Marketing Consultants

Most consultants position themselves too broadly in terms of who they serve.

To give you an example, when I started consulting for the coworking industry, I was nervous it was way too niche.

There are fewer than 20,000 coworking spaces worldwide. It didn’t seem like nearly enough. But it turns out, that’s plenty.

Now, I know I could niche even further and widen my competitive moat by focusing exclusively on multi-location spaces.

It’s crossed my mind, but for now it’s not necessary.

To give you another example, when I started Mindshare, it was originally for independent professionals.

Like… what? I was thinking freelancers, consultants, and other independent knowledge workers.

I quickly realized I had no mooring. No center of gravity. Nobody would relate to that idea.

I tightened up my positioning to focus on independent marketing professionals. Then further to marketing advisors and strategists of all stripes.

Since then, my content has become far more focused. People in my target market tell me how much it resonates with their situation. They say it feels like it was written precisely for them.

And I still attract people who freelance and run agencies because they do similar things and my ideas are still completely applicable.

Remember, your market is bigger than your target.

There are big businesses in tiny niches.

Niche until it hurts.

I came across an insightful Twitter thread you might like by Yannick Veys on SEO fundamentals.

It’s actually very good.

It includes tons of additional resources and links to keep you going for a while. You could do worse than add some (or all) of these ideas to your Methodology.

I have 15+ years of digital marketing experience.

I condensed everything I know about SEO in one single thread including videos from industry experts.

When you finish this thread you can literally start your own SEO agency and start making money online.

— Yannick | Marketing & Growth (@Yannick_Veys) July 12, 2021

Here’s the full thread: https://twitter.com/Yannick_Veys/status/1414556914772496386

Oh, and if you don’t follow me on Twitter, be sure to do that and say hi so I can follow you back:  https://twitter.com/kevincwhelan

I ran a poll the other day on Twitter with this question:

Would you rather have 100% retention or 100% free marketing for your consulting business?

The results were surprising—it was nearly 50/50!

I’m curious, which would you rather? 

Hit reply and let me know what you would choose and why. There are no wrong answers, just an interesting thought experiment.

Your prospects don’t care about your proprietary methodology. They care about their pains, desires, and what you can do to solve them.

Sure, it’s good to talk about your process for those ready to sign up anyway. But your prospects are likely to gloss over it.

They’d rather understand the practicalities of how your engagement works, not necessarily the precise formula you use to get results.

It won’t make much sense until they actually go through it, anyway.

But here’s the thing: once you’re in your client engagements, your clients sure do expect you to have a process.

If they feel like you’re winging it on their dime, they won’t be able to relax and follow your lead. This will manifest itself as micromanaging your work, not taking your advice, or a variety of other symptoms.

You need a methodology the same way pilots need their checklists. It doesn’t necessarily determine how or when they fly. That’s up to them based on the conditions and situation.

The checklists pilots use are there to ensure the necessary procedures are followed during the key parts of the flight. You, too, will reference your methodology at various points during your engagement to ensure you provide a complete service.

So while it’s critical to have a well-defined methodology, your prospects don’t need to know all about it unless they ask.

Keep it any mention of it in your marketing high-level and focus on their pains, desires, and outcomes you can deliver instead.

This is your Friday preview episode of the private podcast that comes with a Mindshare Community membership. Sign up for a free 7-day trial to improve the way you run your marketing consulting business.

When you approach your client work, do you follow a Methodology or standard process? Or do you make it up as you go along?

I have a Methodology, and it makes every engagement streamlined and less stressful.

It’s like a checklist. Something to capture and document your ideas. It’s also a reference in your client engagements to ensure nothing gets missed. This creates predictable outcomes when applied consistently.

I call this my Methodology.

Your prospects may not care much that you have a Methodology, only that you can get results.

But once they become your clients, they do start to care if it feels like you’re winging it every day. Or if there’s no method to your madness (results) to speak of.

They also notice and appreciate it when you do show them how it works. When you create a Trello or Asana board just for them with the entire picture mapped out, it gives them a lot of confidence to see they’re part of your tried-and-true process.

In this episode, I talk about my own Methodology and the general approach I use in my marketing advisory practice.

I store it in Trello, and every new idea or learning I get goes into the core template that becomes the basis for every new (and current) engagement I run.

If you’d like to learn more, be sure to join Mindshare to get access to resources like this so you can run your client engagements longer and more efficiently. It can increase your profit significantly.

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Here’s something I’ve learned along the way:

If your gut instinct says a client will be trouble, there’s a good chance they will be over a long enough horizon.

