Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

Niche

Everything is feedback

Paying attention to feedback from your target market is critical to your growth.

If you’re not getting any feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting positive feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting critical feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting lukewarm feedback, that’s also a form of feedback.

You can either fight against what you’re seeing or you can keep shifting what you do until most of the feedback you see is positive.

You’ll never get perfect feedback on everything, but you can remain detached so you can see the feedback you’re getting for what it is.

Keep your eyes wide open so you can shape and grow your business.

Where real innovation comes from

It’s hard to innovate if you’re paying too much attention to your competitors.

The best you can hope to do by watching them is to differentiate.

And while differentiation is a smart strategy, innovation is what will make you a market leader.

Real innovation comes from working with your ideal clients, not from watching your competition.

Strive to serve your ideal clients better and better every day. Remove any pre-conceived notions about what your business can for them. Think outside the conventions (and limitations) of your peers or industry.

You’ll be more able to innovate—and therefore lead—when you watch your ideal clients more closely than your competition.

Belonging to a genre

In Seth Godin’s book, The Practice, he talks about belonging to a genre. It’s been a while since I read it, so I’ll riff on the concept a bit because it’s an interesting way to view the world.

Belonging to a genre means being similar to people or things in an existing category. You quickly “get it” when you see something that belongs to a genre you’re familiar with.

Bob Marley was part of a genre of reggae artists. Jaws is part of a few genres, including cult classics and classic thriller films. Tony Robbins is part of a genre of motivational speakers.

All genres are made up of peers who do similar things but have their own unique angle or perspective.

Belonging to a genre makes it easy for the market to understand you more quickly. They have a context to place you in.

And with that context, they can more easily see where you stand out or are unique.

It’s the difference among people within a genre that that compels people buy or engage. We want things belonging to a genre we like, but we choose which ones to engage with based on their differences.

It’s good to belong to a genre. The question is, what genre do you belong to, who are your peers, and how are you unique?

This work is hard

No matter what you do, the work will be hard.

You may love marketing. You probably have a passion for your craft.

And yet, it’s still work. No matter what.

If you’re not working with people you are intrinsically driven to help, you won’t be able to sustain the work long enough to be the best at it.

And you want to be the best at what you do.

Choose your niche wisely.

How to scope a consulting service

The scope of any consulting service should be determined by the goals of your ideal clients.

If you start with an idea in your head about what people want, you almost always get the specifics wrong. You need real-world input from your ideal clients.

At very least, have conversations with people in your ideal target market. Understand their pains and the context around their goals.

Build backwards from there.

You can do this in your research process, it doesn’t need to be done exclusively during sales conversations.

If you get clear on the goals of your ideal clients using real-world input, the scope and price takes care of itself.

What does a marketing consultant even do?

One of the questions I get from clients and students alike is, “what do you even do if you don’t do execution work?”

This is an important question. You will inevitably be asked some version of it. And when you do, you’ll want to have a response internalized.

This is also important if you’re still wrapping your mind around the value of your brain without doing the actual execution.

The main four things to know is this:

  1. Your job to act in their best business interest at all times.
  2. Your mission is to get a result with whatever tools you have at your disposal (though not your hands if you can avoid it).
  3. You’re a facilitator of outcomes. You’re a guide. You are not the pack mule. You can’t be everything.
  4. Niching makes your expertise rarer and immensely more valuable independent of execution.

Here are 22 ways a marketing advisor adds value without doing execution:

  1. Create an insight- and data-driven marketing strategy
  2. Create a marketing plan that actually gets implemented
  3. Bring a proven process that makes things more efficient
  4. Source outside specialists to perform specific tasks
  5. Help them develop and manage a financial budget
  6. Help them measure results in a non-ambiguous way
  7. Help them limit mistakes they could easily avoid
  8. Hold them accountable to their goals and promises
  9. Coach them on their marketing skills and mindsets
  10. Bring rare subject matter expertise they can’t find elsewhere
  11. Help them achieve their goals faster by knowing what to do
  12. Bring examples, templates, and resources they can use
  13. Help them create lasting habits, systems and processes
  14. Challenge their assumptions about what they can or should do
  15. Provide a neutral, outside perspective on their business
  16. Connect them with others in their industry or niche
  17. Assist with the market research and analysis process
  18. Draft proof-of-concept wireframes, content, and other materials
  19. Help them sell their business, attract investors, or report to stakeholders
  20. Help them hire an in-house marketing manager when the time is right
  21. Guide their marketing from a higher level without getting lost in the weeds
  22. Think strategically on their behalf

When you eliminate the need to use your hands, your time is freed up to work on higher-value things that ultimately help them save time, avoid problems, and get better results.

There’s a lot to unpack in all of these, but the bottom line is this: advice and execution are best sold separately.

Once you and your clients internalize this, it’s hard to see it any other way.

Have a bias for action

When you’re standing still, all you can see is what’s around you. To get new information, you need to move.

But many of us get paralyzed when we’re not sure what to do. We think but don’t act. And then nothing happens.

If you’re willing to take imperfect steps, eventually you’ll find what you need to succeed. No mistake is unfixable.

So when in doubt, just move.

Try something. Create a proof of concept. Put out the feelers. See what happens. Adjust your strategy. Everything can be undone or adjusted.

Having a bias for action creates momentum—and momentum creates progress.

You can harness momentum, but you can’t steer a parked car.

You can survive without a niche

It’s scary to commit to a niche. Doing so inherently means excluding most of the world with your marketing.

In some ways, it goes against all survival instincts. And that’s why so few people do it.

It’s also why so many marketing consultants struggle to build a real businesses with healthy margins and ample time freedom.

You can survive without a niche, but you will create a lot greater leverage, profit, and impact with one.

Why I don’t love the term “Fractional CMO”

I’m not actually against the term ‘Fractional CMO’. I just don’t love it.

You may or may not recall, but there’s been a lot of terms for what we as marketing experts do—especially since the digital era.

Digital strategists, e-marketing specialists, growth hackers… the list goes on and on.

As one new term rises, another inevitably takes its place, making the former one look outdated.

‘Fractional CMO’ feels a little like one of those terms to me.

But here’s the thing: the fractional CMO positioning works right now. People get it when you say, “I’m like hiring a part time chief marketing officer”.

And that’s important when you only have a minute to explain what the hell you even do.

There’s another reason I don’t love the term:

It positions you like an employee. And employees are in many ways to take orders.

Not really, but kind of. As a fractional CMO, there’s the expectation that you’re hired to do what the client wants.

And while that’s true to some degree, I’d argue you’re hired to get a result a client wants, not to do what they want you to do.

Because what they want to do is often not entirely the thing they should do to get the result they really want.

Above all else that you’re a consultant.

You’re paid for your expertise, not to take orders and execute them.

And because even ‘consultants’ are sometimes used as a fancy term for a freelancer who executes hard things, I prefer the term ‘advisor’.

It’s timeless and says what it is you do: you sell advice.

So I’m not saying don’t position yourself as a fractional CMO. I just don’t want my content and positioning to use that term too much because it reminds me of all the other buzzwords that came before it.

It works today, so use it if you want. You can always change it later.

Just know the risks and constraints of fractional CMO positioning.

Fish at your feet first

“Fish at your feet first.”

I quote this sentence a lot, yet I can’t find a reference for it.

I think I spun it off in my head from the original quote, “fish where the fish are”.

Why fish at your feet first? Because that’s where you’re standing.

There’s no point in casting deep into the ocean looking for new opportunities if you haven’t looked immediately around you first.

There’s a good chance you’ll find plenty of fish nearby if you look.