Marketing Advisor

No matter how well we know business and marketing, we have blind spots.

Here are some of the most common blind spots we all develop about our own company, marketing, and offers. These are all real examples from successful companies that ultimately hired me to see what they were missing:

• Current challenges become the focus. For example, a high-tech product manufacturer had a new version of their best-selling product. They were trying to get more of their customers to upgrade to the new version. The issue was that, even if all their customers would’ve made the switch, it wouldn’t have made nearly as much of a difference to their profit as up-selling almost any of their other products to those same customers, which proved to be far easier.
• Claims become accepted truths. For example, a service business could cut a building’s energy consumption commonly by 30%+. For everyone in the company, it was a simple fact. They used it as a headline on their website and in advertising—as they should. But they didn’t explain how it was possible. For everyone outside the company, it was a hard-to-believe marketing claim. As soon as we acknowledged that, we could address it in marketing in a way that made the claim believable.
• Old advantages get forgotten. For example, a consulting firm grew rapidly for a few years. The owners saw potential in expanding to new services and made huge investments into those. But then they hit a plateau while suddenly dealing with massive fixed costs. The problem was that they misunderstood why people bought from them, so they didn’t do any of those things while marketing their new services. As soon as they saw that and started doing the things that made them successful in the first place, their new services became easy to sell.
• Past decisions become unquestioned expenses. For example, a consumer service company had years ago decided to invest in a marketing-adjacent department. And for some time it was justified. However, no one had considered whether the fixed costs (~5% of revenue) were still worthwhile. After a bit of digging, it was clear that roughly 80% of the cost provided no value to the company, even though everyone at the department was always busy. We could quickly focus the department on the few truly profitable responsibilities, expand those further, and overall cut spending.
• Projects become pet projects. For example, a consultancy’s revenue was dwindling. A new tool had enabled their clients to simplify some of the things they sold help with. The CEO decided they should embrace using the tool and make it the centerpiece of their messaging. But that made their messaging so unfocused that they lost even more sales. As soon as we focused the messaging on a clear problem people still needed help with, they reached record sales.

This farsightedness is the reason even marketing companies get help from a marketing advisor who can see their blind spots. Seeing your own decisions objectively—let alone from the perspective of your potential customers—is challenging.

That’s why so many of them have come to me that I’ve earned the nickname “marketers’ marketer.”

You will certainly see a very positive ROI. That’s not even a question.

The question is, “What ends up being most impactful for you?”

Here are some things that clients often bring up. Any one of these is usually worth far more than the investment in advisory services:

• Save a significant amount of time. Typically clients estimate that they essentially gain one full workday for every week. They save time by making decisions faster together and by focusing on more efficient ways to move forward.
• Avoid costly mistakes. No matter how good you are at marketing — many of my clients are marketing companies — you will occasionally miss something. Just a single small mistake can often more than cover the investment.
• Get more out of every marketing activity. When we talk through the options and plans, we always find ways to make each piece of marketing more effective. Sometimes the difference is small. Often it’s significant.
• Make all aspects of marketing support each other better. If the individual marketing activities don’t truly work together, they’re all working at half of their potential.
• See consistent growth. Overall, the lows won’t be as low and the highs will be more frequent. Nearly every client I work with for a longer time sees significant year on year growth — every single year.