Marketing Consultants

Tomorrow, you have to fire every client you have.

Except one. Who makes the cut?

The first person who comes to mind is probably the one you should design your business around. Make them the target.

Nobody will notice the changes at first. But you will. You’ll slowly shift what you do and how you do it.

Maybe you’ll finesse your website copy. Or create a distinct audience page. Or offer a new service. Or tighten up your positioning.

Or maybe you’ll even start a separate website to try it out.

Whatever route you take, your business will slowly become more attractive to those people. Even subtle changes can have a big impact.

That’s how I ended up running a coworking consultancy. I went from serving “anyone”, to B2B services companies, and then eventually, to coworking spaces—always following my best clients and narrowing my focus along the way.

Your best clients may change over time. Your focus will adapt with those changes. That’s normal and healthy for your business.

Unless you’re making a serious pivot, focus on serving your best client(s) above all else.

It will put you in the best position possible to attract more like them—and if you’re lucky, actually love your own business.

What do you do when you’re not sure about something?

If you’re like most people, you procrastinate. You put things off until you feel like you have more clarity.

You decide to “let it marinate”, as if inspiration will strike you at some later date.

And maybe it will. But usually not until it’s reached a point where the pain is too high or the opportunity costs accrued have become too great to keep ignoring it.

Uncertainty leads to inaction. And inaction has an opportunity cost.

It’s also stressful, which is a cost in itself.

The best way out of it is to take the smallest step possible. Then the next. Then the next.

Talk to people, if you can. Hire a coach if you need to.

Whatever you do, don’t wait for inspiration to strike.

Hunt it down.

I think it was Dan Kennedy that said (I paraphrase), “whatever industry you’re in, you’re actually in the marketing business”.

He’s absolutely correct.

When you stop marketing yourself, you become invisible. It happens slowly at first. But after a while, you’ll notice the opportunities drift away.

If you want to keep your consulting business alive (and growing), you have to dedicate time every single day to your marketing.

You can’t depend on referrals forever.

Luckily, it’s never been easier. You can publish content to your blogs or social media and get remarkable results.

Ideally, you do it daily, but even once a week is better than nothing.

You can also improve your positioning, or freshen up the design of your website, or reach out to people in your dream 100 client list.

Whatever it is, remember that you’re not in the consulting business. You’re in the marketing business.

And it has nothing to do with the marketing you do for your clients.

If you find yourself unable to come up with content ideas, there’s a good chance you’re focusing too broadly.

Either tighten your positioning, or go two levels deep with your content topics.

The tighter you focus, the easier it is to know what to say.

“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”

– Elizabeth King

Methodologies and systems. I talk about them a lot.

Methodology is the way you approach your client work. It’s your magic formula and checklist, ensuring no stone gets unturned with every engagement.

Systems, on the other hand, are the things you teach your clients to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.

It becomes their methodology.

The point of having systems in a business is to reduce the need to think. To make it easy to know at all times what to do next, and to iterate on the system until it consistently gets the desired results.

As an advisor, your job is to create the necessary direction and infrastructure needed to get results.

But before you call it a day, you also want to leave your clients with a system they can operate after you go.

Otherwise, your good work will start to fall apart the minute you’re no longer overseeing things.

The idea of a system is that it stores all the ongoing tasks and reminders they need to run their marketing program. It also stores ad hoc ideas, too.

If you have a small project that can get results, for example, you want them to be reminded every so often to either re-run it or post-pone it.

The choice is theirs, but at least they’re reminded to consider it.

I put all this stuff into Trello, but you can use any tool to store these ideas and reminders.

When you don’t have a system, the easy thing to do is to default to how people feel. And usually, people don’t feel like putting in the work needed to succeed. 

That’s why a formal system matters so much. It reminds you of what you agreed to do, and what needs to be done in order to create repeatable results.

If you haven’t already, check out Mindshare to learn more about how to building your own methodology and systems for your marketing advisory practice.

I recently purchased a book called Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It).

When I got the book, I opened a random page and found this passage:

The passage struck me.

It reminds me that people with real challenges don’t want the cheapest option. Cheap means you probably won’t really be able to solve my problems.

Instead, they want the option that corresponds to their desire to achieve an outcome.

Assuming you can actually solve your clients’ challenges, it’s your duty to price accordingly. Otherwise, people will simply assume your work is no good.

And they will probably be right.

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 level up the way you run your marketing consulting business.

I was talking with a client recently about the value of a project we were considering hiring someone for. The client wanted to know if paying a premium for a high-value writing project was worthwhile.

