Inconsistent marketing kills companies

Almost every agency consultant or other services company I talk to has the same problem: consistent marketing.

Here's how it plays out 90% of the time:

They’re good at what they do and they have a strong reputation, so they get by on word of mouth and relationships— sometimes they have some close calls where it looks like their pipeline is going to dry up, but something always seems to come together at the last minute (a old client reaches out, they randomly run into someone at a conference, etc.)

They know they should be better at marketing, but They never make it a priority because things always seem to work out— until they don’t.

Maybe their contact at a big client changes jobs, the economy stumbles, etc And suddenly the pipeline is dry, and they're in panic mode because they don't figure something out, they’re screwed.

So they do a mad dash to get some meetings (calling everyone they know, hitting up all their old clients, etc) and it works! They’re saved!

Except now they're “too busy to do marketing” again… and the whole cycle repeats 🤦

I completely understand how hard it is to keep the marketing machine going when you're also grinding your ass off to do the work-- but turning off marketing completely is probably the single worst mistake it could make.

Instead, you should have two core marketing channels that are always on:

Short term

First of all, you need something that will drive results ASAP— so anytime you find yourself in a crunch where the pipeline is dry, you know that you can just go a little bit harder on this and you'll reliably get meetings that turn into deals.

For most service companies, that's some kind of outreach program. I really like what Modash does for this: They have an ongoing series of collaborative articles where they interview influencer/marketing experts and document their best practices. That gives them a reason to constantly do outreach without it being a sales call (a lot of people use podcasts for this— that can also work, although they’re usually more work than people think).

Long term

But in parallel, you also want something that's evergreen. It probably won't deliver results tomorrow, but it's an asset that grows over time and will make you less and less dependent on doing those short-term pushes.

SEO is generally a good option here— especially because it's in a transition right now. Search is moving to ChatGPT and other AIs (include Google’s AI overviews), which means the old power structures are getting redefined. We don't really know exactly how this will shake out yet, but I can tell you I've been able to get our content into ChatGPT in less than two weeks after publishing it.

The bottom line:

There's a million other options that can work. The point is that marketing MUST be an always-on thing, not something you turn on and off like a faucet.

Build it before you need it. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

PS - If you like my emails, reply to this and say hi! I don’t have any room for new clients right now so I have nothing to sell you, but I always like talking with people.