Brain-dump: Enough M*rketing to be dangerous for tech entrepreneurs

Once tech folks start to become mid-to-senior level in their careers, a common path that opens up is to start selling their expertise through creating their own consulting business. There is a lot to love here—you get freedom to work for yourself, you get to choose who your customers are (and more importantly who they are not), and as you help them, you gain amazing opportunities to broaden your skills on different types of problems / organizations vs. going really deep in a single company.

However, many people who go this route do so because they really know their stuff well around technology. But getting the word out about what you offer and helping other people understand the benefits is going to require very different skills, and one of those is Marketing. (GASP! :O)

Here’s a brain-dump of a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way as my developer self was thrust into a Marketing org a few times along my career. :)

Plug your nose, and let’s begin! ;-)

Spend some time really thinking through your target personas.

Who is most likely to engage your services? (hint: “everyone” is not an answer ;)) Try and narrow it down to specific job roles, level of expertise, types of industries, size of companies they work for, etc.

Then go a few levels deeper:

What is that person’s day-to-day like?
What would help them feel like a total bad-ass at work?
Where do they get their latest tech information?
What factors do they consider when trying to decide on solution X vs. Y?
etc.

Having 1-2 of these personas in mind will really help everything else that follows.

Focus on the problems you solve, not the features you offer.

This is a common problem with Product companies, too. They talk all about their BlorpBlops or their WheezleWizzles, but people ain’t Googling or ChatGPTing for that. ;-) They’re going to be searching for things like:

server crash
error XYZ-1234
X vs. Y

Based on your target persona(s), figure out what are their major pain points? What keeps them awake at night? (Ask a few in real-life, if you can!)

Then put content out about how you make that thing go away so they can sleep soundly.

Optimize your “messaging” for your target audience

Are you talking to a platform engineer who’s on-call during emergencies? Then don’t talk about “speed of innovation” or “ROI” — that’s not their most pressing concern. (And may also lead to vomiting. ;-))

Are you talking to that person’s boss? Great! Use those phrases, but then don’t hammer on how your solutions use the latest buzzword-compliant version of the SnazzyJS library, because they literally do not care.

Of course you will say your consulting services are great — you’re the one selling them! ;-)

But a third party recommending you based on experience working with you will go a much longer way. (As long as it’s someone credible and not, like, your mom ;-))

LinkedIn recommendations are great. Testimonials from previous customers of yours are even better. Case studies, which go more in-depth into the “why” and “how” and “result” are the best, because now you’re not just talking about, but demonstrating your expertise.

Think through the “buyer’s journey”

What are all the steps involved from someone becoming aware that you exist to you getting a bank deposit from them?

For example: Can your target persona(s) actually make the decision to engage your services? Or do they need to go through 15 levels of red tape with an 18 month vendor procurement process with 25 upper brass approval to get there? (If so, you may need to focus on one of them as a persona.)

If they can make that decision and pay that bank deposit, what is going to stop them from doing so? What other options are they also going to evaluate? How can you proactively combat their objections?

Think through the “after-buyer’s journey” as well

VCs don’t tend to go for services-based companies because it requires a ton of effort to secure those funds, then once the work is done you have to then do that work all over again to find the next one, on repeat. The only way to scale is to hire more people, which costs more money, and cuts into your bottom line (“margins”)… so you have to then raise prices, which makes your services more out of reach, which reduces your pool of customers, and so on.

What VCs love is recurring, subscription-based revenue that just magically comes in on its own on a predictable basis, and also compounds over time. But if you’re not trying to build a SaaS product but a consulting business, how does this work?

Here are a few avenues to think about:

Can you package your knowledge up into an online course subscription that you sell? Esp. on a platform like LinkedIn Learning or Udemy that has existing “reach.” (You can also then offer to deliver this training in-person to teams as a service offering.)
Can you offer a recurring annual “refresher training” for your customers to get them up to speed on major changes in your industry / new versions of software they use?
Can you offer an ongoing bucket of consulting hours to deal with any follow-up work, and stay engaged with them as new projects come down the line you may be a good fit for?

How can you create more visibility around your expertise?

Try not to do one-offs. If you put real time/attention into helping someone (a colleague, a customer, a stranger on the Internet, etc.) see if there’s a way to turn those learnings into content that both demonstrates your expertise and acts as a resource others can learn something from. (Pro-tip: It is MUCH less icky-feeling to reframe Marketing as Trying To Help People, especially when that’s actually the case!)

Take that helpful email or Slack thread you wrote and turn it into a blog post
Re-enact that enlightening conversation you had at a conference in a 5 min video on social media
Take that code snippet you used to fix that issue and chuck it on GitHub
Take that REALLY deep dive you did on that problem and turn it into a downloadable “cheat sheet” or “template” that requires someone to put their email address in to get. ← boom, potential customer.
etc.

(I’m trying to model this a bit here, with this “blog post that could’ve been an email” ;D)

And last, but certainly not least, don’t forget… Community!

A thing you are going to have to think about is your “pipeline” or “funnel” — in other words, the collection of people / organizations who could potentially be your next customers while you’re helping out the current ones.

Way back in the beginning you identified your target personas, right? Go figure out where they hang out—online and in-person—and make sure you’re there too, being as helpful as possible. Host a meetup, help organize a conference, answer questions in Reddit and Discord communities. If you do this on a consistent enough basis, people will start to take notice, and tell their colleagues as well. (This is particularly important if the problem you’re trying to help people with is one they don’t like to discuss in public!)

And even if nothing pans out directly from a business opportunity POV, you’re building relationships which expand your network, and you’ll gain a much better understanding of what some of the “hot topics” are among folks in your target personas which you can then turn into… more content. ;-)