Two Keys To Successful Affiliate Marketing For Mobile-First Companies

Years ago, service professionals became trusted advisors only after a deal was closed and money changed hands. The process went like this: deal signed, advice given, money exchanged, more advice given, more money exchanged.

That’s how it used to be, but not anymore. In today’s content-marketing-driven world, prospects expect to be given great advice before a deal is signed or money exchanges hands. This raises an important question: When do professional service people become trusted advisors?

I believe that if you want to break through to your next level and queue up a steady stream of great prospects who want what you offer, you need to become a trusted advisor long before sales dialogue begins. Let me share with you why you should do this and how to do it.

More Demand Than Supply

Most of our clients have set a goal of at least doubling their revenues. But they’ve also set the goal of creating more demand for their services than they can supply. This allows them to pick and choose the deals, opportunities and clients they want, not simply what the market gives them.

To some degree, achieving the status of having more demand than supply is dependent on financial disciplines. When you don’t have to take on certain clients because you need their revenue, you can wait for deals that are a better fit.

But it takes a lot of guts to turn down a prospect who might be dangling a sizable check in front of you and instead wait for a better deal. If you are not confident that better deals are out there, you’ll probably take a deal that may not be a great fit.

I believe this is a top reason to become a trusted advisor before the sale. If you do this, you’ll begin to see a steady stream of prospects who are leaning in to you. This will give you the confidence to walk away from deals that you otherwise might have taken.

But that’s not the only reason. In my experience, prospects who already view me as a trusted advisor and expert:

• Accelerate through our sales funnel in half the time of other prospects

• Display far more openness to ideas that might not be intuitive to them

• Get the value of what we do and so avoid negotiating on price

• Champion our ideas to other members of the decision committee

• Follow our counsel closely after we launch the engagement

• Have a higher tolerance for bumps in the road once they become clients

How To Become A Trusted Advisor Before Someone Becomes Your Client

The best strategy to become a trusted advisor before someone becomes your client includes these steps:

1. Build an ideal client profile that includes the demographics of everyone who is on the decision committee: decision makers and decision influencers.

2. Build a list of the top five goals, opportunities and challenges of the people on the decision committee.

3. Ask yourself these key questions:

• What is our best advice on how to achieve the goals that matter to ideal clients?
•  What is our best advice on how to realize the opportunities that matter to ideal clients?
•  What is our best advice on how to overcome the challenges that matter to ideal clients?

4. Develop short-form and long-form content that contains your advice.

5. Publish the short-form pieces to blogs, social media posts, videos and the like. Make sure each short-form post points to a call to action for a long-form piece.

6. Put your long-form content assets behind a registration form on your website where users provide their contact information to get the asset.

Once you’ve developed your content pieces, promote the short-form content across your website, email marketing, LinkedIn and third-party sites that accept original content submissions. It's important to use a multichannel strategy because, for reasons I cannot explain, people tend to prefer one channel over another. Here is what I mean.

We run campaigns that include short-form pieces that have a call to action at the end, such as “register for the free e-book” or “access a free action guide.” Usually the short-form piece will contain one or two great ideas. But the long-form piece contains a lot of great ideas.

What we’ve discovered is that some people will respond to the offer if it comes to them on LinkedIn. Other people will respond to the offer if it comes via email. Still others will respond if they find it on our website using organic search.

But the ironic thing is that almost no one seems to use all three channels: LinkedIn, email and search. People who prefer LinkedIn seem to ignore email. People who prefer email seem to ignore LinkedIn. I cannot explain why this happens, but the digital footprint of these people makes their preferences very clear. This is why you need a multichannel strategy.

What Can You Expect?

This strategy takes time to develop and execute, but it absolutely works. All of the best clients we’ve acquired over the last eight years or so have come to us because of this strategy. I pull organic prospects out of the digital ecosystem because I talk to them about their goals, opportunities and challenges.

Once you’ve developed your content assets, you can run a number of different types of campaigns and become very creative with them. This will allow you to see which topics, subject lines, ungated (no form required) and gated (form required) content assets are most effective for your firm, and which channels work best.

The most important thing is not the technology or machinery of the campaign process, but the quality of your counsel and how targeted it is for organic prospects. There is no substitute for great ideas.

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