Books like “Zero to One” that talk about creating your own business category always struck me as interesting, but not applicable for the type of company I wanted to run.
However, I’ve come to change my mind.
Everyone (in my online bubble) talks about the need to “go niche”: focus on a particular subset of customers and serve them really well, rather than offering a generic solution for lots of people, even though the latter has a larger market size.
For me, “niche” meant focusing not on ANYONE who might want a podcast, but instead the types of companies we serve best: B2B companies.
But then, on the recommendation of Noel Andrews, I read a book by 2x.co which put things into focus.
It’s not just Deep Tech companies, or those who invent rocket ships that can have a “market of one” – any company with ambitions to grow can and should aspire to it.
The killer question I found is: to whom can you legitimately be the undisputed market leader?
Being able to orient your business around robustly answering this question is what makes you stand out and be able to genuinely solve the problems your dream customers have, rather than having lots of people feel “meh” about it.
Based on conversations with our customers, this has led to three modifications for Cofruition’s strategic positioning.
🧑💼 Who has the pain?: people running companies feel the pain of not having an easy, reliable way to get more customers to be able to grow
🔪Sharper focus on the problem: meeting prospective customers and not creating enough content to stay on people’s radar is something all of our best customers feel
🛒 Expand the offering: in order to be the undisputed market leader we need to offer a package that others can’t
The result is going from “podcasting as a service” to offering an all-in-one marketing solution for high-value service companies.
Below is an article explaining more details – I’d be curious to get your thoughts.
How to sustainably grow is often the question preoccupying the minds of business leaders.
In this article we’ll offer an answer for companies selling a high-value service.
These types of companies (like ourselves) have particular characteristics which mean the standard “marketing hacks” aren’t always applicable, and can in fact be a dangerous distraction.
We’ve landed on this solution after years of experimentation, interviews and seeing results and are now building our business around offering it to other companies who want it too.
Problems to solve
We take a first principles approach to solving this.
Below are a set of assumptions that we have about high-value service companies which leads to our solution:
- Most high-value service companies feel too busy to “do marketing”: it’s often an afterthought meaning there’ll be the occasional spurt of writing a few blog posts, but it never gets properly systemised and so often gets deprioritised
- Domain experts have the best insight for content: it requires some technical/ domain knowledge to post something valuable which often resides in the delivery team
- There’s friction in creating content: it can require hours/ days to make something valuable, which is all time that could be spent on client work
- There’s not a system for regular content: it gets stuck in a stop-start mode and is demoralising and doesn’t lead to the results it could
- Meeting new buyers is hard: they are typically more senior than those who search for products/ services online and thus it’s trickier to get on their radar, let alone speak with them
- Weary of cold outreach: there are so many people trying to sell to them they switch off to most generic email/ LinkedIn requests
- Don’t want to hear a pitch: they are very careful with their time, and don’t want to spend it “hopping on a call”
- Requires work to do it consistently: even if you decide that outreach is the way to go, it’s a job to do the research, personalise messages, find emails, reach out, follow up etc. etc.
- High-value service buyers require more trust than other buyers: they’ll want to have assurance that the company deliver, ideally on the back of a relationship with the company directly, or from a referral
- It’s premised on human relationships: it isn’t an anonymous software product that the client is buying, they’re going to get to know you and your team
- Services are tailored to clients: even if it follows a process, each client will be having advice and deliverables unique to them
- It can be difficult to distinguish between sellers: and so the buyer will typically do some sort of vetting, and ideally has a referral of someone who can vouch for the company
Constraints to consider
Things that might restrict the ability for a solution to be effective.
- Simple to execute: the more it requires of the internal team, the less likely it’ll happen
- Short-term ROI: tangible results in the near-term that can lead to growth
- Long-term ROI: invests in the long-term growth of the company
- Built to scale: can start small and scale up with positive results
This leads us to the solution…
The Cofruition all-in-one marketing solution
It starts with having a fully managed video podcast.
This provides the engine to open doors with people you never normally would get to speak to, removes the friction in your company creating content and, because we do almost all the work, just requires a company exec to turn up for an hour to have a conversation with guests.
Then comes the consistent content machine.
From each episode we make as much or as little content that your company needs. As a baseline, we fill up your LinkedIn account with enough weekly posts to showcase your insights (and who you’re rubbing shoulders with) to your industry which means you stay on their radar when they know someone who might need your service.
Then comes the scalability.
The hidden value in this is that we get to really know your business. We get to know your goals, your team, your approach, your solution really well which means we can bring in our strategic and operational skills to scale up your growth strategy with other add-ons, without requiring the overhead of onboarding another team member/ agency/ company to handle your marketing. We’ll either deliver these ourselves, or manage another partner provider so you don’t have to “do the thinking”.
With this, high-value service companies get all that they need to grow, plus have a clear system for building out growth paths.
What/ when is the payoff?
There are obviously unknowns with every marketing strategy, but this is one where we like to stack the odds in your favour.
Let’s assume that you do a podcast for 6 months, what will you have by the end?
- Guest relationships: you’ll have spoken with ~20 executives in your industry, built a genuine relationship with them so that when they, or someone they know, has a problem you can solve, they think of you
- Consistent content: you’ll have published 60+ pieces of high-quality content across your social channels to stay on people’s radar and convey your values
- Built trust: people naturally see podcast hosts as authorities in their industry. Listeners used to your voice will become accustomed to hearing your expertise
- Brand awareness: your existing audience (+ guests’ audience) will be getting used to seeing you regularly, increasing your brand recall
- A system!: you’ll have a robust machine that allows you grow and nurture prospects with minimal effort that we can easily build upon
In terms of how this translates into new business, that’ll be dependent on your market, solution and typical sales cycle.
We conservatively find that 10% of guest relationships lead to some form of new business (either directly or through referral) and then there’s the longer term benefit that comes from building brand awareness and reputation in your industry.
How else do we help?
Our ultimate goal is to get you more clients.
On top of the fully managed podcast + consistent content, we constantly work with you on techniques, processes and workflows to help systemise your business growth. This can include identifying opportunities to strengthen your relationships with your guests, or spotting opportunities where an additional content piece might yield results (e.g. Twitter threads).
We love working with high-value service companies and so are constantly developing/ refining approaches where we can support their growth.
Next steps
We hope you’ve found this article interesting. If you’d be interested in hearing more about how we could help you and your company, then please be in touch via: www.cofruition.com