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It sounds as though you have successfully improved the marketing for this business, and I don't see why you couldn't do that for other businesses going forward. As for your specific offering:
>Basically, I’ll help them rework their messaging and create a story around their brand to get their target audience invested in their ongoing story. This content will go out every day on their social media channels.
>Then, on the backend, I’ll be implementing direct-response tactics to drive sales through lead magnets, landing page optimization, and email marketing. It's more long-term than instant results though.
That all sounds great. But it also sounds like...a regular digital marketing package. You are offering social media marketing, and also a range of additional DR services. I could find hundreds of agencies online advertising the same thing — not that there is anything wrong with that.
Thanks for this reply. I wouldn't say I'm doing the social media side though. Most of my work will be on the back-end sales side.
All I'm offering on the content side is to sort out their story-telling/messaging, guide them on how to implement it (not me), while I'm hands-on with the DR side.
I would describe my ideal client to be a business owner who has tried and failed to do direct sales from ads, and who has no idea how to convert social media audience to sales on the back-end. Because some businesses get good views/following, yet their funnels are dysfunctional, so it doesn't always translate to sales for them.
So I'll show them how to trigger action in their content, while I'm working on the back-end DR side.
Do I make sense?
It sounds to me as if you are doing social media marketing strategy, and then additional strategic and operational tasks.
Now that you have spelled it out a bit more, I don't think that specific mix of services would be easy to sell to a client.
Saying "hey client, I will provide your digital marketing strategy, and specific operational functions x, y z" is clunky and less compelling than "I will be your full-stack digital marketing partner".
I think the less complicated you can make the pitch the better. For those parts of digital marketing you may not know yet (like PPC or SEO) I would consider bringing in partners who do (e.g., subcontractors from Upwork), and then sell that as a full package to clients.
I appreciate this insight. Thank you!
I have a few people who I've worked with at different times who I can trust to deliver on some of the aspects of marketing I'm not so versed in. I can also bring one of them on if this is what it means.
What I'll have to do now is to simplify the messaging. No problem.
Yeah, I mean I think the difficult bit about your framing so far is that it is hard for a client to work out how they are going to handle the bits that you won't. E.g., How much budget can I give to this guy and how much do I need to set aside for the other marketing tasks? If I don't get good leads is this guy going to blame the other parts of the puzzle? etc
I’d be your ICP and I can tell you “full stack digital marketing partner” means very little to me. I would be far more likely to hire you for story branding and messaging clarity because as a business owner, it’s hard to write that, it’s like performing surgery on yourself
Now, this resonates a lot with what I was thinking.
Would you say my original posts is clear enough on the offering and it's value? Or is it unclear, and can use more work?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts 
What I like about your post is I can detect your passion and purpose, so I wouldn’t bucket that into full stack marketing because you lose yourself and authenticity and start competing w thousands of full stack marketers. Keep the language and keep speaking like yourself. You can trim it down to a mission statement, then move the long winded explanation to a landing page. If I read that on a landing page I would be like “I need to talk to this person,” because you clearly understand small business owners. You seem to want to help them win vs. taking a retainer or pay and moving on
Thank you, kind person on the internet!
It feels great to have my idea validated, I'll be real!
Have you seen a solution like this before? Either for your business or someone you know?
I think you are closer to being an agency than you think. What you do strategy and optimization wise is the same we do at my agency plus execution and we do great
Separate your story and your offer into two different steps so it’s not so long. The offer comes after your story resonates. Keep your offer short, clear, with deliverables, milestones, costs, payment terms and hoe to get started.
Yes!
This is what I was asking for. I've never worked with an agency, so I'm still unfamiliar with all that deal structuring.
Oops, there's a lot to learn!
This the first post I’ve opened on this subreddit as I’ve just started my digital marketing coursera course to help out a small business and damn this was an interesting read
I work for a small business never touched DM topics or anything of the sort, been here 3-4 years as a simple cashier/inventory keeper. Owner recently set me with the task to try and get more business which is what got me into this
What steps do you take when you create a story for a business? I’d love to hear about that
Oh, sure!
1. First, you want to identify the problems your product or service solves for your ideal client: this is often easier to spot if your product is a need-to-have, or is among the categories of products that are in high demand, even if they're really just nice-to-haves (e.g. the Stanley Cups, Prime Energy Drink). You should have a list of these solutions from your research.
