledge of the market factors, product-related, instinctive, or any combination thereof.

The key is that when you have these insights, it’s easy to recall them and use them as a lens to make tactical decisions. They should also make a self-evident case for how they might help you win.

That’s a good a definition of strategy as any, in my eyes. It’s not the “right” definition, but it works in practical terms for the strategy work I do with my clients.

So what conscious (or unconscious) insight (s) drive your business and marketing tactics?

What’s your strategy?

The remedy

It’s easy to skip your own marketing.

You do it for others all day and it can be hard to muster the energy and time it takes to do your own.

But then there’s also the other factor: the Resistance.

It’s the inner dialogue that talks sweet “logic” in your ear to convince you not to do what you planned to.

This is the one to be most aware of.

Finding time to do your own marketing is a solvable issue. It’s a matter of prioritization. There’s always time to do some.

The second part, the Resistance, is craftier. But it has a remedy, too.

In both cases, the remedy is to make a plan and stick to it no matter how you feel.

Know this: your content is good enough.

Some days, you’ll think it’s not and people will tell you it’s precisely what they needed to hear.

Other days, you’ll write an instant classic and nobody says a word. Not a like nor a comment.

And other days still, you’ll create content that isn’t your best. And that’s okay. You get to have another chance to do better tomorrow.

All you can control is making the plan and then deciding to stick to it no matter how you feel.

Good, bad, or ugly, make the decision to keep showing up.

It’s not sexy but it works.