Marketing Consultants

Business revolves around the exchange of money.

And yet, it can be hard to talk about, especially when you’re talking big numbers.

The reality is, you can’t succeed without talking money. But you can feel more comfortable talking about it by keeping two things in mind.

1. Your job is to advocate for your clients

Remember you’re there to be an advocate for your clients, which means you need to understand their goals and the value of those goals in order propose something that makes their investment worthwhile.

Knowing the outcome they want and the value of that outcome to their business allows you to create a scope (and price) that works in their best interest.

Which brings us to the next point.

2. You also need to advocate for yourself

Once you know what success looks like and what value will be generated for your client, your next job is to ensure the engagement will be worthwhile for you, too.

After all, you can only work with some many clients and you need to be profitable with each one.

Not “cost-covering”, but actually profitable. 

If you advocate for your clients while seeking to create a clear win-win, money shouldn’t be hard to talk about.

Be frank and honest about money up front. Ask questions about outcomes, value, and scope. Figure out what job you’re really doing.

You want a clear win-win scenario, after all. Which means you can and should talk about money plainly.

If you can’t talk about money, you might be thinking of the transaction as being a fixed-sum game where one person loses and another person gains.

The opposite is true if you come from a place of advocacy for yourself and your clients.

If you do it right, value gets created for both parties.

That’s one of the beautiful aspects of business.

One of my marketing pet peeves is when someone over-uses marketing jargon.

I see it as a sign of insecurity at best, or an attempt to bewilder or confuse people at worst.

If you’re a marketing advisor, your job is to speak in a language your clients understand. An educated client is a happy client, after all.

Advisory work is a form of advocacy. To look out for your clients and help them see the big picture. You can’t do that if their eyes glaze over when you speak.

Sure, there are cases where technical language needs to be used. I’m not saying to throw precise language out the door.

But if you want to advocate for your clients and help them really understand things, avoid jargon whenever possible.

Explain things like you would to a kid.

On a related note:

A client sent me this today which is hilariously on-topic: http://jargon.columnfivemedia.com/

It generates text full of marketing jargon and exemplifies what I mean really well.

Here’s an example:

ROI flat design integrated seamless reaching out hashtag SEO. Integrated flat design scalability platform quiet period. CPM branding The Cloud. Synergies disruptive tech alignment omnichannel meme. Blogosphere fanbassador user-friendly quiet period curated click-through rate robust. Shoptimization buzzword content curation click bait target audience alignment pivot. Quiet period hackathon chatvertizing. Brand awareness context conversation marketing pass the clap. Lean content cross-device CRM iterative integrated. B2B platform synergies. Tweens B2C branding dynamic content platform cross-device context.

Did your eyes glaze over after a sentence or two? That’s exactly my point. 🙂

Enjoy!

To be a successful consultant, you need at least four things:

1. Credibility

How much proof do you have that you’re competent at what you do?

To be credible, you need to have a demonstrable track record of success. Years of doing things that prove you’re as good as you say.

Case studies and testimonials help. Associations with other trusted people and organizations go a long way. Third party credentials may help, too.

Win them with proof.

2. Awareness

How many people in your target market know about you and what you offer?

To build awareness, you want to try to be “everywhere” your ideal target market hangs out. You should feel ubiquitous to them.

And the only way to do that is by focusing down on who you serve best and showing up in as many places they hang out as possible, offering value.

Be everywhere for a small group of ideal clients.

3. Education

You can’t succeed for long without education.

And if you want to sell your expertise for what it’s worth, it makes sense to constantly upgrade your professional skills and knowledge.

Learning on the job will only take you so far. Courses, books, training, coaching—these are all required streps for a high-paid consultant.

No way around it.

4. Consistency

Being consistent with your publishing shows you’re serious and trustworthy (which lowers perceived risk).

When you first start publishing and putting out your thoughts to the world, you won’t get a big reaction. In fact, you’ll get crickets.

It may take some time, but a funny thing happens when you keep showing up. Small wins turn into big wins. Eventually, you’ll build traction.

In closing…

You can complicate it all you want, but these are the four main core ingredients to succeeding as a consultant.

None of them are easy, and all of them take time and effort.

It’s worth it if you invest yourself in the process. It’s miserable if you don’t.

If you had to build a business offering only service for one kind of client, what would it be and who would you serve?