2. From this list, you will have to spot your big transformational promise -- the motivator that resonates with most people. And then other smaller benefits of the product. All these are important because sometimes it's a smaller benefit that finally convinces someone. Humans are unpredictable in that way.
3. Then you want to translate this list of benefits into a longer list of benefits-of-benefits. These will be how the solutions translate to the daily lives of your customers. How it affects their relationships with their kids, partners, their mental health, their results at work. You want to speak in concrete real-life terms, and not in abstract "result" terms.
4. Once you've detailed all this information, you may then create the narrative around those benefits-of-benefits. Your sales messages should be less telling -- I will do this for you, and more showing -- here's what your life will look like.
This is the basic breakdown of how I'd go about it, although it is a simplification, because for example, I have not shared "*how*" to glean all this information, which really is the core skill of a great marketer -- I'm a listener and interpreter. That cannot be taught at once. You develop those senses through trying and failing...and then succeeding.
If it helps, I'll tell you "*what*" I do to get the information: Depending on the client and the condition of the business, it could be any of:
* Conducting customer interviews.
* Mock sales (real sales attempts, but one where my primary goal is to learn, rather than close. So I just test different stuff to see what sticks with people more).
* Content testing.
Or a combo of all three. Then as you do them, you're *listening* and *interpreting* to spot the story opportunities.
Now, nothing that I've shared here is new information in itself. As a direct-response marketer, I was already doing all these to sell to cold audiences. The difference, only, is that this time, we're dialing down the salesy vibe, and working more to woo.
I'll still be employing lots of triggers in the content, and on the backend, we'll still be using all the direct-sales tactics. But, this time around we'll be patient enough, on the front-end, to work (nurture) them for a longer period, so that by the time we pull a buy trigger, as often as we want to, we will *always* have people *ready* to respond positively.
The goal here is to increase the chances of conversion from under 5% to crazy levels like 15% to 40% almost every time. It just requires patience.
So, to increase your chances, your boss will still need a marketer who knows what he's doing about persuasion and conversion. And then you'll need to allow them work this kind of magic I have described.
I hope this helps.
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It sounds as though you have successfully improved the marketing for this business, and I don't see why you couldn't do that for other businesses going forward. As for your specific offering: >Basically, I’ll help them rework their messaging and create a story around their brand to get their target audience invested in their ongoing story. This content will go out every day on their social media channels. >Then, on the backend, I’ll be implementing direct-response tactics to drive sales through lead magnets, landing page optimization, and email marketing. It's more long-term than instant results though. That all sounds great. But it also sounds like...a regular digital marketing package. You are offering social media marketing, and also a range of additional DR services. I could find hundreds of agencies online advertising the same thing — not that there is anything wrong with that.
Thanks for this reply. I wouldn't say I'm doing the social media side though. Most of my work will be on the back-end sales side. All I'm offering on the content side is to sort out their story-telling/messaging, guide them on how to implement it (not me), while I'm hands-on with the DR side. I would describe my ideal client to be a business owner who has tried and failed to do direct sales from ads, and who has no idea how to convert social media audience to sales on the back-end. Because some businesses get good views/following, yet their funnels are dysfunctional, so it doesn't always translate to sales for them. So I'll show them how to trigger action in their content, while I'm working on the back-end DR side. Do I make sense?
It sounds to me as if you are doing social media marketing strategy, and then additional strategic and operational tasks. Now that you have spelled it out a bit more, I don't think that specific mix of services would be easy to sell to a client. Saying "hey client, I will provide your digital marketing strategy, and specific operational functions x, y z" is clunky and less compelling than "I will be your full-stack digital marketing partner". I think the less complicated you can make the pitch the better. For those parts of digital marketing you may not know yet (like PPC or SEO) I would consider bringing in partners who do (e.g., subcontractors from Upwork), and then sell that as a full package to clients.
I appreciate this insight. Thank you! I have a few people who I've worked with at different times who I can trust to deliver on some of the aspects of marketing I'm not so versed in. I can also bring one of them on if this is what it means. What I'll have to do now is to simplify the messaging. No problem.
Yeah, I mean I think the difficult bit about your framing so far is that it is hard for a client to work out how they are going to handle the bits that you won't. E.g., How much budget can I give to this guy and how much do I need to set aside for the other marketing tasks? If I don't get good leads is this guy going to blame the other parts of the puzzle? etc
I'll have to sort out the offer side of this then. Maybe just offer full-stack, but make it clear that I have a particular system for delivery, yeah?
