Marketing Consultants

There’s a feeling you get when you haven’t published in a while.

Heck, even when you do publish regularly, you will still feel it sometimes.

You get this feeling in your gut like your content isn’t worth it. You have nothing to say. People won’t like it. Do it another day instead.

Ignore that feeling. Let the market decide.

And by the market, I don’t mean any one individual person. I mean the specific people who buy what you are offering. They’re who it’s for.

Whatever you do, don’t judge your own content before you publish it. Put your ideas out there and watch the magic happen.

Publish and move on.

—kw

Content marketing can attract a lot of inbound opportunities.

It’s been the main driver of business since I went full-time as a marketer and web designer back in 2014.

I literally wouldn’t be in business without publishing content.

But it doesn’t need to be as complicated as a lot of the experts will have you believe.

For me, it all starts with writing. I write blog posts intended for an email recipient on their mobile device.

That’s my mindset. Hence the short paragraphs making it easy to read from your phone.

Once it’s published, it auto-sends to my list via RSS and ConvertKit, then I put it on social media to let it breathe.

Nothing fancy. I just think of an idea, write it out, publish, share, and move on.

My general approach

There are two lenses through which I think about content marketing: frequency and potency.

Frequency relates to how often you publish, and most importantly, how often people see and consume your ideas.

It doesn’t necessarily speak to the depth, or in this case, the potency of the message.

I think of it as aiming to get on base.

I don’t try to hit home runs with every at bat. I just keep showing up as often as I can with something that might be useful to someone.

The other method—the potency method—is for the occasion when I’ll go deep on an idea.

It might be a long article, webinar, or podcast interview.

These usually require hours of time and preparation. They go in-depth. They become assets I refer to or sell later on.

Ideally, your content marketing plan includes a little of both. 

You focus on getting base hits as your foundation and go deep every once in a while to show people what you’re capable of.

The problem with a potency-only approach—at least for me—is I overthink it. I end up not publishing enough to get results, and the potency isn’t so high that people are blown away for months at a time.

Some people are great at potency-only posts. If that’s you, go for it.

But for me, it adds too much pressure. I’d rather build a consistent program involving high-frequency publishing supported by occasionally high-potency pieces.

That’s just what works for me.

If you’re going to go exclusively with potency, your content better be potent to make up for a lack of frequency. I really do think frequency is part of the secret sauce.

One thing is for sure, if you don’t publish at all, it will be hard to build the business you want.

So, are you into frequency, potency, neither, or both?

Or are you still on the fence?

—kw

I woke up today thinking about scarcity and economics.

Weird, but true.

I heard a podcast host mention recently that scarcity is a central aspect of economics. Supply and demand are not limitless, after all.

Obvious, I know. But for some reason, it stuck with me this time.

It led me to think about positioning.

If buyers can readily find 10 people who look and sound similar to you, there’s a good chance you’re not winning the deal.

You want people to find you and go, “Wow, your business is weirdly designed exactly for my business“.

And then they’re comparing you against the nine other more general options they can find.

That’s the goal. To be the better fit for your prospects. Strategic positioning helps you do that.

You may not start there, but if you can end up there, you’re in a good place.

The goal isn’t to be better than the competition, the goal is to be more rarely qualified to help your target market than most of the easily-found alternatives.

How you decide that rare positioning is the hard part. All strategy requires risk and trade-offs.

But one thing is for sure, being scarcely qualified sure does help.

—kw

I recently noticed an area between two teeth that needs flossing after I eat certain foods.

My first thought was that I better go to the dentist soon to see if it needs attention. But the funny thing is, I now find myself flossing all my teeth daily instead of randomly each week. 🫣

This has to be a net benefit, right?

Either way, I’m now taking action on the problem and considering further action in the near future (going to the dentist).

Pain and discomfort is a funny thing.

They motivate you to take action better than almost anything else. Without sufficient quantities of them, it’s easy to let things slide or put them off indefinitely.

The relevant lesson here is that people don’t hire consultants without some form of pain or discomfort going on.

It could be a downward revenue trend, an income plateau, or a lack of confidence in making a strategic change in their business—or any other number of examples.

If you’re purely selling “get more customers” to your clients, you might be missing the underlying motivation your potential clients really have, which is pain removal.

People value specificity—especially when it comes to solving their pains. They don’t notice the generic marketing language we all use.

But they will recognize their own pains and discomforts when they see them articulated in language they relate to.

“Worried your teeth will fall out one day?” works a lot better than “Create a healthy, happy smile.”

