Kevin C. Whelan

I was speaking with someone recently who has been a marketing consultant for a few years but has seen their advisory work drop off recently.

When you lose most of your clients, you definitely begin to panic.

After all, it’s not a quick and easy process to get advisory clients. You need to be marketing yourself continually to keep opportunities available for when you need them.

So what do you do when your advisory work dries up?

To me, this is an opportunity to do a few things.

1. Go back to your core skills

Being a marketing advisor or fractional CMO requires knowledge of a wide range of marketing strategies and tactics.

Most marketing consultants (all) are somewhat T-Shaped. We are deep experts in one or two areas and have a wide range of knowledge on the rest.

When the opportunities are not around, it might be time to go back to the things you do best and cut the rest, focusing the what you offer so that you are clear about where you add the most value.

This will help reframe you as the ideal candidate for someone who needs exactly what you offer.

2. Start doing implementation work

If I lost all my clients tomorrow and noticed I was having difficulty getting new ones, I’d probably go back to making websites and build back up from there.

It’s a lot easier to sell implementation than it is to sell advisory work. Rebuild from your core skills, do the implementation work people need, then layer in advisory options in your proposals until people start to buy them again.

For me, I went from doing freelancing, to running an agency, to a “fractional CMO” role with a project management piece, to eventually pure advisory work.

Getting back into implementation work can be the quickest way to get your business going again.

Keep offering advisory work as well until people start buying it again.

3. Use your implementation skills as a sub-contractor

The most important thing you can do if you’re not earning enough money is to find some kind of work.

You have a responsibility to yourself and your family to keep getting paid—otherwise you’ll find yourself in a job quicker than you can say “CLIENT”.

When I was just starting out on my own, I did a lot of sub-contractor work for other agencies. Design agencies, IT companies,  digital marketing agencies all needed things like web development and content marketing to fill their gaps. I had those skills and more.

Sub-contracting is not a place you want to live forever. But if you have no other choice, one or two agency relationships can bring a bunch of client work if you stick to the things you do best.

4. Consider broadening your positioning

Another thing you can do, which is not what I would normally recommend, is go back to a more generalist positioning.

If you’re doing implementation work, and you focus on your narrow area of specialty (i.e. design or SEO), you’re bound to run into people who need a talented individual at that thing.

This is called horizontal positioning. It means you’re not focused as much on who you serve but what you offer. Keep it broad and/or mention several industries of expertise.

This isn’t a long term strategy, but sometimes you need to broaden yourself to make yourself more appealing to your general network, then build a tighter positioning on the side again.

But definitely build that tighter positioning on the side ASAP so you can get back to running a proper advisory business,

5. Ramp up content marketing efforts

I’ve succeeded primarily through content marketing.

It’s why I blog daily and will continue to put out as much content as I can. If things aren’t working, try ramping up your blog and social media presence.

Broaden your surface area.

You may also want to start a podcast and invite your ideal target market onto it as a guest. I know a few people doing this and they seem to rave about how effective it is.

It helps to have a niche, though.

6. Talk to people 

The next and final step I’d recommend is to simply talk to people in your network and let them know you’re looking to take on X type of implementation work or even do sub-contracting if they wanted to mark up your time.

If you have relationships, this can go a long way towards getting money in the door to let you build your advisory practice back up in a niche where you can be effective.

I’d also talk to people in your ideal target market. See what they are working on, add value for free if you can, and be first to come to mind when work becomes available.

In closing 

If your consulting work dries up and isn’t showing signs of improvement, go back a few steps in the ladder and build things back up the way you did the first time. Try some of the ideas I mentioned, too.

Usually, if you’re not selling advisory work, it means there is an awareness, positioning, or trust problem.

Go back to the basics, do whatever work you can to stay in the game, and rebuild your business again from scratch, tightening your focus as you go.

 

P.S. If you’re a marketing professional and need help with your consulting or freelance business, definitely join Mindshare, a private podcast and community with resources that will help you do great work for better clients.

The only way to know the ROI of your marketing is to know two things: customer acquisition cost and lifetime value.

Your acquisition costs are relatively easy to determine. It’s ultimately the total amount spent on marketing divided by the number of new customers you signed up.

Where it gets tricky is the lifetime value.

As a marketing consultant, you need to know this stuff for your clients. So let’s let into it.

