Marketing Consultants

As consultants, we like doing hard things.

We enjoy finding solutions to difficult problems. We thrive on a good challenge.

And it’s because of that trait that we must also reign it in—both for ourselves and our clients.

There’s a simple way to do most things. Your job is to not over-complicate the way you do things, both for yourself and your clients.

Find the simple way. Bake it into your methodology.

Then avoid the temptation to complicate things at all costs.

If you’re a coach or consultant, daily writing has many benefits.

Some of those benefits include clarifying your ideas, establishing credibility, and attracting opportunities to you over time.

But the biggest benefit of daily writing is you get to be a lightweight “coach in the pocket” for your ideal clients and readers.

It’s akin to giving a small sample of what it’s like to work with you.

And if you’ve ever been to a grocery store, you’ll know that giving away samples is a great first step toward signing new clients (or gaining new customers).

Your ideas don’t have to be long or complicated. In fact, they should be the opposite when you send them daily.

Keep it simple and you might surprise yourself with the results.

Over the years, I’ve worked with, hired, and referred a lot of business to marketing freelancers, agencies, and consultants.

In that time, I’ve noticed two things that are critical to their success long-term.

Combined, these two things are extremely to find. And that’s what makes them so valuable.

The first one is competence.

Being very competent at your work is difficult and takes a long time.

You have to go through a long phase of making rookie mistakes and turning out work that later embarrasses you. When you finally become competent, you’ll know it.

Competency is rare, but there’s another characteristic that is even more subtle and rare.

This second characteristic is dependability.

Dependability is subjective, but you always know it when you see it. When you’re dependable, people can rely on you to follow through on your commitments.

You respond to people in a reasonable timeframe. You don’t over-book yourself so you always have some room to provide great service and account for the unforeseen. You do great work on time, on budget, and with full integrity.

To me, the only way you can be both competent and dependable is to do less than you want to do. Specifically, you do fewer kinds of work and take on a smaller number of clients at one time.

To be competent and reliable, you need margin in your business.

That means charging a premium for your services so you can keep wiggle room for unforeseen wrinkles and go above and beyond for your clients.

You can’t be competent and reliable if you’re always operating at full throttle and saying yes to any work that comes along.

If you want to be around a long time, try doing fewer kinds of work for fewer people at a time so you can be highly competent and reliable at the same time.

Do this and you’ll write your own future.

I heard Joe Pilger speak last week in a Clubhouse room on positioning. He said some smart things, so I decided to check out his website.

As it turns out, his site has examples of productized consulting services worth exploring. Below, I’ll share a few reasons why I like them, just to point you in the right direction.

1. It offers a mix of services at various price points, intended for different audiences at different stages in their business.
2. He publishes his pricing and scope transparently, which in my opinion creates the best buying experience for consulting work. That doesn’t mean it’s cheap. It’s not. But it lets you assess the value yourself and see if you’re a fit before reaching out.
3. He also has 1:1 and group offers, making for a range of accessible offerings for nearly all budgets.
4. Lastly, it shows he uses at least a few “methodologies”. He even goes so far as to trademark some of them.

If you’re looking for a strong productized consulting page for inspiration, this is one to look at.

This post is a preview episode of the Mindshare Private Podcast inside the Mindshare Community. Sign up for a free trial to run a more profitable and enjoyable marketing practice.

Every so often, a client or prospect will ask for a discount.

And personally, I never do it. For a few reasons.

1. In order to do the job well, you need to be properly so you can invest the necessary time and energy to get a result.
2. You need to earn a profit on your time—not just be paid for your time. You can reinvest or take home that profit. That’s what a business does.
3. It wouldn’t be fair to other clients if you gave them a discount and not everyone else.
4. You need to be excited about the work you do and the price you charge. Otherwise, you won’t be properly motivated. Never apologize for your price.
5. When you discount, your clients will value your work less because you value your work less. Your expertise is an asset, not a commodity.

So what do I say when clients or prospects ask for a discount?

1. Ask why the number is so important to them
2. Refocus them on the value of the project
3. Remove something from the scope to make it work
4. Find another lower-cost option they can buy
5. Do a custom project (which will be more expensive)
6. Ensure you’re talking to the financial buyer, not an employee
7. Pass on the project if it’s not a fit/you’re not valued

Some people negotiate with everyone for everything. It’s in their nature or disposition. I don’t take it personally.

As long as I have a scalable ladder of options for clients to select from, it shouldn’t matter what your price is. If they value your expertise and you help them see how the investment will pay off, they will pay full price.

Otherwise, send them to someone who is cheaper.

Listen to this episode for a lot more nuance on this subject.