When you understand the true underlying pains of your ideal clients, you’re able to speak to them better than the generic “build a better marketing engine” messaging we all use.

Specific identification of pain is what gets people’s attention. And that’s where research and thoughtful analysis comes into play.

The person who can articulate the pain of another in better words than they can themselves is much more likely to be able to solve that problem.

Your clients instinctively know that.

Talk about those pains. Isolate them in your messaging. Show them there’s a way out of it—and how you’ve done it for other people before.

It’s not manipulative, it’s empathetic.

It’s about speaking the language of the people most likely to hire you using real examples of the pains and discomforts you solve.

Examples of this kind of messaging might include:

• Worried about your recent declining revenues?
• Is the competition eating your breakfast?
• Are investors breathing down your neck for better performance?
• Ever feel like it could all go away tomorrow?
• Tired of trading hours for dollars?
• Feeling overwhelmed in your business?
• Unsure about what to do next?
• Tired of grinding out deadlines on a deadline?

The nuanced language and specificity you use to call out the context along with the pain or discomfort of your ideal clients’ situation is what gets people’s attention.

So while everyone is talking about helping companies achieve mega growth and scale, help your clients see your value to them by articulating the underlying pains they’re experiencing.

They may be financial in nature or something less tangible, such as a lack of confidence or uncertainty. Probably a combination of both and a variety of other things you’re not considering.

Remember that “what is most personal is also universal”. One client’s pain is likely held by many more like them.

Study your clients. Analyze their underlying motivations for hiring you. Put that in your content, copy, and messaging to better resonate with (and attract) more clients like them.

The better understood your clients feel, the more likely they are to hire you. It takes effort, time, research, and introspection.

That’s the hard work that separates the rainmakers from the survivalists.

—kw

P.S. This letter is sponsored, as usual, by Mindshare.

I started getting into photography sometime in 2020.

It began with the goal of making my webcam video look super crisp and clear. It led me down a rabbit hole of upgrading my lighting, microphone, office artwork—you name it. You can see my setup here.

As a tech guy, I was in my element with this stuff. I spend all day on Zoom, so I might as well deliver the highest fidelity version of myself as possible, right?

We justify our interests very well with logic when we want to. 😉

In 2021, my experimental rabbit hole turned into a photography hobby. I bought a used Leica Q for a decent price and I was hooked.

Since then, I’ve taken approximately 140,349 photos with it. That’s roughly 1,000 photos per month, not including shots taken on my Sony A7C camera (used as a webcam).

Here’s the thing…

I love many of the photos taken with my Leica Q. Probably because they’re mostly of my family and day-to-day life, but also because of the image quality coming out of the camera.

But if I’m honest, I’d be surprised if 1/100 of those photos were actually deemed “good” by “real” photographers.

The reality is, we need to put in the reps at whatever we do. Even great photographers know you need to take a LOT of photos to get that one perfect shot.

It’s no different with your writing. As a marketer, writing can be a huge benefit to your business. It’s how I’ve gotten almost all my clients—directly or indirectly.

But not every one of my posts is a showstopper. Each has a place and a purpose. They all come with a message that resonates with some—but never with everybody.

If you want to hit home runs, you have to have a few strikeouts and a lot of base hits. That’s part of the game.

Keep getting up to bat and let the universe take it from there.

—kevin

I did an audio recording for Mindshare members today in response to a few questions I received.

Mindshare membership includes what I call the #audiofiles. They’re short MP3s addressing common questions I receive and lessons I learn while out in the field as a marketing consultant.

I don’t generally put them public because, well, I have consulting clients and this stuff is mostly “inside baseball”. It might be weird for them to hear how the sausage is made, so to speak.

But this 28-minute audio recording covers a lot of things people ask and worry about a lot, so I thought you’d also find it valuable.

It covers things like how to get clients quickly when you need to, how to streamline your growth and build a sustainable marketing engine, and the key reasons why I believe I’m almost always booked solid.

So, in an unusual fashion, I thought I’d share this one with you. It gives you a taste of what’s in the membership. Because unless you try it out, you really have no idea.

Samples work!

Here’s the MP3 you can download and listen to this weekend:

→  Avoiding feast and famine.mp3

Hope some of these ideas serve you well.

—kw

P.S. Spinning your wheels? Learn more about Mindshare at https://howtoselladvice.com/membership.

I recently chatted with former software consultant turned CRM SaaS owner, Reuben Swartz, about how to do sales in a way that doesn’t feel like selling—and instead sets up your relationships for success.

