Branding Momentum with Veronica Di Polo

How do you do Black Friday when you run a service business? If you're a consultant, designer, coach, or event planner, Black Friday offers work differently for you. When you sell a product, you can discount it and sell more. When you sell a service, you still have to do the work. In this episode of Branding Momentum, I look at Black Friday ideas for service businesses, what you could offer, who you could sell it to, and how to make sure those extra bookings actually make you money. WHAT'S INSIDE THIS EPISODE What makes Black Friday different when you sell a service rather than a product. Which service businesses can genuinely benefit from a seasonal promotion. The difference between introducing a new service and discounting what you already sell. Who to sell your offer to and how that changes your promotion strategy. The financial question to ask before you launch any Black Friday promotion. TIMESTAMPS / CHAPTERS [Insert chapters automatically generated in Descript after editing.] WORK WITH ME I'm Veronica Di Polo, a marketing and messaging consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help experienced service business owners communicate their services so potential clients understand what they offer and why they should hire them. https://www.veronicadipolo.com/private-consulting GET V'S EMAILS Marketing observations and ideas I don't always share on social media. https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/vdaily LISTEN TO BRANDING MOMENTUM https://www.veronicadipolo.com/podcast QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE How can a service business do Black Friday? You don't need to discount your main service. A contained offer with a specific outcome, a limited number of slots, or an added benefit for booking early can work without reducing the price of what you already sell. What can consultants, designers, coaches and event planners offer for Black Friday? A strategy session, a defined design package, or a new service you want to introduce to a different type of client. The offer should be something you can deliver without disrupting your existing workload. How do you know if a Black Friday promotion will actually make you money? Getting more bookings doesn't automatically mean making more money. You need to consider what you'll earn after delivering the work, and whether you're discounting something a client would have bought at full price anyway.

Leads not converting into clients? In this episode of the Branding Momentum podcast with Veronica Di Polo, Getting Leads but Not Getting Clients? looks at why potential clients show interest but never hire you, and why changing your prices, website or marketing might be the wrong response. If people ask about your services, request proposals and then disappear, getting more leads might not solve the problem. Are you attracting the wrong people, losing potential clients during sales conversations, or relying on marketing methods that no longer bring in enough business? You'll hear why an unanswered proposal doesn't automatically mean your price is too high, and why networking and referrals may not be enough. WHAT'S INSIDE THIS EPISODE Why getting leads and getting clients are two different problems What you actually know when someone goes quiet after your proposal How to recognize whether your problem is attracting leads or converting them Why referrals and networking may not bring clients quickly enough When to reconsider advertising, direct outreach, or something you've already tried TIMESTAMPS / CHAPTERS 00:00 Stop Panic Changes 01:13 Leads Not Converting 02:07 Proposal Ghosting Mystery 03:12 Not Enough Interest 04:23 It Didnt Work Excuse 05:45 Diagnose The Real Leak 06:53 Next Steps And Free Resource   START HERE Want potential clients to understand the value of your expertise before they contact you? Start with my free 3-day sprint. https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/aisprint WORK WITH ME Want to rethink how you're attracting potential clients and communicating the value of your services? Private consulting with Veronica Di Polo: https://www.veronicadipolo.com/private-consulting GET V'S EMAILS More observations about marketing, messaging, and what makes people choose one service provider over another. https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/vdaily LISTEN TO BRANDING MOMENTUM More episodes for experienced service business owners: https://www.veronicadipolo.com/podcast FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Why am I getting leads but not clients? People may be interested in your services without being ready or willing to hire you. The important distinction is whether you're attracting unsuitable leads, losing people during sales conversations, or misunderstanding why they didn't move forward. What should I do when potential clients stop responding after a proposal? Don't immediately assume your prices are too high. Review what the client needed, what was discussed, how you presented your offer, and whether you actually know why they stopped responding. How can a service business find clients beyond referrals and networking? Advertising a specific service, reaching out directly to suitable businesses, or approaching different types of clients can create additional opportunities. The episode explores why it's worth reconsidering methods you've previously dismissed.