And if you like content like this, consider joining the Mindshare Community. You get 7 days free, so there’s zero risk to try.

Many people struggle with selling “strategy” vs. execution work.

The main skill you need to have to become more strategic with your client work is to understand how what you do impacts your clients’ bottom line. 

Until you understand how your work creates value—and how much—you’ll always have a hard time selling strategy-level work.

Once you unlock the ability to describe scenarios that lead to results and account for probabilities of achieving certain financial outcomes, your work will become demonstrably more valuable to you and your clients.

Get in the weeds with what you do. Try to understand how your work attracts business for your clients.

Understand things like acquisition costs, lifetime value, and marginal profit. Know how what you do moves those needles.

A little business knowledge plus a holistic view of marketing will go a long way.

There is a misconception about marketing that almost every dollar can and should be traced back to an ROI.

The reality is, it’s just not possible—for the most part—on a granular level.

Think about anywhere else in the business. What is the ROI of hiring one person over another?

Or delighting clients with a treat the next time you see them? Or choosing one office over another?

You just can’t measure it, even if there is one buried deep down inside.

So much of marketing can be measured, yes. And yet, so much of it relies on combinations of things that are hard to quantify individually.

Multiple touchpoints, taking risks, word of mouth, and many other factors combine to make an ROI equation almost impossible.

Marketing should instead be looked at as a whole. Like your health, it’s a system of things that make up the health of the individual.

It’s everything your business does that makes up the whole.

Sure, you can and should track all of the metrics that matter. But then you must zoom out and look at the big picture: are we getting opportunities and new clients at a cost we can afford?

That’s the true measure of marketing success. At least in my eyes.

The more technology advances, the stronger pull I feel towards older technology.

Open protocol stuff, such as email, owned domains, self-hosted open-source technology, SMS, RSS, and podcasts (which are based on RSS).

These things are built on technology that have withstood the test of time. They’re durable and hard to shut down.

Usually, they just work. And their lack of frills makes them elegant in their simplicity.

I like having the Mindshare Community (which is hosted in Circle). It’s great to be able to build content and conversations that increase the value of being a member for those new and old.

But there’s something timelessly appealing about the idea of a mastermind-like community that lives in your inbox. I’m being a bit romantic about this idea, so bear with me as I articulate it further.

Such a technology does exist. It’s called a “listserve” or “listserv”.

Originally known as Listserv, which is trademarked name for a software dating back to the 1980’s, is essentially a group email address.

You email it, and everyone on the list serve gets the email.

People can reply to all members of the group or you can allow people to reply directly to the sender for private responses.

A very small part of me wants to create a private community membership on a listserve. It’s probably not a practical idea, but I’ll continue waxing romantic if you’ll continue to indulge me.

Google Groups is a form of listserve, except they also host the conversations in the Google Group. I don’t want that.

I’d want the value of the community to be in the longevity of the members’ tenure. The longer you stay, the more value is built up in your email archives.

It incentivizes signing up (and staying signed up) since all the value you gain is in the time of your membership, which begins and ends with the duration of your subscription.

Something about the idea of conversations living on a Google server somewhere isn’t appealing to me, so I wouldn’t want to use that technology.

I also like that it relies solely on existing technology we use every day, so there’s no need to log in somewhere new or begin a new behaviour. This is an underestimated factor in community-building.

The only way this works is if you keep it relatively small and focused. You need a tight-knit group of people doing similar things.

I’m not sure if this idea will go anywhere, but I might try it out for fun.

Would you join something like this? Hit me up on Twitter and let me know!

What is the least profitable and/or most stress-inducing thing you offer?

I bet something comes to mind.

Take this as a sign: it’s time to stop doing it so you can make room for something better.

You’ll be surprised how well that works.

I was watching one of those on-demand lead-gen webinars where the host pretends they are live, but they’re not.

You know the kind. You opt in from an ad or sales page and magically, the next webinar is starting in just a few minutes.

I won’t name names, but I’m sure you know the kind.

I get it. Hosting webinars that replay every 20 minutes around the clock with a “live” chat component may trick enough people to convert at scale.

But for anyone with even a reasonable amount of technical savvy, it just reeks of misleading and scammy behaviour. It also completely ruins any hopes of being seen as having integrity. Forever.

If you want to run an evergreen webinar, just make it clear that it’s a recording. Don’t pretend it’s live 24/7. Even if it converts for some, you’ll ruin your reputation for many people who are smart enough to realize what’s going on.

Your reputation is all you have. Treat your potential clients like the intelligent people they are. And whatever you do—act with integrity. 

You know this, I just thought I’d share this as a reminder not to get tempted by tactics like this.

It’s just not worth it.