In this episode, we chat about things like:

• Why traditional sales processes don’t work
• How he helps people win clients without being sales-y
• How having a clear target market helps your sales success
• Reframing “sales” as “educating” and “networking” as “connecting”
• Why a strong marketing engine allows you to be better at sales
• A mental model for generating more referrals
• Should you give gifts and thank-you notes to people who refer business to you?
• Easy ways to maintain contact with people in your network

And a lot more!

If selling isn’t your jam—or even if it is—you’ll get a ton of value out of this episode.

The mindsets and mental models he shares make it easy to navigate sales conversations without getting mired in tactical “steps” which can often confuse you and put a barrier between you and your prospects.

Resources mentioned:

• The Go-Giver by Bob Berg
• Alchemy by Rory Sutherland
• Mimiran: The fun, antiCRM
• Reuben on LinkedIn

Listen here or subscribe via your podcast player.

—kw

P.S. You can my interview on his podcast, Sales for Nerds, where we chat about strategies for selling your expertise (not just your labour).

It’s really hard to find good people.

I help my clients hire countless freelancers and agencies each year, and I still struggle to determine who will be capable or not without some degree of scrutiny.

The reality is, you never know how capable someone is until you work with them. And if it’s difficult for me—someone who’s been doing this a long time—you better believe this is difficult for your potential clients when they’re looking for someone like you.

So how do you make yourself a more obvious and less risky choice for your ideal clients?

It comes down to looking good on paper.

Some ways you could do that include:

1. Specific and differentiated positioning
2. A professional-looking website
3. Content published consistently and recently that clearly demonstrates your expertise
4. Case studies, work examples, and testimonials
5. Recognizable clients
6. A multi-year history doing what you do
7. Past record of speaking, teaching, and/or guesting on relevant podcasts
8. Associations with trusted people in your industry
9. Services that are specific and clearly communicated
10. Third-party signals, such as LinkedIn recommendations and a social following

As marketers, we often put our marketing last. The cobbler’s kids have no shoes, as they say.

Or, more commonly, we look undifferentiated from the sea of other options out there. We try to be all things to all people.

Before you go trying to build an audience on LinkedIn or Twitter, or before you reach out to your prospective clients and industry peers, make yourself look good on paper.

Have a place to invite people back to, as Michael Port would say.

Have a website that communicates and houses most or all of the above. Build your credibility signals. Make yourself different in some meaningful way. Specialize, if you can.

If you don’t look good on paper, there’s a good chance people won’t know how valuable you really are. And that means they won’t hire you.

Look good on paper. It will make it easier for clients to find you and for people to refer you.

After all, we’re in the de-risking business. Let’s make hiring you less risky.

—kw

P.S. Have you seen the new membership tiers? Check em’ out.

There’s a good chance you spend most of your time helping your clients with their marketing.

But what about your marketing?

I’m in that boat right now. I have a waiting list for 1:1 client work (aside from my 1:1 async mentoring), which means my free time to work on my business is a little limited.

Maybe you can relate.

You get busy. You onboard one or two clients in close succession. Your momentum slows or stops completely. And if you’re not careful, it can be really hard to get it going again.

The thing is, it’s your ethical duty to market yourself.

You can’t properly advocate for your clients’ best interests if you’re not able to easily turn away money from unfit clients.

When you don’t market yourself, it happens sooner or later that you suddenly feel the need to cling to every opportunity. It even makes it harder to do your job with your current clients. You’re less willing to take risks and say the hard and sometimes necessary things.

It’s like when you’re on an airplane and the oxygen masks drop down. You will want to put the oxygen mask on your dependent loved ones first, but the airlines tell you to put yours on first so you can better help others who need it.

The bottom line is this…

Your marketing isn’t going to be perfect most of the time. You may not even be consistent all the time.

But true consistency is about getting back on the horse when you fall off.

If you don’t put your oxygen mask on first and make sure you get your important tasks done each week, it won’t just hurt the future you—it will be hurting your current clients as well, whether you’re conscious of it or not.

Marketing creates opportunities.

And that lets you charge enough to do your best work, turn away unfit clients, and say the necessary things in your engagements when they need to be said. Change is rarely comfortable, after all.

Don’t put yourself last. Make marketing your business a priority. Put your oxygen mask on first.

Then get back to helping your clients.

—kw

P.S. In case you missed it, there are now three tiers of the membership. One for independent learning, one for learning + group coaching, and one for learning + group coaching + 1:1 async access to me. Learn more about what’s going on at howtoselladvice.com/membership.