Can you build a personal brand when you own multiple businesses or have experience in different industries? Do you really need to choose one thing to be known for? I've worked in marketing, events, fashion and image consulting, and I'm also involved in a vertical garden business. Depending on when someone met me, they probably know me for something completely different. But here's what personal branding advice often overlooks. Experience in different industries can actually be the reason someone chooses to work with you. In this episode of Branding Momentum with Veronica Di Polo, I'm talking about personal brand positioning, what happens when you've built more than one business, and why your professional experience doesn't have to fit into one neat description. WHAT'S INSIDE THIS EPISODE Why being known for more than one thing doesn't automatically create a personal branding problem. How organizing events and marketing events require two different ways of thinking. What my experience in fashion and image consulting brings to my marketing work today. Why you don't need to explain every business you've owned when someone asks what you do. How your experience across different industries can give someone a specific reason to recommend or hire you. TIMESTAMPS / CHAPTERS 00:00 More Than One Label 00:17 Meet Veronica And The Podcast 01:10 The Multi Career Dilemma 03:01 Events Production Vs Marketing 04:12 Fashion Eye Meets Marketing 06:03 Stop Hiding Your Experience 07:14 Networking Without Oversharing 08:30 Position Your Unique Value 09:15 Bring It All Together 10:27 Final Thoughts And Subscribe WORK WITH ME I'm Veronica Di Polo, a marketing and messaging consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help experienced service business owners explain what they do, why it matters and why potential clients should choose them. https://www.veronicadipolo.com/private-consulting  GET V'S EMAILS Marketing observations and ideas I don't always share on social media. https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/vdaily LISTEN TO BRANDING MOMENTUM https://www.veronicadipolo.com/podcast QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE Can you build a personal brand around multiple businesses? Yes. You can own different businesses and still have a recognizable personal brand. You don't have to promote every business in every conversation. What matters is making the relevant experience useful to the person you're speaking with. How do you position yourself professionally when you have experience in different industries? Lead with the work you're primarily offering today. Bring in your experience from other industries when it helps someone understand why you're particularly suited to their business. Do you need to choose one niche to build a successful personal brand? Not necessarily. Experience across different industries can help you understand problems others might miss. The important thing is showing how that experience relates to the work someone might hire you for.

Your sales funnel could be working perfectly and still be making it harder for someone to hire you. If you've been running a service business for years, you've probably added things to your sales process along the way. A booking system, an application, a discovery call, an email sequence. Each one made sense when you added it. But does the whole process still make sense for the services you're selling today? In this episode of Branding Momentum with Veronica Di Polo, I look at why a sales funnel that worked for your business years ago might now be working against you, and why copying a lead funnel designed for a different type of business can create problems you don't even notice. WHAT'S INSIDE THIS EPISODE A real service business where the process of becoming a client had become unnecessarily complicated. Why service providers adopt sales funnels designed for course creators, even when their clients hire them differently. How having too little structure can make potential clients just as frustrated as having too many steps. Why booking a straightforward service and hiring a consultant for a €20,000 project require different sales processes. The question worth asking when your business has evolved but your sales funnel hasn't. TIMESTAMPS / CHAPTERS 00:00 Funnel Too Hard to Buy 01:19 How Complexity Creeps In 02:36 Stop Copying Creator Funnels 04:18 Too Little Process Too 05:25 Match Process to Purchase 06:41 Simpler for Whom 07:06 Update for Today's Business 08:31 Rebuild It From Scratch 09:04 Weekly Marketing Insights WORK WITH ME I'm Veronica Di Polo, a marketing and messaging consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help experienced service business owners communicate their services so potential clients understand what they offer and why they should hire them. https://www.veronicadipolo.com/ GET V'S EMAILS Marketing observations and ideas I don't always share on social media. https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/vdaily LISTEN TO BRANDING MOMENTUM https://www.veronicadipolo.com/podcast QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE Why isn't my sales funnel working? Your forms, emails and booking tools may all work, but the process can still make hiring you unnecessarily complicated. A sales funnel that suited your business years ago may no longer fit your services or clients today. How do you fix a leaky lead funnel? Before adding more follow-up emails or automation, consider whether people are being asked to complete steps they don't need. The problem may be the way the sales process was designed, rather than a missing piece of technology. Do service businesses need complicated sales funnels? Not necessarily. A photographer offering a clearly priced session may only need a straightforward booking process. A consultant considering a €20,000 project may need several conversations and qualification steps. The right sales funnel depends on what is being sold and what both sides need to know before agreeing to work together. Is a simpler sales funnel always better? No. Removing steps can create confusion if potential clients don't understand what happens next. The goal isn't to have the fewest steps. It's to have a process that makes sense for the service and the people hiring you.

