Agencies: who will pay you the most for strategy?

Nobody needs dental insurance until they smash their teeth in.

Strategy and planning is essentially an insurance policy. It ensures the clients’ investment in marketing is going to achieve the desired result. 

As such, the amount a client is willing to pay for strategy is directly related to the clients’ implementation budget: full-time employees, contractors, content, technology, ad spend and so on.

My recommendation is to charge between 10% and 20% of whatever they are spending to get disappointing results.

Of course, for people that don’t currently spend money on marketing, strategy holds very little value. To these people the planning stage is an obstacle. 

We can see them coming a mile away. They want to get started. They want people that can do the work fast and cheap. They want the basic version of the software.

Go find clients with their teeth smashed in, they’re easy to find. Just look for lots of content and expensive websites. 

Follow the money.

But Who Will Pay the MOST?

My Favorite Question!

My first strategy product was called the Content Marketer’s Blueprint™: a repeatable system and three-month action plan for attracting ideal customers and nurturing them to a point of sale. 

The “CMB”, as we called it, was specific to content marketing and the software product it supported, but not specific to any particular industry. 

It easily sold for $2,500.

Three months later we sold the same exact strategy, same workshop, same deliverable, same system for $30,000.

The only thing that changed was how we positioned it. We changed some words to align the product with our prospect’s industry: higher education, a college.

I literally replaced the word “lead” with “prospective student” in the templates and multiplied the price by ten.

Explain that:

A college’s investment in marketing is relatively high. They have full time team members which means they spend a LOT of money for disappointing results. 

But the MEGA-PREMIUM came from a reduction in replaceability.

At the time, April 2013, to find someone who was selling content marketing strategy without jamming software and content down your throat was difficult. But finding a specialist in content marketing for higher education: well, they didn’t exist. 

There was nothing to compare me to. I was in control.

Focus: The Mega-Premium

Focus amplifies value because it counteracts replaceability. End of story. Want to charge more? Solve a specific problem for a specific kind of company.

You can stop reading now… go do that! The rest will fall into place.

The reason we don’t take our own advice without significant third party therapy is fear and hunger. Fear of missing out and our hunger for the next paycheck.

I resisted focus. I was “deal hungry” but the decision was made for me. I inherited higher education as a focus from my business partners who’d worked in the space for years.

I got lucky.

That said, I quickly decided I never wanted to work in higher education, ever again. It was the exact opposite of what I wanted: “decision by committee” made me sick. I don't have the patience for it. I don't want to explain my recommendations to eleven people. I just want them to follow my F-ing directions! Just give it a try!

Higher education was the complete wrong space for me. 

Yet the moment I chose to take a risk and focus on higher education I commanded a 10x price premium for the exact same process. Focused messaging, not the amount of work, not a more complex process, just different packaging made it more valuable to the client.

Lexus is basically Toyota. Packaging.

I digress: choosing the wrong thing cured me of not focusing. 

I chose the wrong thing another two or three times and I loved every minute of it. Each failure funded a pivot. Each pivot got me closer to the answer.

Give yourself a free pass to focus on the wrong thing.

Enjoy the ride.

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What's your take on the topic? Leave your two cents below, and let's discuss!