Trouble might mean a number of different things. It might mean being overly demanding, or having unrealistic expectations, or erratic behaviour, or unethical tendencies, or worst of all—being litigious. 

It helps to have good, clear agreements in place. Legal reasons or not, a clear scope of work will set expectations and avoid disagreements down the line.

If you can incorporate your business, that helps give you some peace of mind. Insurance is an absolute must if you’re giving advice.

But the real solution is to get out of the relationship (or avoid it) before it becomes an issue.

Never underestimate your gut instinct. It knows more than you think.

Especially about bad clients.

When you first start writing daily, it feels like you’re writing into the void.

No audience, no subscribers, very little social media engagement.

But people are noticing, whether you can see it or not. It happens slowly, at first. You’re finding your voice, ideas, and style. It takes time.

Eventually, people start to notice you showing up, day in and day out. They see your commitment. They begin to grow familiar with you and your ideas.

You start to see what’s resonating with your ideal audience. You double down on what’s working, ignoring what isn’t.

This is the process. Or, as Seth Godin likes to call it, The Practice. You show up regardless of the immediate results.

It’s how you build your reputation. You do it through repetition and consistency. You harden your thinking and figure out what your big ideas are.

If you quit too soon, you’ll see no results. If you stick with it, you’ll not only build credibility, which is number two on the Mindshare Methodology pyramid, you’ll start to see signs of life.

People will begin to reach out and engage with you. You’ll start generating leads. You’ll close a few.

Slowly but surely, you build a name for yourself. It’s not quick, but it works.

Keep your eye on the long game and stay consistent.

(This is day 242 of my daily writing habit. It does get easier, too.)

If you tried to teach someone how to skate in one day, it would be difficult.

But if you taught them the basics first, then gradually added steps over time, they’d be skating like a pro in short order.

They might even enjoy the learning process!

If you rush the process, however, they’ll get overwhelmed, frustrated, and give up. Not good.

It’s the same with your coaching or consulting engagements. If you try to incorporate too much at once, you’ll create stress, frustration, and overwhelm.

But if you do too little, and you risk underwhelming your clients and not seeing results. That’s not what you want either.

The key is to manage your engagements at the right cadence. To push without going too far. To know when to throttle your efforts to ease tension.

Get it right and your stress levels will be low, your clients will be happy, and they’ll see results through consistent steps.

Get it wrong and you’ll be out of your job in no time.

The world wants more access, not ownership.

It’s why we buy a Spotify subscription instead of single albums. Why companies are using coworking/flexible office spaces instead of traditional leases or ownership. Why people are renting AirBNBs around the world instead of owning a vacation home.

It all comes down to flexibility, and it’s shaping purchases on the individual and corporate level.

Companies are treating their marketing department much the same way.

Many are now hiring one, two, or maybe three people in-house and then outsourcing an enormous amount to outside contractors and agencies who specialize in their individual areas.

Structuring things this way keeps fixed costs low, creates more efficient spending, and generates a highly specialized team that can scale up or down—almost on demand.

And that’s part of why there’s an increased demand for fractional CMOs and marketing advisors.

People are seeing they can hire people from around the world at half the cost and still create excellent work. But only if they figure out how to hire and bring together all these people and moving parts.

Luckily, that’s what you do best, right?

Over the next few years, just keep this in mind: the demand for fractional leadership is just as strong as it is for flexibility in all other areas.

Knowing where the market is going will help you be in the right position to make the most of it.

 

The longer you consult, the more unconscious pressure you’ll feel to create content about highly complex topics.

After all, if what we say sounds advanced, we must be good at our jobs, right?

That’s probably true. But if you look at the vast majority of businesses, most still struggle with the fundamentals.

You’re better off focusing your content on a few foundational topics that are intuitive and within reach to your ideal clients.

If your content feels too sophisticated, you may alienate the people most in need of your services. Your prospects will feel like your services are for some mythical other company that has all the basics figured out already.

But the reality is, most companies don’t. The vast majority of companies aren’t able to consistently execute even the basics.

And the basics are 80% of the job.

As experts, we have the curse of knowledge. It blinds us from what it’s like to be newer or less sophisticated.

That’s why we must actively try to think like a beginner with our content. To use simple words and sentences. To help people understand and identify with the fundamentals so we guide them to the more advanced stuff later on.

You can talk about complex topics from time to time, it just shouldn’t be your core strategy unless that’s all you offer.

Stick to the fundamentals most of the time and you’ll be just fine.