Bad service, wasted time, doing things just to be polite... there are things we used to shrug off that we simply don't want to put up with anymore. In this episode of The Flip with KC & V, we get into what we tolerate less as we get older, whether "I don't want to" is finally a good enough reason to say no, and why some things are much harder to let go of than they used to be. Then we flip it: have our standards really gone up, or has our patience gone down? And what if we're the difficult ones now? KC and V have been friends long enough to disagree, call each other out, and occasionally realize they were looking at the same thing completely differently. Meet KC Kenneth Miller is a restaurateur and restaurant consultant with more than ten years of experience. He founded a semi-industrial bakery and sold his share after three years, then moved into college counseling, first in his mother's business and now independently. Outside of work, KC loves travel, great food and wine, time with friends and, above all, his two children. You can find KC at: Instagram: @globaluniversityalliance 📍 I'm Veronica Di Polo, a marketing consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help service-based businesses communicate in a way that makes them easier to choose. I help service businesses get more of the right people choosing them. If your leads only show up when things feel urgent, start here: https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/aisprint 🎧 Enjoyed the episode? Screenshot and tag @veronicadipolo @brandingmomentum on IG or @brandingmomentum on TikTok. ✨ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps the right people find the show. 📬 Want V's Emails (the stuff I won't post)? https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/vdaily

A potential client hears your name. Instead of just Googling you, they ask AI what you specialize in, whether you're right for their business, or how you compare with someone else. And AI tries to answer. Research from Semrush found that among B2B professionals already using AI at work, 66% regularly use it to research vendors and solutions, with agencies and service providers the most researched category. So there's a new question worth asking: What conclusion does AI reach about your business from everything it can find? In this episode of Branding Momentum, I look at how AI is becoming part of the way potential clients research service providers, what happens when your website, content, profiles and older information don't quite add up, and a simple way to see what AI understands about your business before a potential client does. 📍 I'm Veronica Di Polo, marketing consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help service-based businesses communicate in a way that makes them easier to choose. If your leads only show up when things feel urgent, start here: https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/aisprint 🎧 Enjoyed the episode? Screenshot and tag @veronicadipolo @brandingmomentum on IG or @brandingmomentum on TikTok. ✨ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps the right people find the show. 📬 Want V's Emails (the stuff I won't post)? https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/vdaily

I recommend people all the time. And I've noticed something strange: plenty of those recommendations never turn into a conversation. That doesn't necessarily mean the referral failed. The person may have asked three other people, already had someone in mind, or started comparing everyone they were given. And that's where this gets interesting. Research from Hinge found that more than half of professional-services buyers had ruled out someone who was referred to them before ever speaking with them. Which raises a much better question than "How do I get more referrals?" What happens after someone recommends you? In this episode of Branding Momentum, I look at the part of referral marketing you can't see, what a potential client finds after hearing your name, what they're comparing it against, and the simple test I'd do before trying to get more people to recommend you. 📍 I'm Veronica Di Polo, marketing consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help service-based businesses communicate in a way that makes them easier to choose. If your leads only show up when things feel urgent, start here: https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/aisprint 🎧 Enjoyed the episode? Screenshot and tag @veronicadipolo (https://www.instagram.com/veronicadipolo) or @brandingmomentum (https://www.instagram.com/brandingmomentum) on IG, or @brandingmomentum on TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@brandingmomentum). ✨ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps the right people find the show. 📬 Want V's Emails (the stuff I won't post)? https://veronicadipolo.mykajabi.com/vdaily

