How to Be a Marketing Consultant
If you want to become a better marketing consultant or to start your own practice, good for you.
It’s a great gig. People pay me to do what I love doing. And I get to choose who I work with (my life has been asshole-free for the past 15 years).
But it wasn’t always like this (I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years). I had to learn how to attract clients — enough clients that I could afford to say yes only to those projects I was really excited about. And this is the key. This takes you from at-least-I’m-not-playing-the-office-politics thing to being excited about getting up in the morning and tearing into the next challenge.
In the beginning I bought the books, networked, gave talks, wrote articles and attended trade shows. I had a nifty logo, beautiful letterhead and eventually, a beautiful office.
I hated networking functions, and, as a result, I was horrible at it. I had a pretty good network of referral sources, but it wasn’t enough to make a business out of what I was doing. I’m a pretty good public speaker — I even taught some seminars at a local college — but the only clients that came from my talks were tiny companies that couldn’t afford much help. Thirty-nine articles; two clients. That still stings when I say it.
The truth is I treaded water for 15 years. I looked the part, people were impressed that I was a marketing consultant, I was doing great work, but I wasn’t putting money in the bank.
Then I learned how to attract enough clients that I could afford to say yes only to those projects I was really excited about. And that’s when my life changed.
My advice on how to become a better marketing consultant:
Simple: find another marketing consultant who fits your personality and has a system for attracting clients. Buy an hour of their time and listen. Then implement your ass off. There are no mountain tops to sit on and wait for grateful clients to climb seeking your wisdom. Sorry, you’ll have to go out and find them.
You can hire me for $250 an hour. You can hire my marketing consultant for $500 an hour: Ian Lurie. And yes, I have a marketing consultant! I’d be a fool not to.
Does this sound self-serving? It isn’t. I don’t need your $250 to make my month. It simply is the best, most practical advice I can give.
So, where are you? Has it been six months, a cool logo, all the other networking things and you’re still wondering if you can do this? Are you 10 years into this and want to go to the next level? Or maybe you know yourself better than most and you want to save some time and money?
