1. Review and refine your marketing. Take stock of your marketing efforts year to date. What strategies have worked, and which ones have fallen short? Set aside time to evaluate your progress towards annual goals or establish them if you haven’t already. Prepare a written marketing plan if you don’t have one to serve as your roadmap.

2. Build relationships through one-on-one meetings. Summer offers an ideal time to meet with contacts. The purpose is to nurture relationships so don’t go into a meeting to ask for referrals. Find out how you can help your contact; that person will naturally reciprocate. But be prepared to say what you may want from the person.

3. Update, clean and consolidate your contact database. Use the summer months to work on your contact database, ensuring your data is complete, consistent and up-to-date. Segment contacts by relevant categories to better target your marketing. Leverage interns or part-time staff to assist with this task.

4. Develop evergreen content. Invest time in creating content that stays relevant and provides value to your audience for a long time. This evergreen content can then be used during busier periods in the year when creating fresh material is challenging.

5. Repurpose existing content. Don’t overlook the treasure trove of content you’ve already created. Repurpose blog posts, articles, presentations and videos to breathe new life into them. This also helps extend your reach and reinforce your key messages.

6. Go to summer networking events. While some networking groups may take a hiatus, others host informal gatherings during the summer months. Take advantage of these casual events to expand your network and forge new connections. The diverse attendee mix can lead to unexpected opportunities.

7. Invest in continued learning. Summer provides an excellent opportunity to invest in your professional development. Read marketing or business-related books, subscribe to relevant newsletters, or explore industry blogs for fresh insights and inspiration to fuel your business growth.

8. Host educational programs (in person or online). Take advantage of the quieter summer months to host programs for your clients or target audience. These sessions not only provide value to participants but also position your firm as a thought leader in the field. Even better, collaborate with a complementary business on a joint program to expand your audience.

9. Showcase your firm culture. Summer is a great time to share your firm’s culture by posting about team outings, company picnics or volunteer activities on social media platforms. This helps humanize your firm with potential clients and prospective employees.

10. Refresh your website and online presence. Use the summer months to give your website and online presence a refresh. Update content, optimize for search engines, and ensure that your branding is consistent across all digital platforms. A visually appealing and user-friendly website can make a significant impact on attracting and retaining clients.

11. Conduct client surveys or feedback sessions. Seek feedback from your clients through surveys or one-on-one conversations to gauge satisfaction levels and identify areas for improvement. Summer’s slower pace can provide an opportunity for more in-depth discussions. Use these insights to refine your services and tailor your marketing strategies accordingly.

12. Support community events or causes. Get involved in community events or charitable causes that align with your firm’s values. Sponsor local festivals, fundraisers or volunteer initiatives to demonstrate your commitment to making a positive impact beyond your business. Engaging with the community fosters goodwill and strengthens your firm’s reputation.

Marketing has a cumulative impact and requires consistency throughout the year. Keep up your marketing efforts by incorporating these strategies during the summer.

Need help with your marketing? Contact us for a free consultation.

1. Update your contact list. People change jobs regularly or information is entered incorrectly and we never notice. If your data is wrong, it’s useless because your marketing won’t reach those individuals. Interns can take care of tasks like researching bounced emails and gaps in your data. They can also compare your social media and email contacts to find individuals that are missing from either list.

2. Create and send an email newsletter. A great way to stay top of mind with contacts is to send out an email newsletter every month. An intern may be able to help with creating an email template if you don’t have one, gathering materials that could be included in the newsletter, formatting the newsletter, and/or sending the finished product to your contacts and then reporting the results to you.

3. Post to social media. An intern shouldn’t decide what should be posted on your behalf but may offer suggestions. In addition, they can assist with the mechanics of scheduling posts, finding accompanying images, recording video, designing ads and monitoring and reporting on the results of your social media marketing.

