Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

marketing

Optimizing for conversations

One of the fastest and most straightforward ways to get more clients is to initiate conversations.

Carl Richards would call this an example of “playing in traffic“.

Not in a spammy or salesy way, of course. You do it to connect with people and either begin or build your relationships.

Maybe you like to connect with new people in your niche on LinkedIn. Those connections might turn into conversations later on. No need to rush it.

Or maybe you like to DM people who engage with your content just to say hello in a more personal setting.

Or maybe you like to trade ideas with your peers or other non-competitive professionals who serve your niche. A lot of good intel and referrals come that way.

I’ve seen it time and time again, the more people you speak to, the more good things happen.

Innovate on top

I’m a big believer in modelling what works.

I also believe innovation—which can’t be modelled—is how you build a lasting business.

Model what works, yes. But don’t forget to innovate on top.

How to publish more consistently

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself is that when I don’t have a fixed publishing schedule, it’s easy to push it off for long periods without publishing anything.

Just like exercising, the longer you don’t publish content, the harder it is to get going again.

I noticed this recently with Mindshare Radio, too. I used to publish episodes 3 times per week—every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Then, I decided to record something once per week. But, I didn’t set a strict publishing date or really commit to anything publicly.

And that resulted in inconsistent publishing—and worse, some over-thinking and even occasional anxiety about what to create.

In this episode, I talk about why committing publicly to your publishing schedule can not only make you more consistent, it can reduce the anxiety you face each time you stare at a blank page.

Give this a listen and let me know if you can relate.

Choices and trade-offs

One of my absolute favourite books on business strategy is Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t by Kevin Maney and Jim Collins.

I was re-reading it yesterday and this quote from the intro struck me:

If business leaders fail to make choices—fanatical, obsessive, focused, disciplined choices—to build for the long term, and succumb instead to grasping as much as they can in the short term, they will build mediocre companies.

The reality is, we make trade-offs in our businesses whether we’re intentional about them or not. If we don’t make them, they happen to us.

There’s no right answer for everyone—it just depends on what you want to build and whether you’re willing to make the necessary trade-offs to get there.

How to stand out in a sea of competitors

Do you feel like it’s hard to stand out among the sea of other marketing consultants?

One of your available secret weapons for standing out is going smaller either in what you do or who you do it for.

My preferred approach is picking a smaller target audience and going deeper on serving their few core needs.

You can pick a smaller pond and make a bigger splash—which makes standing out a lot easier.

Once you get traction, you can begin to broaden again if and when the time feels right. Or, you could do smaller again.

It’s counter-intuitive, but standing out more often means going smaller, not broader.

My take on “Start With Why”

I’ve always been mildly skeptical of Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” thinking when it comes to customer attraction.

I don’t really care why Jeff Bezos started Amazon. Or why my dentist chose his profession. Or why my accountant does her work.

And then one day I saw this sign. Even though this little pathway “store” was “closed”, it definitely made me feel warmer about the idea of buying from them had they been open.

Does sharing your “why” matter? I’m not sure. But it probably doesn’t hurt.

The real question is, do you have a good why for the work you do?

And if not, are you doing what you should be doing?

sign with a reason for buying from them

Build your wings before you jump

It’s scary leaving a full-time job to start freelancing or consulting.

Someone asked me recently how I overcame my fear when I made the leap.

My answer? I did freelancing on nights and weekends, saved as much as possible, and designed my business for recurring revenue.

It’s hard to survive as a new freelancer or consultant without cash in the bank and some predictable revenue.

Hell, it’s hard to run even a mature freelance or consulting business without recurring revenue.

You need money to give you peace of mind and time to build the business properly. And it does take time.

Nobody hires a desperate consultant.

No matter what, it’s going to be scary to go all-in on self-employment. And it won’t be easy to juggle a full-time job while doing freelance/consulting work on the side.

But this approach is a lot less risky than building your wings after you jump.

Build your wings before you jump

The smallest possible step

We all get stuck sometimes. We want to do something but for some reason we don’t act on it.

So instead, we dance around it. We procrastinate. We ponder. We ask a few people what they think.

Their positive assurances gives us some relief from the tension. It feels like progress has been made.

But then nothing happens. The idea fades away. We lose interest, and tomorrow it’s something else.

Repeat the process all over again.

What’s really happening?

Fear is happening. Whether you call it that or not, that’s what it is.

And we all experience it—especially with the ideas most dear to our hearts. Which is all the more reason we shouldn’t give into it.

If you want to see if an idea will work, take the smallest possible step.

You don’t know if something will work—or even if you’ll like it—unless you try. Take the smallest possible step.

170. Building around your super-consumers

Super-consumers are the 10% of your customers who account for upwards of 50% of your profit.

All industries have them. All of us are super-consumers of at least something. It’s true. And for very logical reasons.

In this episode, I break down the concept as coined by Eddie Yoon in his book, Superconsumers—and why it matters to your both business and the clients you serve at a strategic level.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Why your new products or services don’t sell

The longer I do education and advisory work, the more I notice how hard—if not impossible—it is to create and sell a new product or service based solely on my own imagination.

And the closer I am to my ideal target market, the easier it is for me to know what to offer.

Why? Because I talk to them. There’s no magic secret there.

If you’re just getting started, optimize for conversations. Reach out to people. See what they are working on. Build or join a community with them.

Try to observe what challenges they have without imposing your ideas on them.

Start with the ideal target market, actually speak to them, deliver a custom solution, then figure out how to productize and communicate it later on.

No matter how smart you are, it rarely works any other way. Not for something new, at least.