4 ms·

> They call you. Your acquisition costs are close to zero. The million-dollar question is: How do you make potential customers contact you? >...a strong brand m

by iakh 7y ago

> They call you. Your acquisition costs are close to zero. The million-dollar question is: How do you make potential customers contact you? >...a strong brand makes finding new projects so much easier: New projects find you! Be aware that building up your brand easily costs you 60 hours per month. Not sure how this is a compelling argument. 40% of your time seems like a lot more than close to zero

ghaff 7y ago
I took it as just a statement of reality that people should be aware of. Especially for higher-level advisory work, i.e. not primarily writing code, a large percentage of time is "off the clock." Most of the independent consultants I know spend a lot of time writing newsletters, doing podcasts, speaking for free at events, in addition to whatever 1:1 marketing/sales they do.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  > Your acquisition costs are close to zero I think the point was that the acquisition costs are _not_ close to zero. Rather, the acquisition costs are no longer specific to individual clients, they're general in nature. If you spend just as much time/money but don't spend it on specific client, then the cost for each client doesn't change (it's just the total divided by the number of clients).
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Good point. There clearly are acquisition costs. In marketing speak what he's basically saying is that your bottom of funnel acquisition costs are low. (I don't think they're quite zero because you still need to close a specific contract.) But top of funnel awareness/education/etc. is a large chunk of your time. Which for some types of consulting/advisory work rings absolutely true to me. e.g. https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/ https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/
  - wtracy 7y ago
    I think the author is trying to say that you're trading high fixed costs to get near-zero marginal costs per client acquisition. If you're only planning on working with half a dozen clients every year, the distinction is mostly academic. If you're running an agency that has a new project kicking off every other week, the difference could be huge.

by iakh 7y ago

ghaff 7y ago

I took it as just a statement of reality that people should be aware of. Especially for higher-level advisory work, i.e. not primarily writing code, a large percentage of time is "off the clock." Most of the independent consultants I know spend a lot of time writing newsletters, doing podcasts, speaking for free at events, in addition to whatever 1:1 marketing/sales they do.

RHSeeger 7y ago
> Your acquisition costs are close to zero I think the point was that the acquisition costs are _not_ close to zero. Rather, the acquisition costs are no longer specific to individual clients, they're general in nature. If you spend just as much time/money but don't spend it on specific client, then the cost for each client doesn't change (it's just the total divided by the number of clients).
- ghaff 7y ago
  Good point. There clearly are acquisition costs. In marketing speak what he's basically saying is that your bottom of funnel acquisition costs are low. (I don't think they're quite zero because you still need to close a specific contract.) But top of funnel awareness/education/etc. is a large chunk of your time. Which for some types of consulting/advisory work rings absolutely true to me. e.g. https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/ https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/
- wtracy 7y ago
  I think the author is trying to say that you're trading high fixed costs to get near-zero marginal costs per client acquisition. If you're only planning on working with half a dozen clients every year, the distinction is mostly academic. If you're running an agency that has a new project kicking off every other week, the difference could be huge.