Nicolas Verweyen is the founder of VerDigital, a Munich based Marketing consultancy that provides marketing and sales strategies to independent consultants and business owners all over Europe. Active since 2019, Nicolas has worked with more than 100 businesses.

Why Less Is More When Marketing Your Consulting Business 

Please, make marketing simple again! Many business owners are struggling with the complexity of creating a simple, yet effective marketing strategy. Due to the immense amount of possibilities, many are lacking clarity and direction. The result: They are trying everything at once with little to no results. In this article we will explain how you can make marketing simple again. 

It’s not necessary to spend 50% of the day figuring out what to post on social media. It’s important to understand the following 5 principles, which truly matter when it comes to a successful marketing strategy. 

1. A strong foundation 

To build a strong foundation of your business you need a well-defined positioning. This means that you should choose a clearly defined market (your niche) in which you position yourself as the expert. 

Trying to be the expert for everyone is a strategy that most service based businesses are trying. There are a number of reasons why this Approach doesn’t work: 

• You are competing against the bigger players that have way more resources and expertise than you. 
• Nobody is recognizing you because your few marketing resources are focused on too many people. 
• You are not differentiating yourself from your competition. 

Because of this, choose your niche and get to know the people inside as good as possible. 

2. Growth mindset 

When trying to grow your business, it is all about your mindset. Your inner state of mind will directly influence your growth or decline. 

You need to have a strong conviction about your service and offer. People will have a hard time trusting you and your solution when you yourself have doubts about it. Your confidence will show your target audience that you are the expert within this area and they need you to solve their problems. If you are currently struggling with this, no worries. Confidence comes with practice. The more you do it, the more confidence you have in your skills. 

In addition to that you need to take full ownership and responsibility for every situation, not only for positive results but also for failures. Those happen to everyone. Quit looking for excuses, instead take action towards constant improvement! 

3. Create the right message by talking to your target audience 

If you want to create a highly relevant message and solution for your target audience you need to talk to the respective people. Just strategizing and conceptualizing in a closed room will not get you the knowledge that you actually need. A clear understanding of your prospect’s current situation, their needs, wants, dreams, fears, & goals is mandatory. 

So, talk directly with the people that are supposed to benefit from your offering. Ask them about their current situation. Ask them what they are thinking about at night, when they are staring at the ceiling not being able to fall asleep. Ask them about the current trends that are happening in their lives. What are they struggling with, what are their goals, aspirations, secret wishes? The more people you talk to, the sooner you will see that there is a commonality among your target audience. Use this repetitive wishes and struggles and formulate your marketing message that actually resonates with the people that it is crafted for. 

Once you have it, you can communicate on their wave-length. You can show your potential customers that your solution is their vehicle to get to their desired situation. 

4. One approach to generate conversations with prospects 

Keep it simple when trying to get in contact with prospects. Concentrate on the one approach that has been successful in the past and optimise based on it. Too many different approaches will result in complexity. You will lose the overview and things are getting more difficult to handle. 

The problem with adding new approaches to your prospecting is that you will also start to shift your focus from the approach that already works for you. Once your focus shifts, you will also get less results from it. 

Think about this example: Your main approach brings you 10 leads every week. You run into a possible additional approach that promises to get you 10 additional leads. You will focus 50% of your focus on your old approach, 50% on the new one. You will need to learn how to do the approach, try different methods and you will end up with possibly 2-3 additional leads. Since you only spent 50% of your focus on the approach that already works, you also only get 5 leads. The result is 7-8 leads, which is 2-3 short of just sticking to the approach that already has worked. 

So use something that works for you, for example an automated ad funnel or manual outreach. And most importantly - stick with it and exploit it as much as possible. 

5. Outstanding customer fulfilment 

When you are able to deliver (and potentially even over-deliver) to your customers, they will be more than happy with your services. Remember: In almost every case your customer also knows other people who can profit from your offer. If your customer is happy, they will refer you to their network. You will start to get clients through recommendations. Your reputation in your niche will become even better. 

Don’t spend your day doing anything else. Otherwise, you are wasting your time & potential – be aware of that! 

Feel free to get in contact with the author Nicolas Verweyen through Linkedin or his website  www.verdigital.eu  if you want to grow your business.