Productize or Perish

If you're considering a consulting business or feel the need to pivot your existing consulting business, you may be wondering what you stand to offer your potential customers.  This can be a big challenge for professionals who have several levels of expertise because you're not sure what to offer someone as a service product.  On this week's episode, we'll review some of the ways you can narrow down your expertise to find the most viable options to offer someone as a consultant.  

We spend a lot of time trying to decide who we are, who our brand is, what our products should be.  How often do you think about how you're not?  Are you good at recognizing the solution you shouldn't be for the customer you shouldn't have?  It's a form of niching but knowing who you're not is just as important as knowing who you are.  This week, we'll focus on the benefits and relevance to knowing who you're not supposed to be. Resource: https://azolacreative.com/disc

You know what it's like to have a good or a bad experience with a product or brand.  You know how good it feels or how bad it feels when these experiences occur.  Yet, so many businesses do not focus on developing a consistent customer experience to ensure they as a business are prepared for every twist and turn as well as being better communicators to their customers. This week, we'll discuss ways you need to think about the bad experiences you may be guilty of and learn how to fix them. Resource: https://azolacreative.com/disc Ask a question at https://azolacreative.com/podcast

The TikTok ban has been short-lived over the weekend but teaches a valuable lesson.  For years, I've seen businesses put so much effort into only one or two lead generation sources.  It might be partners, SEO or social media.  But what happens when the rules change and those marketing channels no longer play by the same rules?  It can be potentially devastating to your business.  This week, we'll review some real-world examples of this along with some key things you should be asking yourself to protect your self from a potential threat. Resources: SMB Marketing Blueprint Ask Greg a question at: https://azolacreative.com/podcast

The rock band, Van Halen was known as a group of loud and proud rockstars with a high level of ego to boot.  There's an infamous story of how they demanded "No Brown M&Ms" backstage at their venues.  Although it became folklore that they would have such ridiculous demands, it was actually for a safety reason and teaches us something important about the way we approach our Terms & Conditions for selling our products and services.

Over 50 years ago, Elton John and Bernie Taupin embarked on a songwriting partnership that changed the face of the music industry.  Their partnership wasn't built on competition - it was built on complimenting each other based on their individual weaknesses. When launching and marketing our products, it's important to recognize that a strong partnership strategy can develop a sales channel for your business that grows your product sales by complimenting the weaknesses they may have.  In return, you can be a better partner sending leads to those who compliment your weaknesses. This week, we'll look at the Elton John and Bernie Taupin partnership model and how to implement it into our own product marketing plans.

Episode #1 Brand vs. Product Marketing is a chicken and egg kind of topic.  Which comes first and what exactly does it mean to focus on product marketing vs. brand marketing?  I believe product comes first and I'll explain why the product experience is what drives your company's brand experience.   I'll also share how a brand experience can rebuild the product experience for a company when necessary,  We'll talk about the Smokeless Grill campaign featuring Snoop Dogg as well as Jaguar's most recent "Copy Nothing" campaign. Resources for this week's podcast are the SMB Marketing Blueprint - a free 7-day email course designed to help small and medium-sized business owners or leaders understand various marketing channels and their relevance to their target audience. The course aims to provide tools and resources to build a marketing blueprint, focusing on the personas of the marketing channels and the buying process. Find direct links to the resources mentioned on this podcast in the podcast show notes at Blueprint.AzolaCreative.com.

When we're selling or struggling to sell our products, we easily get caught up on all of the reasons why someone should buy from us.  We're passionate about our product and we believe it's the best solution.  But, we aren't going to win every sale and that's okay.  But why do we sometimes lose sales?  How often do we ask ourselves why someone wouldn't buy from us?  It's possible that by asking that question, you can revolutionize the growth of your business because you'll find the right customers faster by removing the barriers to sales that you may have inadvertently put up. Resources for this week's podcast are the SMB Marketing Blueprint - a free 7-day email course designed to help small and medium-sized business owners or leaders understand various marketing channels and their relevance to their target audience. The course aims to provide tools and resources to build a marketing blueprint, focusing on the personas of the marketing channels and the buying process.  

The key to being more profitable with your products and services is to adopt an E-Commerce mindset for the way you sell.  In E-Commerce, you need to have everything buttoned up as to what the deliverables will be for a product so that you can sell it more efficiently online.  Unfortunately, many service-based businesses offering a lot of customizations, they are constantly balancing providing great results while protecting their profitability against scope creep. This podcast episode is an introduction to the Productize or Perish podcast, and also an invitation to begin adopting an E-Commerce mindset in the way you develop and sell your products.  I'll discuss ways the IP Stratify Framework™️ helps with this process. Resources this week: Visit AzolaCreative.com to learn more about Greg Davis and Azola Creative Share your story, ask questions at AzolaCreative.com/podcast