Whether it’s a practical thought experiment or not, it’s fun to think about. It forces you to focus, which is the key to growth.

And if you did do just that one thing, do you think you would do better work than you’re current offering?

Do you think you could build a business around it if it had all of your focus?

Would you want to?

Whether it’s practical or not to do so, this thought experiment may guide you towards an area that could use a little more of your focus.

Assuming you would want to head in that direction, of course.

My hunch is, you do.

When you’re good at what you do, it’s only a matter of time before you get busy. It’s slow at first, but then it happens all at once.

It turns out, having an effective product or service is great for business.

Who knew?

But with that increased demand for your services, you’ll eventually run into a challenge: keep scaling with demand or go slowly and double down on the quality of your work.

It’s really hard to stop taking clients. Especially when you first encounter the limits of your bandwidth. It’s tempting to say yes to everything and figure it out as you go.

But the problem with accepting too many clients in an effort to grow quickly is that you neglect the very process that got you clients in the first place.

As a result, your work begins to suffer.

Growth and new client acquisition is an indicator of health in your business. You should have some turnover. You should sign new clients.

But growing too fast usually means assigning work to people more junior than you, which means your systems need to be rock solid or the quality of your work will drop through the floor. 

Or, you simply get too busy to keep doing great work and provide excellent client service.

I’ve seen it time and time again. People get busy, they don’t say no to new business (especially non-ideal business), and suddenly it’s like you’re working with an entirely different freelancer or agency than before.

In the case of agencies, the work is delegated to a junior who does NOT uphold the founder’s original methodology. They too become overworked and things start to fall apart pronto.

In the case of consultants/freelancers, they get so busy that response times become infinite and the work quality becomes a shell of what it once was. It happens to all of us if we’re not careful.

There’s no real correct answer here. You can either scale quickly or uphold high standards in your business. Both can be lucrative, but you need to choose which one you’ll go for. They represent completely different business strategies.

Mass production or boutique service.

When you need results yesterday, it’s easy to get panicky.

It becomes tempting to make short-term tactical decisions that seek immediate gratification. But doing that only delays the eventual process of building a marketing engine drives durable results tomorrow.

The best thing for any marketing team to do is to keep a 6+ month minimum horizon. Especially when building things from the ground up or rebuilding things that aren’t working.

There’s very little you can do that will make immediate and lasting results in under 6 months. You can run ads, reposition your offering, launch new campaigns, or make tweaks to existing pieces. And those can help!

But if you want real strategic change, there’s no substitute for building things slowly, one step at a time.

You can’t grow a tree by tomorrow, and it’s the same thing with strategic changes to your marketing.

If you want to get traction in a new niche, the best thing you can do is create and publish content.

Lots of it.

1. Clarify your thoughts on the niche you’re entering
2. Figure out where you feel most strongly about
3. Increase the likelihood of someone finding you via increased “surface area“
4. Build a reputation for being credible and committed to the industry
5. Show people how you think and what you know
6. Build an audience of people you are seeking to serve

… all of which leads to more opportunities from people who need what you know

With any luck (and perhaps a few relationships to help along the way), you’ll notice traction and see early signs of life.

If you keep going, you’ll eventually establish yourself with a unique point of view that people will be willing to pay for.

Keep showing up and create lots of content until things begin to click.

Then work your hardest to get it in front of the people who want your point of view.

If you’re even reasonably busy, you should be discerning about who you work with.

Why?

Because a single poor-fit client can spoil your entire focus (and mental well-being). They can even cost you your best clients.

What do poor-fit clients look like?

Well, they tend to require more of your time, don’t pay when they’re supposed to, don’t respond in a timely manner, never even think of referring you to someone else, don’t implement your advice, don’t show up on time, and generally don’t get the same results as good fit clients.

And that means no case studies, no business growth, no job satisfaction—and all kinds of other costly downsides.

Whether you’re actively working with someone or evaluating an opportunity, remember that the choice is first and foremost yours to make about whether to work with them or not.

Sometimes, gut instinct is enough. You will always get a sense when things are right or not.

But just to be sure, it helps to pay attention to any early warning signs. When there’s one or two red flags, there’s usually a lot more under the surface and more to come.

Be selective about who you choose to work with—both new and current clients alike.

Thank me later.