Are you overcompensating for an underachieving data solutions proposition?

Is your data consultancy overcompensating its marketing for an underachieving proposition? In this article, we tackle a common challenge faced by many data consultancies – when their service offerings aren't converting, they try to find more ways to turn up the marketing volume, instead of addressing the root of the problem.

Why do weak propositions create expensive marketing campaigns?

When I speak to data management consultancy firms, many have adopted a range of costly marketing tactics:

• I talked to a consultancy founder recently who had been heavily investing in LinkedIn ads
• Another data firm had sunk a considerable amount of leadership effort into a time-draining partnership
• One firm had sent at least one principal consultant to virtually every event in the data management calendar
• A firm in the middle east had paid a meeting booking agency to connect and pitch thousands of CDOs (for many months) on LinkedIn.

When we got into the outcome of these efforts, there was a familiar pattern:

The ratio of sales calls booked to converted sales was 0:0.

Friendly chats, no sales.

And the root of all these issues?

Lack of clarity about the problem they solved and the outcome they delivered for a specific type of ideal client profile (ICP).

In every case, these firms were small enough to be highly specialised, yet they still opted for a vague positioning across a broad portfolio of data-related offerings.

When they tried to market their services, they sounded like so many data firms – bland, uninspiring offerings, typical of the 'average' data firm.

Here's the thing...

• Don't run ads if you're driving people to a confusing website, with a menu of different options that look like a data management 'sm?rg?sbord '.
• Don't partner if you don't both have a clear target audience and proposition (hint: a broad list of data services is not a proposition).
• Don't burn your cash going to events if you can't explain your differentiated offering over cake and coffee in less than 60 seconds.
• Don't connect and pitch the hell out of your target audience with a 'pick me, pick me!' post-connection meeting request. Just don't.

Getting clear on the problem you solve and the outcome you deliver is the key to growing your data business. Everything else is fluff.

Your sales performance metrics never lie. Sales meetings booked-to-closed is the KPI to watch.

Not getting sales meetings, despite getting eyeballs on your content? The reality is your primary offer isn't attractive to the audience you've attracted.

Either the audience is wrong, or the offer is wrong, or both.

More clarity = More meetings

If you promote a straightforward proposition to an in-demand challenge that you repeatedly address in your problem-solving content, you'll begin to get inbound requests to get on a call.

Let's role play this right now.

An example of a simple data services proposition

Your Ideal Client Profile is a CDO or Head of Data Quality.

Here's an in-demand challenge:

HIRING DATA QUALITY ANALYSTS IS COSTLY, TIME-CONSUMING AND CHALLENGING DUE TO EXTREME MARKETPLACE SHORTAGES.

Here's a proposition:

WE HELP YOU RAPIDLY DEVELOP EXISTING STAFF INTO SKILLED DATA QUALITY ANALYSTS WITHOUT THE BURDEN AND COST OF HIRING EXTERNAL SPECIALISTS.

WE ALSO PROVIDE SKILLED RESOURCES WHO WILL FILL YOUR IMMEDIATE DATA QUALITY SKILLS GAP AND HELP MENTOR INTERNAL HIRES, SO THEY BECOME PROFICIENT FASTER.

Content topics to discuss:

BUILDING A WORLD-CLASS DATA QUALITY TEAM AND CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE.

Do you see how this would attract the correct type of audience?

And a percentage of this audience would likely be interested in solving their data quality resourcing challenge in a novel way.

But of course, YOU need to discover a proposition that you KNOW is in demand.

It's not enough to guess; your proposition needs to be validated based on your background within the industry.

I know from painful experience how challenging it can be to build a DQ team cost-effectively. I've spoken to DQ leaders who have taken months to hire a single staff member – who then turns out to be sub-standard or promptly quits for another role.?

And I've solved that problem in the past by rapidly developing staff internally. It saves time, cuts costs, and delivers excellent results.

So, here's the big takeaway...

If your services aren't resonating, the answer isn't to turn up the volume with more elaborate marketing tactics.

The solution is to focus on a more specific and outcome-based proposition – THEN turn up the noise, ideally with great content that doesn't cost you anything to create.

Need help building a consistent, content-driven growth system for your data consultancy?

Your data firm now exists in the attention economy.

If you're not consistently attracting your ideal client profile with great content and a clear, compelling service proposition, your firm can get left behind.

Book a discovery call to learn more about the myDataBrand system and how it can help your data consultancy create a reliable pipeline of opportunities through expert content, systematic outreach, and simple, ethical sales conversion.

Schedule a discovery call: https://mydatabrand.com/breakthrough