Forecast · The Marketing Podcast For Consultants And Professional Service Firms

Grab the entire series on branding at forecast.fm/brand Let’s assume you’ve got your brand image all lined up. You know exactly how you want buyers to feel when they interact with your brand. And you’re even doing the kind of work that lines up with the image you want to portray. But how do you get that […] The post 3 Steps to Tell Your Brand's Story appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Grab the entire series on branding at forecast.fm/brand Do you look and sound the same as all your competitors? There’s an easy way to find out. Print out the ‘about’ page of your website alongside the ‘about’ page of your closest competitors. Then black out any specific references that would identify each firm. Then, show […] The post How to Make Your Brand Stand Out appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Grab the entire series on branding at forecast.fm/brand What the heck is a “brand” anyways? Ask three different people and you’ll get three different answers. Without a shared definition of what a brand is, it’s no wonder there are so many different approaches to building one. In this lesson, we’re going to cut through the clutter […] The post Why Feelings Matter More than Facts appeared first on Boutique Growth.

If you've decided to give content marketing a try, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is it's never been easier to get started. You can publish an article on your LinkedIn profile. You can go live on Facebook or Twitter video. And you can start sending emails to your […] The post 5 Steps to Get Started With Content appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Make no mistake. Content marketing is a LOT of work. You're busy enough trying to balance the many demands of running a professional services firm. Between answering to clients, supervising staff, and maintaining some semblance of a personal life -- there's not much time left over. If you're going to invest time into creating all this […] The post A Tale of Two Professional Services Firms appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you've probably heard the term content marketing before. Even if you haven't heard the term, you've definitely seen content marketing in action. Content marketing is when someone you're connected with on LinkedIn publishes an article that challenges the prevailing wisdom in your industry. […] The post How to Create Marketing People Actually Want appeared first on Boutique Growth.

So you're finally ready to put pen to paper. You've completed the customer profile and identified the ways your products and services create value for your buyer. This next step should be the easiest. Because you've already figured out what you want to say. Now you just need to say it. Here's the formula: Our […] The post Use This Simple Formula to Write Your Value Proposition appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Now that you have a clear customer profile, your next step is to determine how your products and services can help buyers achieve their "gains" and avoid their "pains". The mistake people make here is they jump into the writing stage. They start putting pen to paper hoping they'll be able to come up with […] The post How to Connect What You Do to What Buyers Want appeared first on Boutique Growth.

If you struggle to craft a compelling value proposition for your firm, chances are you're doing it wrong. As we've discussed previously on the show, powerful messages don't live inside your head… they live inside your buyer's head. So instead of trying to come up with messages that you like, or that make you sound […] The post The 3 Elements of a Customer Profile appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Here's the harsh truth. Most people will NOT achieve their goals. Despite the best of intentions and their best effort, they just won't achieve what they want to achieve. And it's not because they're not talented or smart. It's because they don't know how to execute. Being able to consistently execute on your plan and […] The post 5 Success Disciplines for Marketing Execution appeared first on Boutique Growth.

It's nice to have goals. The act of setting goals along makes you much more likely to achieve them. But having goals isn't enough. It's far too easy to jot down some goals that make you feel good about yourself, only to then get distracted and forget about them altogether. The key to achieving your […] The post How to Align Your Actions With Your Goals appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Goal setting is a tricky exercise. For starters, most people try avoid it altogether. It's much more fun to sit around and dream about your goals than to take the uncomfortable step of writing them down. The truth is, you are far more likely to achieve your goals if you put them on paper and […] The post How to Set Business Goals that Stick appeared first on Boutique Growth.

This is where messaging gets messy. Up until now, we've talked about where powerful messages come from and how to get your clients to tell you what they want. But even after you've done all that, you can't simply communicate one message to all your ideal clients and hope it'll stick. That's not how things […] The post The 5 Levels of Buyer Awareness appeared first on Boutique Growth.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. There's something that marketers and copywriters (people like me) don't like to tell their clients (people like you) about messaging. We prefer that you think creating "messaging" is some complicated, fickle process that simply can't be understood by the layman. It's best to leave this […] The post How to Get Clients to Tell You What They Want appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Here's how most people come up with marketing messages. They sit down at their computer, fire up the keyboard, and start brainstorming "hooks". Or they get their team together in a room for a white-boarding session. Or, more often than not, they ask the marketing intern to come up with something "catchy". If this sounds […] The post Where Powerful Messages Come From appeared first on Boutique Growth.

The more you charge for your services, the more money you'll make. But you can't simply raise your prices indiscriminately. If you do that, without justifying the increase, you'll lose more business than you'll gain. If you want to raise your prices, start by looking at the factors that influence your pricing. You'll discover pretty […] The post These 5 Factors Determine How Much You Can Charge appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Some clients are worth more than others. There are clients who stick around for the long haul... they buy from you repeatedly and happily pay your invoices on time. While there are others who give you a hard time from the very first engagement. And before you know it, they're long gone. To some extent, […] The post How to Maximize the Value of Every Client appeared first on Boutique Growth.

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about growing your firm? If you're like most people, you probably think about attracting new clients. All things considered, the more new clients you sign, the more your firm will grow. According to Jay Abraham, America's leading business growth strategist, you're leaving a lot […] The post How to Unlock the Power of "Growth Leverage" appeared first on Boutique Growth.

What if you could turn a stranger into an interested prospect in just one sentence? What if you could almost instantly make a new prospect curious about what you do? Meet the trigger statement. This simple sentence is designed to tell your target client that you have something they need. In this lesson, I'll show […] The post This Simple Sentence Will Get Your Prospect's Attention appeared first on Boutique Growth.

Are you sending a clear message to your prospects? If your message isn't getting through, or it's not converting prospects into clients, chances are it's not clear enough. The best way to make your message clear, so your prospects will immediately know that you have what they're looking for, is to wrap it in a […] The post The 7 Elements of a Billion Dollar Marketing Story appeared first on Boutique Growth.