Most founders think that doing marketing means making something new; a new social post to write from scratch, a new idea to ponder and a new task to bolt onto a week that is already full.
It’s no surprise that marketing keeps sliding down the list. Anything that feels like extra work, especially when it’s non-billable, will always lose out to what is going to pay the bills today.
But there is one thing I wish more business owners understood. You are already producing marketing material all day long, you just don’t know how to make use of it.
Every client call, every finished project, every email where you explain something clearly. You are just letting most of it evaporate the moment it happens.
As a result, the job isn’t to create more content from scratch, it’s to make use of the content you’re already creating.
At Edward & James this is one of the first things we help clients see, because it takes marketing off the ‘separate job’ pile and turns it into a by-product of the work they are already doing. And once you start looking, the raw material is everywhere.
The questions clients ask you
Every question a client asks you is a piece of content waiting to happen.
For example, if one client is asking how your fees are structured, or whether they really need a particular service, or what happens if their circumstances change, then a hundred prospects are wondering the same thing and never asking. Answering that question in public does the selling for you.
The next time you find yourself typing out a thoughtful reply to a client, or explaining the same thing for the tenth time in a meeting, stop and notice it. That explanation is a post, a short article or an addition to the FAQ on your website. You have already done the hard part, which is knowing the answer.
The work you finish
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. You complete good work all the time and then move straight on to the next thing. That finished project is a case study you never wrote.
It does not need to be a polished, designed document. The bones are simple: what the client came to you with, what you did, and what changed as a result. A few honest sentences about a real problem you solved will do more to win trust than any amount of clever copy about how great you are.
Get into the habit of pausing at the end of a project, while it is still fresh, and jotting down those three things. Future you, staring at a blank page and trying to remember a job from eight months ago, will be very grateful.
The emails you write
Some of the best writing you do never reaches more than one person.
You have almost certainly sent a client an email that explained something clearly, reassured them at a stressful moment or laid out their options in plain language. That email was a piece of marketing that reached an audience of one. Strip out the personal details and it becomes a newsletter, a post or a page on your site that reaches everyone.
The same goes for the advice you give away in conversation. If you find yourself saying something genuinely useful, that is a signal. Useful is exactly what your marketing is supposed to be.
One moment, several pieces
Once you start capturing these everyday moments, you get more out of each one than you might expect.
A single good client question can become a short post today, a section of a longer article next month and a talking point when you are next asked what you do. You are not repeating yourself. You are meeting different people in different places with the same useful idea. Noticing one thing well is far more efficient than inventing five things badly.
A word on confidentiality
For those of us working in finance, legal and professional services, there is an obvious and important caveat. You cannot go publishing client details, however good the story.
The fix is straightforward. Anonymise. Talk about the type of client and the type of problem rather than naming names: ‘A trust client came to us worried about a change in their circumstances’ tells the story without identifying anyone. And when a project is genuinely worth featuring in full, simply ask the client for permission first.
Most are happy to say yes, particularly if you make them look good.
Handled with a bit of care, confidentiality is not a barrier to this at all. It just shapes how you tell the story.
The takeaway
The founders who market consistently are not the ones with more time or more ideas. They are the ones who have stopped treating marketing as separate from the work, and started treating the work as the source.
As you go back to your week, keep these three things in mind:
- You do not need to make more. You simply need to take more notes.
- Capture the moment when it happens, because it evaporates fast.
- Your questions, your finished projects and your best emails are marketing already. You just have to point them outwards.
Nothing here asks you to add a single task to your day. It simply asks you to stop letting good material go to waste.
James Le Gallez (main picture) is the Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Edward & James, a qualified marketing consultancy helping professional service providers make confident decisions, execute effectively and grow with intent. Working across finance, legal and beyond, Edward & James helps professional service businesses get to the strategic heart of their work, whether it be the first week of their company or the thousandth.
