Photo by Scott Graham

Originally Posted On: 4 Consultancy Marketing Pitfalls That Should Scare You (linkedin.com)

 

Hi there. I want you to read this article carefully and here is why.

Someone I know wasted thousands of dollars in ads without getting any result, and he still doesn’t know why he spent so much money and blew it all…

Just like this person I know, so many businesses are also wasting their marketing budget without even knowing it.

If you don’t want to waste thousands of dollars in digital marketing, read this quick article carefully and avoid the traps.

If you are wonferding why am I qualified to show you these pitfalls and video training, check out this article I wrote when I audited about 300 websites: https://bit.ly/3bJ8OXz

If you don’t want to sit in a chair for 50 + hours and audit 300+ websites while having a busy schedule, read this quick arciel and save your 50 hours of boredom and hassle.

Pitfall 1: Not Putting Out Valuable Content 

The great French philosopher Voltaire once said, “It’s not enough to conquer, one must seduce.” I’m going to reveal why Voltaire is right on about “seduction” for consultancy marketing.

Imagine if you were the ideal client you are trying to acquire, would you pay thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands, to a company that you have never heard about in the first day of interaction?

Of course NOT! Just like no one would choose to get married to a person on the first encounter.

However, there are so many consultancies trying to close B2B clients with cold calls, cold emails, cold pitches and doing PPC ads to cold audiences and think they will get good results.

In a hyper-competitive industry like consulting, cold approaches are not enough. You have to figure out something else to stand out.

“You Can’t Just Conquer By Hard Selling, You Have To Seduce By Giving Value!”

Reaching out cold does work, but very minimally with high ticket clients you are trying to acquire—it’s not effective and you can piss a lot of potential clients that might lose you future deals from them.

You have to position yourself as a trusted advisor, just like a doctor or lawyer. Trusted advisors don’t personally cold call people and want people to work with you—only spammy salespeople do!

How do you become a trusted advisor to your potential clients and get sales?

By putting out valuable content!

No one likes being sold, including yourself.

Valuable content doesn’t have to be the next industry-leading concept or technology. As long as your ideal clients are willing to pay attention to consume your content in a good way, it is valuable!

Valuable content usually solves a problem or makes you laugh, or makes you feel excited or inspired.

For example, the last funny post on LinkedIn was hilarious and made you laugh, or a Youtube tutorial that solves your problem.

“Put Out Valuable Content Regularly And Begin To Seduce Your Ideal Clients!”

Checklist — 12 Ideas On The Types of Content You Can Produce:

1. Live streaming.
2. Social media posts.
3. Ebook.
4. Interviews.
5. Video training.
6. Youtube videos.
7. Articles.
8. Newsletters.
9. Webinars.
10. Live streaming.
11. Mastermind recordings.
12. Seminar recordings.
13. The sky’s the limit!

MUST WATCH:

Video Training: How To Create Your Own Valuable Content

Pitfall 2: Blindly running display ads.  

Before I explain Pitfall 2 that may cause you to lose thousands of dollars just like someone I know, I’d like to tell you the hog story told by my mentor Tai Lopez with his mentor Joel Salatin:

One day, Joel asked Tai to help him load dozens of hogs from the hogpen onto his truck.

Each hog weighed at least a couple hundred pounds.

If you grew up on a farm in North America, you know how much physical strength farmers have as they’ve worked in the farm for years.

However, even two seasoned farmers like Tai and Joel failed to move around those hogs by force.

What did Tai and Joel do after realizing that they won’t get the job down by force?

They pulled some grass—the hogs’ favorite snack—and slowly seduced those gigantic creatures walking onto the truck.

It was simple and easy and worked incredibly well.

Would Tai and Joel get the same results by solving the problem by force? They already tried and it didn’t work.

Running display ads for your business is the same way:

“Don’t Ever Hard Sell With Ads, Because High-Ticket Clients Will Never Buy.”

No one likes being sold to, including yourself. There are better ways with ads to generate sales other than hard selling.

