Your Consulting Website is Your “Center of Marketing Gravity”

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“I just don’t know how to generate meaningful leads.” 

Have you’ve ever felt like this in your consulting business?

If so, this post will provide you with a new way of thinking to generate these meaningful leads.

I’m sure you already know all the latest marketing “tactics.” Heck, I’ve even written an article with 64 of them.

But having a list of tactics can only get you so far. It’s hard to take action on these tactics and make them useful without a model on how to use them.

I was reading a thread of consultants complaining about how the older they became, the more difficult it was to get clients. 

One user, instead of complaining, left a helpful comment:

“If anyone is having trouble finding “freelance” work, read the book Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss and implement his Marketing Gravity concept. You will never chase a project again. You will wake up every day with an inbox full of requests for quotes. There are massive projects out there, if you choose not to pursue them, you will only see bottom of the barrel rates.”

By the end of this post, you’ll have a marketing model ⁠— Marketing Gravity ⁠— that you can use to get clients to come to you. 

The Original Marketing Gravity Model 

The original model, created by Dr. Alan Wiess, looks like this:

(I encourage you to watch the video here for an excellent explanation) 

In his model, “Marketing Gravity” is a combination of…

  • Referrals
  • Commercially Published Book
  • Columns
  • Articles
  • Newsletter
  • Blogs
  • Position Papers
  • Print/Electronic Interviews
  • Radio/TV Interviews
  • Serendipity
  • Press Releases
  • Pro Bono Work
  • Social Media Platforms
  • Networking
  • Self Publishing
  • Website
  • Trade Association Leadership
  • Podcasts
  • Products
  • Alliances
  • Teaching
  • Teleconferences 
  • Speaking

Alan asks:

“There are 23 alternatives on my wheel. How many are you doing? I’m doing them all, but you don’t have to do them all. But if you can’t do 10 or 12 of these, you’re in the wrong business. Pick out the ones to start most in your comfort level, and then get on to it.” 

This is a useful concept to help you get started marketing your consulting business. 

Carve out some time every day to work on these tactics. You’ll create more conversations with buyers. 

Questions To Improve This Model

Although Alan’s model is powerful, I think that it can be improved. 

Here are two questions I’d ask to make it more useful: 

  • What exactly is your “brand/value”? Can we replace that with something more measurable and tangible? 
  • With over 20 different marketing tactics, how does one prioritize which ones to work on?

Using these questions, I’ve made my own Marketing Gravity model — one that places your consulting website at the center.  

The Website-Focused Model

My model looks like this:

consulting website marketing gravity

The “variety of roads for buyers to reach you and use you” ⁠— marketing ⁠— are all traffic-generation methods.

And these roads, instead of “drawing people to your brand”, attract prospects to your website ⁠— where you’re able to measure its effectiveness. It’s much harder to do that with a “brand.” 

Your “brand” is the totality of your consulting website and how you draw people to it. It encompasses everything about you and your consulting business.

Instead of considering your website as a single marketing tactic, consider your consulting website as your “Center of Marketing Gravity.”

The job of each tactic on the wheel is to attract prospects to your consulting website.

Once they’ve done that, it’s your website’s job to convert these prospects into your database and/or into a conversation with you. 

With the website-focused model, you’ll have data on which marketing method is generating the most interest (traffic). 

The website-focused model will help you understand your “marketing 80/20” — the 20% of your marketing that are generating the most results. 

Spend time each day working on the items around the weel. Identify which ones are more effective, and do more of those. Doing so the key to effective marketing for consultants. And using your consulting website as the center makes all of this possible. 

Action Step

The next time you’re struggling to generate business, bring up this post. 

Ask yourself… 

  • “How many tactics on the wheel am I doing?” 
  • “How often am I doing them?”
  • “Which ones are working best?”

If you’re struggling to generate consulting business, chances are you aren’t doing enough of the tactics ⁠— or, if you are, you aren’t doing the right ones consistently. 

Whether you prefer Alan’s “value/brand” model or my “website” model, this concept will help you do effective marketing and get more consulting clients. 

Which model do you like better? How many of the tactics are you doing, and what works best for your consulting business?

Leave a comment below.