kraatz digital offers full-service marketing on eye level for consultancies and IT businesses – with a range of services similar to an agency, but implemented by one single expert.
To receive the same output quality, you might otherwise need to hire a full-blown agency or multiple solo freelancers. By hiring me, you'll get the same strong results, but save time and money on the way. Keep reading to find out more about the solutions I provide.
"Your trusted partner for X"
"Y years of expertise"
"Excellence in Z solutions"
A business with a clear value proposition will always stand out positively. Customers understand at first sight the services they can receive here – and often start considering immediately whether to request them.
That's called "mental availability". But mental availability needs a strong value proposition, and that's a weak point in many consultancies and IT businesses. They simply choose one of the cookie-cutter bits featured at the start of this text and carry on. And most of their competitors do the same.
This is a huge waste of potential. Sure, a boring value proposition doesn't hurt your business with existing customers because they already know the quality of your solutions first-hand. Their relationship with your business has moved far beyond simple mental availability.
But for new customers, it's a completely different thing. They don't know your business yet – and their first impression is made within seconds. Your business should nail that first impression. And how to better nail it than with a clear, unique, and memorable value proposition?
A value proposition is more than a marketing claim. It should embody the entire solution and service portfolio of your business, and how you benefit your customers, and it should be visible each step of the way.
Because of this, many businesses that lack a strong value proposition tend to also have deficits in brand positioning and marketing communications. And that makes total sense: If you can't articulate what your business is really about, then communicating anything will always feel like somewhat of a chore.
The first step towards a stronger value proposition is a stocktake: I'll take a thorough, holistic look at your current brand positioning and marketing comms.
This includes digital channels like your corporate website and social media channels, but also other assets that may give me valuable insights about your brand positioning – for example, sales battlecards and PowerPoint presentations.
From these assets, I'll be able to understand two things: First, what role your current value proposition plays in your business. Second, whether there's room for improvement.
In most cases, a refined value proposition doesn't mean starting all over again. Instead, it's more about refocusing, and often about putting into words what's already there, but has never been made explicit. I help you unearth these parts of your company DNA, and put them into words that will facilitate anything your marketing will communicate from then onwards.
Once the new value proposition is constructed, it'll be subjected to a round of reality checks with selected internal decision makers. Here, it's important to keep the circle small because too many opinions quickly lead to the new value proposition becoming diluted again, and not better than the old one.
Once a consensus has been reached, I'll develop a plan how you can implement the new value proposition across the customer touchpoints in your business – from the brand tagline to the battlecards of your sales teams.
I'll then hand this roadmap over to your internal teams – or support you with implementation myself, if you'd prefer. The result of a project like this will be a value proposition that strikes a strong interest with new customers, is closely aligned with the service portfolio of your business, differentiates you from competitors and can easily be used in a consistent manner across marketing and sales channels.
Depending on their size, many IT businesses and consultancies have one of the following two problems:
Problem 1 – larger companies They utilise a variety of marketing channels, but don't know which ones are the most effective.
Problem 2 – smaller companies They're focusing their marketing budgets on LinkedIn and Google Ads, but don't make an effort to actively develop these channels.
Both problems have the same cause: Intransparency. Larger companies don't know which channels yield the best results, smaller companies don't know which channels might be more effective.
This intransparency manifests in different ways across marketing channels. For example, many IT businesses are allocating marketing budgets for channel partners and resellers, without ever receiving definitive KPI from them.
Meanwhile, many consulting firms keep investing in LinkedIn for brand marketing and lead generation without questioning the ever increasing advertising costs on the platform.
As a result, in both cases, too much marketing budget is burned, which might otherwise have been used more effectively. But as long as one channel doesn't completely fail, this creeping decline often remains invisible in the day-to-day until it's too late. An outside perspective can help.
I'll bring that outside perspective into your business by examining each marketing channel by spend, data transparency, and KPI. This way, I'll establish a comprehensive image of which channels deliver the most value for your business.
In the next step, I'll expand this image with channels and ad formats which your business hasn't used yet, but which might be high-potential future solutions, based on industry benchmarks and personal experience.
The resulting map of your marketing channels will present a clear picture where to reduce spend and where to increase it – and which channels to retire and which to add.
As an optional step, I'll then guide your marketing team through the implementation phase of the findings and assist in launching new marketing activities on the most effective channels.
Most consultancies and IT companies know that paid digital marketing is important to win new customers. Meanwhile, less attention is often paid to organic digital marketing, even though it's an integral, and cost-efficient, part of the marketing mix.
Organic digital marketing includes a variety of things. One key driver is SEO – if your company's digital content has high visibility in both Google's search results and LLM's answers, you've unlocked an additional stream for new business without using any advertising budgets.
But since ChatGPT has launched, the rules have changed in SEO and GEO (i.e. SEO for LLMs). There are some new best practices, and previously successful tactics have lost significance. For example, if you've used a glossary to explain important industry terms as a SEO instrument – popular among consultancies – you may have noticed that traffic has dropped.
Another key driver is organic social media, which is a field of countless missed opportunities in many IT companies and consultancies. These businesses sit on a treasure trove of subject expertise but often fail to turn this expertise into effective marketing content.
A typical example: A company publishes a 20-page whitepaper on a highly relevant subject, written by an inhouse expert and polished by the marketing team. It's then embedded on the website behind a download gate, targeted by LinkedIn ads. And a post is made on the corporate website.
If that sounds like enough, it's not. You could squeeze so much more out of this one whitepaper. Create several LinkedIn slideshows based on different chapters. Have your CxO organically share them on LinkedIn and distribute them via the company page. Extract the key statements from the whitepaper and turn them into short form video, one 30-second video per statement. There's plenty of other options, but all have one thing in common: They extract much more value from one piece of content, without the necessity to start over from scratch.
Whether it's SEO or organic social media, the key driver for success is: Make the most out of what you have. I will help you achieve this.
If you want to step up your organic marketing, the first thing we'll tackle is your website. Starting with a SEO audit, I'll judge your content's suitability for search engines, both classic and LLM. Not just from a technical standpoint, but also from a customer-centric perspective.
This audit will provide two results: First, you'll better understand which levers you should pull for your website to become more visible. Second, I now know your content and can make informed recommendations how to make the most of it for organic social media.
Organic social media will be the key topic during my next step: to establish a concrete guide how you can extract the most from your existing content for social media, as effective as possible without becoming too repetitive. Some content – for instance, website articles, whitepapers and even PowerPoint presentations – can often be deconstructed in a way that provides social media content for weeks.
Finally, I'll provide a gameplan that helps you embed this "content-multipurposing" way of thinking in your business. If required, I'll also educate your marketing team so they can devise and create content more effectively after the project has concluded.
Depending on your company's maturity in this space, a content-focused project like this can easily be done step-by-step. For instance, if you've recently finished a SEO project, we can immediately begin with the organic social media part.
Successful marketing requires effective strategy. Effective strategy is based on market-oriented thought.
I'll help strengthen the market-orientation of your business and develop strategies to increase your marketing success.
Good strategy means nothing without tactical excellence. Marketing can only be successful if it really connects with customers.
I'll implement impactful operational marketing for your business: Digital marketing, SEO, and content marketing.