Marketing Essentialism
Profit from imperfect decisionsI’m not a tactical specialist, nor do I have a favorite strategy. Instead, I help marketing leaders see what’s essential for their results to improve.
I work on two kinds of questions:
What makes people buy from you?
How do they perceive your marketing? What do they wish to get from you? What keeps them from buying?
What decision is optimal in the long run?
What are the likely points of failure in our plans? How can we minimize the risks? What opportunities should we prioritize?
Your Marketing works as well as the underlying message
Your marketing should make people want to buy from you. That has little to do with the tools you use. Rather, it’s about what you communicate with your marketing.
Developing a winning message is not just about finding the ideas that make you stand out from the competition. It starts from identifying the playing field where you’ll have the greatest advantage. Then we can develop a message that quickly shows up as additional sales.
Once your message is ready, it ensures your marketing is consistent and creates a memorable brand image. It also guides many decisions outside marketing. For example, you can easily focus your product development on things that will make a direct impact on sales.
Peter helped me increase my sales by 423%.
Almost no one can differentiate themselves in our industry, but now we have a marketing message that clearly separates us from competitors.
Even though I have coached thousands of business owners in developing their own marketing and message, I turned to Peter.
Consistently good decisions lead to consistent growth
Long term, your success depends on your decision making.
If you make consistently good decisions, your results will reflect it. Even when you occasionally get unlucky, you come out ahead in the long run.
Nearly every long term client of mine sees significant year on year growth — every year.
On the other hand, if you don’t prioritize correctly, fail to account for risks, or miss key opportunities, you’ll struggle to make meaningful progress. Individual mistakes can negate many more good decisions.
No matter how good you are at marketing and leading, it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar.
When you work with Peter Sandeen, you have a thought partner and an expert on your team. Rarely do deep knowledge and pragmatism come together in one person, as they do with Peter.
In just 4 or 5 months we were so far behind in work we had to hire more people to cover the work.
Peter first improved my messaging, so it became clearer what to focus on to stand out as the best option for my potential customers. He has guided my marketing strategy and given clear guidance on how to implement things. I have broken my revenue goals multiple times since then.
Typical clients
I work with the top marketing decision makers in a wide variety of companies. It keeps me focused on the principles that drive results, instead of becoming a specialist with one tool or strategy.
I’ve worked more with B-to-B companies (roughly 75% of my clients). Those have included software companies, consulting firms, outsourcing agencies, manufacturing companies, and much more in countless industries. A large portion of them are marketing companies because the things I focus on are impossible to do very well for your own company. That has earned me the nickname “marketers’ marketer.”
I’ve also worked with B-to-C companies of all sorts. Just to name a few: a goldsmith, air conditioning company, e-commerce stores, therapists, music performance training, and language training.
Most of my clients are from English speaking countries and from around Europe. Although I’m Finnish, few of my clients are Finnish. That’s mainly because most companies here are either happy to stay in the small domestic market or unwilling to adapt to the more competitive international market. My strengths show mainly in competitive markets.
Peter has helped us clarify our messaging and focus on the most impactful aspects of marketing. We’ve been able to focus on doing marketing and sales, instead of spending time on polishing strategy or general pondering.
The [new messaging] helped us not just define our product’s greatest benefits, but also wording it in a way that put them into perspective for the buyer to understand.
Peter brought clarity to our marketing. We’ve approximately doubled our online sales each year since then (breaking the $1mil line).
How I got into marketing
I started two businesses in two different industries. I got bored with both as soon as I figured out how to get clients consistently. So, I jumped into marketing. I’ve been an individual marketing consultant since 2011 focusing on competitive and/or global markets from the start.
Around the same time I heard of direct mail advertising in the USA. It sounded like a magic trick I had to learn; send a letter to a total stranger, offer them something that costs even thousands of dollars, and they mail you a check.
I was soon writing sales pages for marketing companies that already had good sales pages. I wrote a new page for them, they tested it against their own, and when mine generated more sales, I got paid. I never lost (although there was one tie). It wasn’t because my writing would’ve been unusually eloquent — if anything, my writing was rather clumsy at that point. What made the difference was that I could see more clearly what motivated their target customers to buy, so I could write about more impactful things.
After copywriting for some time, I got into conversion rate optimization and worked for an international conversion rate optimization agency. I helped companies ranging from a global restaurant chain to a major e-commerce company.
While optimizing countless companies’ marketing, I got to see how even the silliest change will sometimes make a big difference. However, only a few things make a difference every time (i.e., positioning/messaging and strategy), and those became my focus.
They are some of the hardest things to figure out for your own business, which is why I’ve helped so many marketing companies.
What else I do
I’m married, and she’s my best friend, so we spend quite a bit of time together.
Something else I’m obsessed with is rock climbing. I even turned our storage room into a home climbing gym. I like rope climbing, but I prefer bouldering. The routes are short and focused on a small number of hard moves, which I enjoy more than the sustained effort of rope climbing. Although we have a lot of world-class outdoor boulders here in Finland, I primarily climb indoors.
I also like difficult puzzles like sudoku, chess, and other logic puzzles. But my favorite puzzles are magic tricks. I often watch magic shows because it’s fun to figure out the methods behind the tricks.
I listen to music almost non-stop. I can enjoy almost any genre as long as it’s made well. I especially enjoy music that’s produced and mixed well, so the sound quality is good. I even have a degree in recording music.
I also read or otherwise learn new things a fair bit. Much of what I enjoy is somehow related to business, but not nearly everything. I’m just as likely to read a book about creativity or flow state as I am to watch a 4h video review of the scientific literature on how ketogenic diet works for athletes.
And finally, I love comedy, especially stand-up comedy. Although I’m focused on the task when talking with clients, it’s a rare call that doesn’t include laughter.
Stand Out with Sharp Marketing Messaging
What exactly makes people choose you?
In this video + summary:
- Why USPs, value propositions, and branding rarely increase sales
- Why exceptional companies get lost in the crowd — and how to make your marketing messaging stand out
- How to turn your message into effective, cohesive marketing
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