2 facts:
- Getting people to read your marketing content is hard.
- A very small percentage of the people who see your marketing are looking for an agency
So if people do read your marketing, it doesn’t make sense that the message you’re sending them is about how good you are.
If your reader’s problem isn’t “how do I find a good agency?” (and that hardly ever is their problem), then it isn’t interesting.
In-market. Out of market.
There’s a difference between a prospect who is actively looking for an agency and one who isn’t.
When they’re in the market, searching, comparing, and shortlisting, that’s the time to impress them. And you should carry on trying to impress them through the pitching and into closing the deal. Your latest projects, your thinking, your process. Everything you’ve got.
When they’re out of the market? They’ve got other problems. And you telling them about your latest case study won’t work.
No one likes someone that won’t stop talking about themselves.
What they actually care about
What they actually want to read, watch, or even pay to attend, is content about the other things keeping them up at night.
The pipeline they need to build. The enquiries they need to generate and capture. How their business is doing. The client they need to make happy. What their competitors are up to. How to find great people. What metrics to look at. How to grow.
Their actual pain-points.
99% of the time, that isn’t “how do I find a good agency?”
Ideas from the creator economy
There are businesses out there whose entire revenue is creating content, services, and events that just help people with their problems. These are often labelled the creator economy. Here’s the kind of thing they do.
Masterminds
A group of like-minded people brought together to support each other. The facilitator handles the introductions, the platform, the ops. They build an audience and pull them into groups so members get value from each other. Then they charge for it (you don’t have to). Arrange a dinner with your favourite clients and get them to invite their LinkedIn friends. You get the goodwill, the introductions, the reputation.
Deep dives
Think case study, but on someone else’s work. Why does it have to be your own? Why not do a case study on another success story your ICP would find interesting?
Check out Tom Orbach’s Marketing Ideas or the Growth in Reverse newsletter. These deep dive into people and businesses that have achieved marketing and newsletter success and works out how they did it. Case studies, in order to learn. Not to prove their own abilities. And the writers are cashing in because people crave this stuff.
If you think promoting work that isn’t yours is a risk, then don’t worry. Positioning yourself as someone who understands how success works and can communicate that isn’t going to do you any harm.
Courses and guides
Taking what you know that’s valuable to your ICP and building self-paced courses, in-person cohorts and email based guides. Work out what your prospect wants to know and start publishing.
Of course this is a lot of work, but you need to understand why this type of content is so effective, and work out your version.
Now yours is their favourite content
If you can identify a problem your ICP has that’s adjacent to the service you provide, one of those never-fully-solved problems, something they’re always working on, and keep creating content around it, keep helping them understand it and solve it.
Your content builds a proper list. Proper relationships. A genuine business asset.
They open your emails. They share your posts. They look forward to your newsletter.
And when they do need an agency?
They already trust you.
That’s impressive.