There are several ways to calculate lifetime value. It varies depending on whether you have a recurring revenue business, sporadic repeat purchases, one-time purchases, or several other factors.

Your goal is to create a fair estimate at the total amount your clients or customers will net your company over the lifetime of their relationship with your business.

That is your lifetime value.

But most people stop the calculation at the expected lifetime revenue or profit of that new customer. They don’t account for referrals. 

Referrals are a funny thing. One customer may refer you to two people over the lifetime of their relationship with you.

And then one of those two people may refer you to two more people over the lifetime of your relationship with them.

You get the picture.

Suddenly, the lifetime value is not anything near the original revenue- and profit-based models.

Each client has their own lifetime value, and the initial referrer has a much higher one.

The real question is, should you calculate those into your lifetime value calculations?

Maybe, but I’d rather not put it into any spreadsheet or budget calculations, personally.

I’d rather aim for a positive return on investment scenario even if nobody ever refers anybody.

Why? Because then it gives buffer if things go wrong or you miscalculate. 

Referrals are an extremely valuable and important source of new customers, regardless of who you are.

You should absolutely know how many of your new clients come from referrals, and if it’s a lot, you might justify adjusting your customer lifetime value accordingly.

But for the most part, I like to plan ROI scenarios conservatively and treat referrals as a bonus.

That might just be

The more marketing you do, the bigger your surface area becomes, and the more people will likely find you.

But there’s another half to the equation that is equally important. And that’s selling something people actually want.

It doesn’t matter how broad your surface area is, if what you’re offering isn’t compelling to the people who discover you, you don’t have a business.

And while positioning is very important, it takes more than good positioning to attract clients and customers.

You need to also have a compelling product or service. 

Luckily, there’s a straightforward approach to creating products and services people want to buy.

Here’s how it works, in very specific order:

1. Get clear on who you want to serve
2. Learn everything you can about them
3. Create solutions to their problems
4. Evolve your offerings and/or adjust your target market (if needed) based on what works best

A lot of people skip to the part where they create solutions and then look for people who have problems they can solve.

That’s a recipe for failure, and yet it’s our first instincts as entrepreneurs.

As Seth Godin says, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘don’t make a key then look for a lock that fits’.

Pick your ideal target marketing, get to know them extremely well, create solutions they want or ask for, and then iterate forever in a continuous loop. 

That’s what customer centric means.

There will come times when things won’t go your way.

Your work won’t land or you won’t get the results you intended.

The best thing to do is take responsibility, own the outcome, seek to make it right if you can, then move on when it’s time.

Leadership isn’t about always winning. It isn’t about always being right, either.

It’s about making choices and owning the consequences. Even when you feel like it’s not your fault, it’s still your responsibility. That’s the role leaders play.

Sometimes, it’s about accepting a defeat and moving on.

Own your losses and move on.

My last accountant charged way too little.

She charged a fixed fee, but my business was growing quickly so I outgrew it within a few months.

As my workload grew, her price remained the same. But she didn’t address it by asking for more. It eventually became a problem.

After a while, it took longer and longer to get responses from her. My books were taking longer to be reconciled and the quality of her work went way down.

I could tell I became a “second class citizen” in her client world. I even offered to pay more a few times, of which she accepted once.

There’s a lesson here.

By not charging your clients enough to do the work AND make a profit, you’ll eventually run into a few scenarios—none of which are good.

1. You’ll get better clients and make them the priority
2. You’ll stop doing good work for your lower-priced clients
3. You’ll start de-prioritizing their work
4. You’ll start to resent them
5. They’ll start to notice
6. They’ll start to resent you
7. They’ll replace you with someone who makes them a priority
8. They’ll never work with you again
9. They’ll tell people about their negative experience

I’m not looking for low-cost suppliers in my business. Most businesses aren’t.

Instead, I want professional-quality work from people who charge enough to make time for me and do good work.

It might be tempting to keep old clients around who are paying old rates because they represent “safe” and “predictable” revenue. But what ends up happening is they become after-thoughts when you get better clients.

You’ll get busy to make up for lost revenue potential, and with that, your relationship will eventually deteriorate along with the quality of your services.

Some people want the cheapest rate possible. Don’t work with people like that.

Instead, charge a rate that gets you excited and then do good work for them!

Don’t justify poor-quality service because you’re not charging enough. That’s on you to fix.

Either charge enough to get you excited to work with them, or refer them to someone who can do the job instead.