In Chapter 22 of my upcoming book on consulting website design, I asked Scott Oldford, a leading authority on email marketing for consultants, how consultants can use their email list and email marketing to attract clients.
Here is the video response he sent me, with a summary of his answers below:
Summary
Why should a consultant start building a list and engaging in email marketing?
We have Facebook, Instagram, and all these different platforms, but if we don’t have the ability to “own” our audience without having to pay for it, we do ourselves a great injustice. The faster you start your email list and building an emotional connection — that true, intimate tribe & community — through email, the faster you’ll be able to stop renting other people’s platforms.
Business happens in emails. You don’t use email for just entertainment — you use email for specific things.
There is an email “Renaissance” happening: we are getting better at labeling and controlling what emails we want to see, which means marketers need to use email in new and innovate ways in an intimate way to connect with your clients.
How can they effectively educate and nurture their audience and move them closer to sales conversations?
People get on consultations not because you’re amazing or you’re great — what they really want more than anything else is to see if you have a methodology or process that provides the “path to redemption.” Email marketing allows you to continually interact and give value to someone and make someone feel their pain again.
There are three main things we want to do with email marketing:
- Show our authority and social proof and that we can solve their problem
- Show our methodology and unique process that allows us to provide the path to redemption
- Make sure that person continually feels their problem so that when your prospect is sitting on the toilet on a Thursday evening after a horrible day, and when they get an email that says “Hey, do you need help with X?” they search inside themselves and they say “I’ve had enough, I want to book a conversation because I’m ready to have X Done.”
You allow that person to understand what the future may hold — or a new, improved reality that they can step into with your help.
What kinds of things can consultants automate through email marketing?
Automation and Segmentation are great — but if you get stuck trying to segment and automate everything, you’ll have to hire an employee for each part.
My point of view on this is very simple — become very diligent on your customer avatar, and specify who you work with. “I’m working with entrepreneurs who are scaling past 7 figures.”
Because I’m so specific with my customer avatar — how much more can I segment on that? I don’t work with eCommerce, I don’t work with brick & mortar. Because I only work with people who sell high-ticket offers (like consultants) it’s easier for me to segment. Let’s segment with our marketing and our customer avatar rather than just technology. If you do not have a focused message or methodology you won’t be able to scale and get a compound effect.
Forget all the specific automation and segmentation until you’re crystal clear on your ideal prospect. You don’t need to be the world’s best marketer — you need to be the best at getting your ideal prospects through the door and helping them with what you do. Keep it simple! Until you have a multi-million dollar business, you don’t need to worry about it.
You can sign up for updates on the book here: Consulting website design book
And you can learn more about Scott here: The Relevancy Engine
Are you using email marketing for your consulting business? Are you using Scott’s tips?
Let me know in the comments below!