Practice This

Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants: Breakthrough Tactics for Winning Profitable Clients is a book by Jay Conrad Levinson and Michael W. McLaughlin I’d recommend anyone, not only consultants.

My biggest takeaways from the  book is a marketing mindset I should have as a consultant and also the prescriptive guidance on how to build my marketing strategy.

Here is my distillation. Read on…

Consultant’s Marketing Mindset

The authors of the book provide an attributes of guerilla marketing for consultants. These attributes helped me to get into the mindset of eternal demand creation for my services I offer as a consultant. And that’s the essence of any marketing – creating the demand.

• [Marketing]Is the business. This attribute reminds me that I am in constant contact with a customer which is just perfect situation to market my service, and that’s not by running the halls yelling “me! me!! me!!!” rather by delivering first class services. Quietly. Results speak louder than blah blah blah.
• Focused message. This attribute reminds me I should be delivering narrow range of services . I deliver performance and security services. I am a SME [subject matter expert], not a generalist.
• Insight-based. This attribute reminds me that I must not keep IP [intellectual property] to myself rather readily share it with a customer [unless there is a violation of some policy or law]. Telling a customer “I will tell you how to do it after you sign a contract” is wrong. Better off to share the overall approach of the solution to customer’s problem generating demand for more detailed engagement.
• Build intellectual assets. This attribute reminds me to keep sharing the knowledge via my professional blog. This is the best investment I have made when it comes to marketing to customers, my managers, and potential employers.
• Build client relationships. This attribute reminds me to not only strive to full engagement with a customers but also to cherish the connections. These connections serve me well when it comes to market research, leads, and referrals. Or a friendship.
• Enhance profit. This attribute reminds me that marketing is done to enhance my profits, not the philanthropy [at least at this stage of my career]. It helps me targeting my efforts to niches with more pain. The more pain, the more demand for SME’s.
• Reveal reality. This attribute reminds me I should share what I have witnessed – without beautifying or hiding parts of the reality. Clients are smart beasts, they spot fake in no time.
• Listen and serve. This attribute reminds me that marketing does not end by throwing stuff in the air – it reminds me I need to listen to reactions and act when there is a demand, even when no budget is allocated for it.
• One size fits none. This attribute reminds me that marketing, like life, is ongoing experiment – there is no rules. The only rule is “do what works, if it does not work – stop doing it.”
• Create markets. This attribute reminds me to be an entrepreneur, or inntrapreneur, or event soloreneur. It reminds me I cannot totally depend on someone else to create a market for my services.

Consultant Marketing Vision

The authors of the book offer extremely dense and prescriptive guidance on how to build a marketing strategy. I used it with my managers to get my message across. I think it clicked. Here is the guidance:

1. Sentence one explains the purpose of your marketing.
2. Sentence two explains how you achieve that purpose by describing the substantive benefits you provide to clients.
3. Sentence three describes your target markets(s).
4. Sentence four describes your niche.
5. Sentence five outlines the marketing weapons you will use.
6. Sentence six reveals the identity of your business.
7. Sentence seven provides your marketing budgets

Write your answers and see if your strategy sticks.

Practice This – Get Results

• Get Consultant’s Marketing mindset – focus your marketing efforts on high impact stuff.
• Follow 7 steps to build your marketing vision – if it sticks you’ll be just fine. If not, refine until it does.
• Read Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants: Breakthrough Tactics for Winning Profitable Clients – it’s loaded with insights from the guys who got results, not fluff.

My Related Posts

• Remarkable Marketing By Seth Godin
• From Part Time Aspiring Blogger To Marketing Top Gun
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