Introducing The Flip with KC & V, a new monthly series inside Branding Momentum. Why do some friendships just work? Veronica Di Polo and Kenneth Miller talk about adult friendships, why some people instantly click, how friendship changes as we get older, staying close when you don't always agree, and the friendships we eventually outgrow. One question, two perspectives... let's see where we end up. Meet KC Kenneth Miller is a successful restaurateur and restaurant consultant with more than ten years of experience. He also started a semi-industrial bakery, selling his interest in the business after three years. Kenneth later began counseling students when his mother needed help with her growing college counseling business, eventually branching out independently. Outside of work, KC loves traveling, great food and wine, spending time with friends, and, most importantly, his two children. You can find KC at: Instagram: @globaluniversityalliance 📍 I'm Veronica Di Polo, marketing consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help service-based businesses communicate in a way that makes them easier to choose. If your leads only show up when things feel urgent, start here: Start here 🎧 Enjoyed the episode? Screenshot and tag @veronicadipolo @brandingmomentum on IG or @brandingmomentum on TikTok. ✨ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps the right people find the show. 📬 Want V's Emails (the stuff I won't post)? Get V's Emails  

Introducing The Flip with KC & V, a new monthly series inside Branding Momentum. Why do some friendships just work? Veronica Di Polo and Kenneth Miller talk about adult friendships, why some people instantly click, how friendship changes as we get older, staying close when you don't always agree, and the friendships we eventually outgrow. One question, two perspectives... let's see where we end up. Meet KC Kenneth Miller is a successful restaurateur and restaurant consultant with more than ten years of experience. He also started a semi-industrial bakery, selling his interest in the business after three years. Kenneth later began counseling students when his mother needed help with her growing college counseling business, eventually branching out independently. Outside of work, KC loves traveling, great food and wine, spending time with friends, and, most importantly, his two children. You can find KC at: Instagram: @globaluniversityalliance 📍 I'm Veronica Di Polo, marketing consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help service-based businesses communicate in a way that makes them easier to choose. If your leads only show up when things feel urgent, start here: Start here 🎧 Enjoyed the episode? Screenshot and tag @veronicadipolo @brandingmomentum on IG or @brandingmomentum on TikTok. ✨ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps the right people find the show. 📬 Want V's Emails (the stuff I won't post)? Get V's Emails

Branding Momentum is back. But I'm not interested in returning with exactly the same podcast I left behind. This summer a few things happened that I wasn't expecting. One of them took me back to Venezuela in a way I didn't plan and ended up creating some of the most interesting content I've made in a while. If you want the full story, I documented it on YouTube: Watch my Venezuela story on YouTube But the reason it matters here is what it reminded me about the difference between strategic content and content that just needs to exist. There's also someone new coming to the podcast. Kenneth Miller, or KC depending on which version of him you know, has been one of my closest friends since I was 16. We talk about business, but also food, travel, relationships, friendships, culture, and the things happening in the world that make absolutely no sense to either of us. Some of those conversations belong here. The first one is about friendship. Specifically, why some friendships actually work. And considering we've managed to stay friends for this long, I think we have some evidence. Branding Momentum isn't changing into something else. The marketing, messaging, and service business conversations are still here. But I'm giving it a little more room this season. If you've been here for years, you'll still recognize the show. If this is your first episode, you've arrived at a good time. 📍 I'm Veronica Di Polo, marketing consultant based in Moraira, Spain. I help service-based businesses communicate in a way that makes them easier to choose. _______________________ If your leads only show up when things feel urgent, start here: Start here  🎧 Enjoyed the episode? Screenshot and tag @veronicadipolo @brandingmomentum on IG or on TikTok @brandingmomentum tiktok ✨ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps the right people find the show. 📬 Want V's Emails, the stuff I won't post? Get V's Emails