It was a fair questions. So, we compared:

1. The opportunity costs of not doing the project
2. The DIY option and implications
3. Hiring a generalist to do the work cheaper—and the trade-offs in that
4. Hiring a specialist to do the work—and the benefits of doing that
5. The longterm value that can be spun off of a well-produced outcome

In this episode, we go into the nuances of value conversations applied to this particular situation, as well as understanding the impacts of marginal profit and costs in the value conversations you have with your clients.

At the end of the day, you need to be able to articulate the value of working with you (or not working with you).

Hope this helps you navigate your next discussions around price and value.

If you’re an email subscriber or RSS reader, click here to listen.

—k

You have to be radically honest with your clients. It’s more than just your job, it’s your duty.

You have to be willing to say the hard things as effortlessly as you say the positives—but without a trace of judgement or arrogance.

It has to come from a place of wanting to give people what they need to hear. But it also needs to be received by your client in a way they will internalize.

A good advisor finds the will and courage to say things as they are—good and bad—knowing they’re coming from a place of true advocacy.

But they must also do it with tact and self-awareness.

They must find the nuance in their tone and language to get their ideas across in a way the recipient needs to hear it. Otherwise, it’s like a seed cast onto the concrete, it will not grow.

You can’t be radically honest in the most genuine way without being a genuine advocate for your clients.

Be a true advocate for your clients and be radically honest.

(But maybe prepare your clients for it in advance so they’re not completely jarred when straight goods come their way.)

This week, my assistant almost cost me $5,000 because of a simple mistake.

As part of my advisory retainers, I provide access to my list of implementation specialists (designers, developers, writers, etc.) to do the implementation work.

Usually, it’s a direct referral. I don’t middleman the transaction nor mark up anyone’s time, I just make the intro.

But there’s on exception. My web developer in the Philippines—whom I have worked with for going on seven years and is amazing—does not take on new direct clients anymore.

However, he will do work for my clients if I pay him directly and invoice the client myself. So, if you’re on an advisory retainer with me, I offer access to his services at direct cost. It’s a flow-through expense.

Anyway, he worked on a big project and invoiced $6,000 for that work, inclusive of some other client work he performed. My assistant, for some reason, didn’t bill my advisory client the $5k, thinking it was going to be handled elsewhere.

A complete oversight, but it happens. I caught it, which is the main thing.

But rather than asking her to be more dilligent next time, I asked her to update the system we use to handle this stuff. I asked her to write down a new process in our Systems Document to prevent this from inadvertently happening again.

We decided that before paying the developer, my admin would create invoices for all the clients who had to be invoiced. She would then check to make sure the invoices matched up with the amount we were paying out.

Once all the hours were accounted for, and the totals added up, she could then remit payment to the developer.

This didn’t delay his payment in any way. I always pay promptly. But what it did do was ensure my revenue was secured to offset the accrued costs—before paying those expenses.

Sometimes, making a mistake and learning from it is sufficient. But if you document all of your recurring tasks and fix the system, it solves it at the root level and is more likely to prevent it from happening again.

The takeaway: fix the system, don’t reprimand the person.

But have the system in the first place—whether for your admin work or your clients marketing program.

Learn more about how I create systemization in my advisory engagements in the Mindshare community.

Pricing a consulting retainer is a tricky ordeal.

Charge too much, and you’re quickly seen as an expense line item.

Don’t charge enough, and you leave a lot of money on the table—for you and your clients.

My typical advisory work involves helping my clients build the strategy, plan, and infrastructure needed to get repeatable and sustainable growth for my clients.

And that takes time.

It often involves ground-up overhauls of their entire marketing program, which takes several months or longer.

Since that’s how my engagements usually go, it means I need to be around long enough to see my clients through the execution work required.

With that in mind, it means I need to price my services in a way that allows clients to sustain my fees long enough to build out the necessary pieces until they no longer need me (though many keep me around for my perspective).

Some consultants are like special ops: they drop in, do a project, charge a lot, then they’re out. And that can work for highly strategic engagements or when solving very specific problems.

There’s nothing wrong with that approach. And if that’s the kind of work you do, you should charge a lot for the value you create.

But if your job is to stick around for a while, you will probably find the lifetime value of your client engagements goes up if you focus on making it sustainable for your clients on a month-to-month basis.

The question is: can you build a service that gets results within their budget range and is profitable enough for you to make it worthwhile?

Charge premium rates, but optimize for making it sustainable.