There are over 50 million web designers competing to design the billions of websites in existence. Let’s just first say, your odds of staying busy as a web design agency are astronomically good so you have every reason to be selective, however, if you are in competition with another agency it can feel like this whole abundance mentality is a load.

But there is abundance and you can have the confidence to win the deal and charge what you need to charge if you know how to articulate your value and expertise over your competition.

Expertise + brand cut through…

As a marketer, the need to crank out content as fast as macro influencers tell you to seems impossible. 50 pieces of content a day? Who freaking has time for that? I get it. It’s so much that it feels impossible to even begin. And what if you aren’t getting the engagement you hoped for? Is it even worth it if no one is paying attention?

Blair Enns stresses the importance of writing in The Win Without Pitching Manifesto:

Writing gets us found. Writing helps to cement our position as experts. Most important of all, writing about what we do…

LinkedIn saw a 55% increase in conversations among connections in 2020.

Thats huge.

Because conversations are the precursor to doing business, getting into as many conversations as possible needs to be a priority for marketing agencies, who, 62% report that referrals are their number one source of new business.

To get someone conversation ready, you have to be willing to suspend your desire to do business and put more value on the relationship. Because the relationship has more possibilities.

If you waste the conversation on a pitch, you may lose that person forever. But if you focus on the relationship…

Agencies large and small struggle to get leads that are conversation-ready for themselves even when they are masterful at getting them for their clients. It’s one of the great ironies of the marketing world. Most agency business is relationship-driven and has little to do with the actual marketing they are doing for themselves.

The cause is understandable. As an agency, you are looking outside-in with your clients but with your own business you are looking inside-out and that one change in perspective is why most agencies struggle to make their own strategies work for themselves.

With your permission, I’d like…

In the last article I wrote about how to use awareness channels and I identified them as social media channels and any location, physical or virtual, that has a gathering or influx of people that come through. The big take away was that in those locations, the audience is not usually in a place to consider a purchase.

Unlike e-commerce or brick and mortar retail which plays largely on impulse purchasing (don’t act like you haven’t bought something on Wish), selling services requires more consideration; and while you may be willing to explore the idea from an awareness channel, it’s…

Here is a stone cold truth:

Branding impacts every part of the marketing funnel and the places where most people are trying to do marketing and sales are actually places where branding is most effective.

This is because there are really only two broad channels for a business to spread their gospel. The first is an Awareness Channel and the second is an Intent Channel.

Awareness Channels vs. Intent Channels

Awareness channels are where people become aware of your brand and learn more about it. Intent channels are where people who are in need of the problem you solve go to get serviced.

Awareness channels include:

• Social Media
• Blogs/Podcasts
• Display Ads
• …

As a SaaS seller are you going through other people’s demos? Are you taking notes on the parts you hate? On the parts you want to steal?

Most SaaS sellers aren’t buying a ton of products so you may not have experienced a truly great experience and if you have chances are they weren’t life changing. Most demos are boring as hell. Let’s face it. And until you invite your prospect into a story that includes them saving the day, your demos will be boring too.

Let’s talk about the five steps I use to sell on a demo call.

…

I love the proverb about the shoemaker and his children, who was so busy making everyone else happy with new shoes that one day he left his shop and found his children playing in the streets without shoes. Like so many service based companies most marketing agencies are guilty of neglecting their own business.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked with an agency owner and as we are looking over their website to strategize about how to increase bookings on their site they give me a disclaimer before the site loads.

“It’s been a while since they’ve…