Marketing Consultants

There’s really only one way to improve your marketing skills. And that’s through sheer practice and experience.

There are no books or shortcuts that will “hack” your way to being an overall better marketer.

Instead, it’s a series of trial, error, learning, applying, and sharing ideas as you go along.

One book at a time. One client at a time. One coach at a time. One project at a time. One article at a time.

If you’re lucky, you get to work with smart people who help elevate your game along the way.

If you’re smart, you’ll continually invest in your education at the same time. You’ll focus on learning how what you do creates measurable business results.

But beyond that, there’s nothing but time, elbow grease, and commitment to do great work to make you a better marketer.

Aim to do great work.

Whenever I create a new service, I try to do as little of the actual copywriting myself as possible.

I like to assemble the copy instead.

Rather than writing a services page from my head, I prefer to ask my prospects questions, listen to their exact words, then assemble a sales page that reflects back their goals and aspirations using their own language.

From those conversations, I also include a scope of work that I believe with reasonable confidence will help them achieve their ideal outcomes.

No clear goals means no scope, which means no service.

It’s the same whether you’re doing a proposal or writing a service page. You need clear outcomes to create a service that will get them there.

That’s why I also never write up a service/sales page until I sell it first.

Instead, I believe in creating content to attract an audience and then simply inviting people to reach out if they need help.

Eventually, someone will reach out looking for help with their situation. The conversation begins, and so does the process of developing a service that I later productize on my website if it makes sense to do so.

Once you sell a service a few times using the goals and language of your prospects, the page basically sells itself.

When you use real language from your sales conversations, the copy is far more nuanced and specific to real-world pains, needs, and desires.

If you want to write good sales copy, start by talking to your prospects, getting clear on their goals, why they matters, and the value of achieving them (or not).

Write the service using their language and refine it with every new prospect who comes to you.

If you do it right, your service page will feel to them like you’re reading their minds. Like you’ve created the solution just for them—before they even talk to you.

Great copy is assembled, not written.

Ever notice that some work gives you energy and other work drains you?

Or that some people you work with seem to light you up and others feel like you’re walking around with a weighted vest?

I’ve spent the last few years trying to do the former and eliminate the latter from my business. Doing so has created significant improvements in my business—from a profit and enjoyment standpoint.

For me, it meant doing more advisory work and less done-for-you execution work. I get to do the work I do best: create and facilitate marketing strategies that lead to measurable change for my clients.

I’m also becoming increasingly more aware of who I like working with. I’m more selective now than before. More attuned to personalities and businesses I’m best suited for (or not suited for).

I don’t know if there’s an invisible law of business that tells you to optimize for doing the things that light you up for people you enjoy working with, but I can tell you one thing: it won’t hurt to try.

In fact, it might open doors in your business you didn’t think possible.

Here’s something I found on Twitter the other week that I thought was interesting. It’s from a recent study by the University of Alberta, which makes it more than just a clever marketing meme.

The basic idea is that the more messages you try to share in an ad at one time, the less impact it makes.

That’s probably why I try to make my daily content short and focused on one topic per post.

By keeping it tight, it makes it more accessible to read and consume in one shot. With any luck, some of the ideas stick, too.

It’s not the only way to do things, but I think it works well.

One post, one idea. One ad, one message. You get the point.

As a marketing advisor, your job is to help clients get results. How you do that is up to you.

Should you roll up your sleeves and do a bunch of the work yourself, or should you stay in more of an advisory and oversight role?

Or, should it be somewhere in between?

The choice is yours to make. But if you want to find any kind of scale, you need to find ways to remove yourself from the day-to-day task work and into an oversight and facilitation role.

You want to be the air traffic controller, not the pilot. And the best way to do that is by creating leverage.

Leverage comes in many forms. For me, it usually includes examples, templates, training, and access to implementation partners I can trust.

These things greatly reduce the need for you to explain things over and over again, or end up doing things yourself every time because it’s easier. They also get results more quickly because you’re not reinventing the wheel every time.

That’s where niche specialization comes in.

When you specialize in a niche (i.e. a market vertical/industry), you can create repeatable assets that remove you from doing the task work and help your clients get results faster overall.

Your templates are all highly tailored to a specific audience. Your training fits precisely with their needs. And your examples are all right on point for their situation.

If you specialize, your leverage grows. Your expertise becomes more rare. Your results become better and more predictable.

And by the way, people are willing to pay good money for rare expertise that applies directly to them.

On the other hand, if you don’t specialize, your templates are generic. Your partners are generalists. Your training is boring. And your examples are hard to apply to each client’s situation.

At the end of the day, by not having a niche specialization, you don’t create nearly as much leverage.

And if you don’t have leverage, you don’t really have a business. You have a job.

Here’s a quick article by Craig Burgess about why he publishes his visual graphics daily.

There are a lot of good lines in it, but this is one of my favourites:

A lot of designers will be better at design than me. A lot of them will be worse. But I can promise you one thing: 99% of them don’t have a daily portfolio.

There’s a certain credibility and weight that comes with daily publishing—whether it’s your art, writing, or whatever your area of expertise is.

This post really resonated with me, so I thought I’d share it in case it inspires you to create daily content, too.