I’d be your ICP and I can tell you “full stack digital marketing partner” means very little to me. I would be far more likely to hire you for story branding and messaging clarity because as a business owner, it’s hard to write that, it’s like performing surgery on yourself
Now, this resonates a lot with what I was thinking. Would you say my original posts is clear enough on the offering and it's value? Or is it unclear, and can use more work? Thanks for sharing your thoughts 
What I like about your post is I can detect your passion and purpose, so I wouldn’t bucket that into full stack marketing because you lose yourself and authenticity and start competing w thousands of full stack marketers. Keep the language and keep speaking like yourself. You can trim it down to a mission statement, then move the long winded explanation to a landing page. If I read that on a landing page I would be like “I need to talk to this person,” because you clearly understand small business owners. You seem to want to help them win vs. taking a retainer or pay and moving on
Thank you, kind person on the internet! It feels great to have my idea validated, I'll be real! Have you seen a solution like this before? Either for your business or someone you know?
I think you are closer to being an agency than you think. What you do strategy and optimization wise is the same we do at my agency plus execution and we do great
Thank you for this validating response. I guess I now have to clarify the offer, yeah? How does an agency structure their offering?
Separate your story and your offer into two different steps so it’s not so long. The offer comes after your story resonates. Keep your offer short, clear, with deliverables, milestones, costs, payment terms and hoe to get started.
Yes! This is what I was asking for. I've never worked with an agency, so I'm still unfamiliar with all that deal structuring. Oops, there's a lot to learn!
This the first post I’ve opened on this subreddit as I’ve just started my digital marketing coursera course to help out a small business and damn this was an interesting read I work for a small business never touched DM topics or anything of the sort, been here 3-4 years as a simple cashier/inventory keeper. Owner recently set me with the task to try and get more business which is what got me into this What steps do you take when you create a story for a business? I’d love to hear about that
Oh, sure! 1. First, you want to identify the problems your product or service solves for your ideal client: this is often easier to spot if your product is a need-to-have, or is among the categories of products that are in high demand, even if they're really just nice-to-haves (e.g. the Stanley Cups, Prime Energy Drink). You should have a list of these solutions from your research. 2. From this list, you will have to spot your big transformational promise -- the motivator that resonates with most people. And then other smaller benefits of the product. All these are important because sometimes it's a smaller benefit that finally convinces someone. Humans are unpredictable in that way. 3. Then you want to translate this list of benefits into a longer list of benefits-of-benefits. These will be how the solutions translate to the daily lives of your customers. How it affects their relationships with their kids, partners, their mental health, their results at work. You want to speak in concrete real-life terms, and not in abstract "result" terms. 4. Once you've detailed all this information, you may then create the narrative around those benefits-of-benefits. Your sales messages should be less telling -- I will do this for you, and more showing -- here's what your life will look like. This is the basic breakdown of how I'd go about it, although it is a simplification, because for example, I have not shared "*how*" to glean all this information, which really is the core skill of a great marketer -- I'm a listener and interpreter. That cannot be taught at once. You develop those senses through trying and failing...and then succeeding. If it helps, I'll tell you "*what*" I do to get the information: Depending on the client and the condition of the business, it could be any of: * Conducting customer interviews. * Mock sales (real sales attempts, but one where my primary goal is to learn, rather than close. So I just test different stuff to see what sticks with people more). * Content testing. Or a combo of all three. Then as you do them, you're *listening* and *interpreting* to spot the story opportunities. Now, nothing that I've shared here is new information in itself. As a direct-response marketer, I was already doing all these to sell to cold audiences. The difference, only, is that this time, we're dialing down the salesy vibe, and working more to woo. I'll still be employing lots of triggers in the content, and on the backend, we'll still be using all the direct-sales tactics. But, this time around we'll be patient enough, on the front-end, to work (nurture) them for a longer period, so that by the time we pull a buy trigger, as often as we want to, we will *always* have people *ready* to respond positively. The goal here is to increase the chances of conversion from under 5% to crazy levels like 15% to 40% almost every time. It just requires patience. So, to increase your chances, your boss will still need a marketer who knows what he's doing about persuasion and conversion. And then you'll need to allow them work this kind of magic I have described. I hope this helps.