Don’t ever waste your marketing dollars on hard selling — you get a lot better results and it’s easier if you seduce instead of conquering.

If you don’t know how to do ads to get results, you’d better spend a hundred of hours learning digital marketing or find someone who is great at it to do it for you.

Checklist — How To Not Run Ads Blindly:

1. Don’t make ads to hard-sell people unless the time has come.
2. Map out your sales funnel and see what role your ads play in it.
3. Target the right audience.
4. Double-check marketing automation before spending your major budget.
5. Optimize your landing page for value-based content, layout, speed, security, legal disclaimers, privacy, and analytics.

MUST WATCH:

Video Training: Strategies To Run Ads That Get You Paying Clients.

Pitfall 3: Having a bad landing page.  

Do you know that only half of the landing pages are optimized for mobile devices? Let alone other aspects you have to optimize for your landing page!

Having a landing page mobile-optimized is a must. However, many businesses aren’t doing that.

This is your opportunity.

Why? Because you don’t need to build the best landing page in your industry to win clients. You just need to make a better landing page than your competitors. Usually, your competitors are not very good at that.

Believe it or not, it’s not as hard as you think to beat your competitors in the consulting industry.

You beat 50% of the game if you have your landing page mobile-optimized, while there are a lot more things to optimize for.

Landing pages can make or break your results from marketing spend, so take it seriously if you want better results and not wasting thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To build a landing page that converts, make sure the followings below are well-done:

1. Providing value.
2. Copywriting.
3. Speed.
4. Analytics.
5. Security.
6. Legal disclaimer and privacy.
7. Call To Action

Checklist — Tools For Auditing A Landing Page:

1. Facebook pixel helper.
2. Google tag assistant.
3. Semrush.com
4. Ahref.com
5. Similarweb.com
6. Ubersuggest.

 

MUST WATCH:

Video Training: How To Make A Landing Page That Converts

Pitfall 4: No Lead Magnet

Do you have your own ebook, video courses or other resources you created that you can give away for free?

If you don’t, pay close attention to Pitfall 4 because you are giving away the opportunity to be in front of your potential clients to your competitors.

Lead magnets are something free and valuable you can give away to attract customers.

Lead magnet example:

By the way, I am giving away my ebook and newsletter membership. Ebook content is the same as this article you are reading. But, it’s will be worth it join my newsletter for free and receive insights and best practices from indsutry leaders and entreprneurs.

 

They are everywhere in our life.

For example, a free consultation is a commonly-used lead magnet for consultants. A free sample works great for eCommerce.

If you watch Netflix, they give you a free trial to attract you to become their potential subscriber.

Amazon is doing the same thing for a 30 days free Amazon prime trial.

Have you ever tried free snack samples in Costco and you ended up buying those snacks?

They taste yummy so you bought them, huh?

If businesses didn’t give away free things to you, would you give your valuable attention to them?

Probably Not.

They wouldn’t even get the chance to present themselves to you.

But, you got their free stuff in exchange for your attention, so you became their customer.

“You Got Their Free Stuff In Exchange For Your Attention, SoYou Became Their Customer.”

Lead magnets can play the same role for your business to get customers. If you don’t have your own lead magnets, you are giving away the opportunity to be in front of your potential customers to your competitors. You don’t want that.

The checklist for Pitfall 1 includes some great ideas for lead magnets. You can create your free video training or write a 15-page free ebook, and then put the lead magnet onto your landing page or website.

Or, you can record your live streams and advertise their recordings on Facebook. People love organic content and ads that aren’t like ads tend to perform very well. Your live stream recordings are organic content, and you can retarget the people who watched your live stream. Long story short, you are put valuable and organic content in front of a group of people that are already familiar with your brand. In digital marketing, we call these people a hot audience—they are ready to become your customers.

Checklist — Tools To Create Your Own Lead Magnet

1. Attract.io
2. Beacon.by
3. Canva.com
4. Unpslash.com
5. Pixabay.com

MUST WATCH:

Video Training: Creating Your Own Lead Magnet