Some Businesses Grow "Different." Why Yours Should, Too.

Before we jump in, I want to make sure you know that I'm privately taking 12 leaders through a marketing strategy sprint this fall. We're going to apply all the techniques I use with our six-figure strategy engagements for a tiny fraction of that price.

Why am I doing it? Because I get smarter by seeing your companies up close. That's the honest truth. Why should you do it? Because the entire marketing ecosystem is built to extract value from your company and I'm gonna show you how to run from that and build marketing that works for you. For your customer. For this decade. (The 20-teens were a whole Pandemic ago.) Find Out More>>>

Today's TL;DR

What do professional services and tech companies have in common? (Teaser Trailer: It's Not Good News.)

We spent the last 40 years scaling up everything, believing that bigger was always better and that the fastest way to margin was by doing lots and lots and lots of the same thing. The digital revolution (boy, it was great while it lasted) put a Hadron Accelerator on the mass commoditization that factories started.?

• Cheap and Big is SO late 1900s.
• What happened to products is coming for tech and services
• How to recognize a marketing tactic that's totally gonna fail

What Does This Actually Do?

I spoke with two more incredible marketing teams this week, both facing real marketing headwinds. Sadly, ones they've experienced it over and over and over again. Let's see if you recognize the pattern:

• They deliver incredible value.
• Most of their revenue comes from services, not products
• The value is very difficult to measure
• They've tried tons of different kinds of marketing tactics
• Nearly all of them were demonstrable failures?

If you are a ? to 3+ of these, then their story is probably a lot like yours. They built their businesses, got to a certain point just by providing value and building a network of raving fans. People got referred, met them through networking, heard through the grape vine that they were awesome.?

And reputation grew.?

Then they caught the growth bug. And somebody somewhere said, "Well to grow fast you need MARKETING." Digital Marketing to be specific. You see, not all marketing is classic digital marketing, but you wouldn't know that from listening to the talking heads.

It's easy to believe that all marketing comes down to is landing pages and email lists and social media and SEO. That's what they were led to believe (and you probably have been, too). When I asked them what all the landing pages and emails and campaigns and promotions were for, they answered in the typical way, "To grow, of course."

Me: "Can you attribute any of your growth to anything like these things?"

Them: "No, but we're probably doing it wrong.

Me: "What if you're not doing it wrong?"

(Long pause)

Me again: "What if these ideas are just plain wrong for your business?"

Them: "Well... that would change a lot."

The Case of Perverse Incentives

The fundamental problem for founder-led service businesses, the kind that produce high-levels of value that is difficult to quantify, is that you all start to sound alike. Every wealth manager sounds like all the others. Every SAAS provider is ginning up the same "grow your business more efficiently" derivative.?

Hear me out, that doesn't mean their value isn't distinct. It is. Way more than almost any other category. It just means that the?value is hard to describe, quantify, and recognize.?

So marketing has to do smarter work. Marketing is dependent on "difference". Like trash to a 21st century flux capacitor, it needs that gas to go.?

But in the service business, "difference" is hard to find.

So digital marketers (who are also often very unskilled about recognizing and selling difference) don't try to help you sell your value. (That's hard.) They don't try to help you find your customer. (Also hard.)

Instead, they sell you techniques that bypass difference. They sell you growth hacks and platform boosts and all the other things to free you from the weight of finding your place in the market of your ideal customers.

Their techniques may work for a time.?And then they become more expensive. Or require more software. Or more data. Or more ads. Or more content. Did it work? Maybe. But then it stopped working. So you need to do more.?

The system of digital marketing is built upon a perverse incentive system where digital marketing platforms are often financially motivated to keep making their outcomes worse, so that you have to do more. Display ads stop working so you need to ad video. Weekly emails stop working so you need to do engagement series. Websites stop working so you need more landing pages.

As is famously said, "Google is never going to tell you to less SEO." Because they are financially incentivized to have it only BARELY work so that you will need to keep doing it more and more.

The unintended (or if you're a conspiracy theorist, "intended") side effect? You have no real relationship with your customer. The platforms do. And they'll sell it to you at a higher and higher and higher price every year. Slowly diluting your value. And making you one more company dependent on the Silicon Valley mother ship.

Blurry Brands Make Bad Buyers

What's a Service Business to Do??

Whether you sell advice or apps, your service business is about to get what I call the Paper Towel Treatment. The fuzzier the lines between you and your neighboring brands, the harder it is for customers to make good decisions. As industries get commoditized, buyers get bad at recognizing value. You know how good you and your team are, but they don't. What's the difference between Brawny and Bounty? Who knows... guess we'll buy on price.

As we've established, many of the most popular digital marketing tactics are just going to blend you in further. They are incentivized to make you the same as everyone else (that's how big data works) so that you are dependent on them to carve out a customer base.

Here's what I told the clients this week, and I've got a hunch it applies to you:

• Know your value and who best needs your value. Make that group as small as possible.?
• In the post-digital economy, scale is not what it once was. Focus less on bigger scale and instead on more value. That's where the margins are.
• Get ultra distinct. As uncomfortable as it may be. The biggest risk your business faces is becoming a commodity. And if you run a service business of any kind... the Commodity Dragon is coming.

After taking dozens of teams through this kind of process, I know it is challenging, particularly to do on your own. When you need help, my team and I are?here.

Forward, forward,

Nick

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Upcoming Opportunities

Let's Build Your Plan Together:?Reminder that I'm opening up 12 coveted spots to go through my marketing plan building process for 2023. We're gonna focus on eliminating waste from your budget and focusing on what's working now (not five years ago). An incredible opportunity for those who want to get ahead of?the pack:?