50 - Brand Awareness V Buyer Awareness

06/16/23 • 25 min

There is a lot said about branding for your consultancy practice, so that buyers can be made aware that you exist when they need you. You want top-of-mind awareness so that when they have a need, they will come to you. And that’s a good thing.
Brand awareness is great when our clients have a need for what we do. We hope all the brand awareness activities we have engaged in will bring those clients to us.
But, one of the biggest mistakes I see owners of consultancy firms making is to focus all their marketing on brand awareness. What they should be doing instead is focusing on buyer awareness.
Brand awareness activities – focusing on what we do, the services we provide and the name recognition we try to achieve, mostly fall on deaf ears, because they have no relevance to our buyers, even though we know that most of them really need what we do.
Buyer awareness is about being the authority. As the authority, you influence the buyer’s journey to:
o Create buyer awareness
- Show you understand their situation
- Educate them about their problem and what happens if not attended to
- Show them your unique solution, based on your knowledge of what is best for them
- Highlight the outcome they will enjoy as a result.
o Build connection, trust, value and belief.

Slow down the sale – it’s about a relationship, not a transaction.
o Selling creates pressure which is responded to with resistance
o Relationship building creates trust and openness
Build a sales and marketing system that positions your firm as the authority for them, eliminates their resistance and has them trying to sell you on taking them on as a client.

Previous Episode

49 - Create Your Own Clients (Even When Their Not In The Market For Your Services)

Most consultants and consultancy firms tend to wait for their clients to come to them, either from referrals, or sometimes from inbound marketing. But in my experience, waiting for clients to come to you is too slow and does not give you enough control over the process of client acquisition for you to grow your business predictably or sustainably.
When you develop and systemize the process of creating your own clients, rather than waiting for them to come to you, you can grow your business much quicker and with less frustration. You can avoid the ups and downs that many consultants experience in their sales cycles and work flows, being busy one month but quiet the next, or not knowing where your next client of project is coming from.
Find out how you can create your own clients in this podcast episode.

Next Episode

51 - Be the Saviour, Not the Servant

In this episode, I discuss the way many consultants are treated like servants in their relationships with clients. However, that is due to poor positioning and leads to the client being able to dictate the terms of the engagement and often, being able to demand cheaper pricing than you may normally charge.
Positioning your firm as the saviour, not the servant means changing the dynamics of the relationship you have with clients, putting you in charge and leading to more freedom to deliver the services your way, less demanding clients and more money from each engagement.
Listen to how to make this change in the podcast.