4. Send social media invitations. If you’re not good about sending invitations to new connections, an intern may help. Further, an intern can assist with inviting your personal contacts to follow your business page on social media. In most cases, you want to have a separate presence for your business, but it means making an extra effort to get people to follow your business rather than your personal page.

5. Identify speaking and writing opportunities. It’s time-consuming to pitch yourself as a speaker or get an article published. An intern can research organizations and publications where you may want to appear; find out the requirements; and prepare, send and follow up on your proposals.

6. Write/proofread marketing copy. It can be useful to have a fresh perspective on the promotional materials you prepare. If your intern is a good writer, have them draft copy, provide feedback on your materials or proofread.

7. Get reviews from happy clients and referral sources. Reviews carry a lot of weight. Even when prospects have been referred to you, they will still google you and check reviews. If you don’t regularly ask for reviews, have an intern help send out requests for a review on Google and/or your social media pages.

8. Run marketing reports. Marketing involves significant trial and error. An intern can run social media, email, phone, google website and advertising reports to help determine what activities and campaigns are working better than others so you can make adjustments.

9. Design marketing materials. If you are fortunate to have an intern with graphic art and design abilities, make effective use of it. They can help spruce up your ads, flyers, invitations, PowerPoint presentations, social media posts, blog posts, website and other materials.

10. Update your website. It’s easy to forget to update your website, but it looks bad when a prospect visits the site and sees that all the “News” and activities are a few years old. Interns can review the site and add information on anything that has occurred in the intervening period, such as articles, speaking engagements, press, awards, community involvement, etc. In addition, the copyright information on the site should be updated.

This is not a complete list but provides suggestions for how you can leverage your marketing intern to promote your firm. Remember to give your intern adequate training and supervision so you both get substantial value out of this experience.

If you need assistance with your marketing, including training interns or other staff, contact us. We offer social media and email marketing training as well as writing and consulting services.

Problem #1. Relying on a generic marketing message. Many firms use the same overused language to describe what they do, who they help and how they’re “different.” The problem isn’t lack of creativity; it’s being afraid of standing out. Many professionals feel more comfortable saying the same things as their peers; they just want to claim to do it better. However, they offer no proof that they are actually better so it’s just the same old marketing copy.

If you want to improve your results, you have to focus on marketing your differentiators. Identify exactly why someone should hire or refer you over your competitors, what unique value you bring to the relationship and how you help. Be specific and make sure you have proof, such as positive reviews, success stories, case studies, activities like writing and speaking, media quotes, awards, relevant group memberships and other evidence that you are who and what you say you are.

Problem #2. Too much selling and not enough helping. Yes, promote your differentiators, but rather than telling people how great you are, prove it with helpful content. I believe in the 80-20 rule – 20% of the time you can be self-promotional but 80% of the time provide useful information that helps people with their problems. This will demonstrate your expertise and build trust and credibility with your audience. It will help you both attract new attention and stay top of mind with the people you already know. However, in developing content, focus on what your audience cares about – their interests and concerns. Also, remember to repurpose your content so you get the maximum return on your investment. For more on repurposing, see No Time For Content Marketing? 7 Tips For Successfully Repurposing Your Content Part 1 and Part 2.

Problem #3. Neglecting your total online presence. There is more to your online presence than your website or your social media pages. Prospects and referral sources will google you even if they got referred to you and they will compare you to others. First, google yourself and your firm to find out what people will see. Then google some of your competitors. Once you determine where you are lacking, focus on making improvements like adding useful content to your website, becoming more active on social media, stepping up your writing and speaking for third parties, getting more online reviews, increasing backlinks to your website, claiming your Google business listing and employing tactics to improve your search engine ranking.

Problem #4. Having a narrow view of social media. You want to take full advantage of social media especially since it is more cost-effective than many other forms of marketing. It’s a great way to stay top of mind with contacts and get found by new people. So, post a few times a week. Also, interact with others by responding to comments to your posts; liking, commenting on and sharing other people’s posts; sending personal messages to your contacts; and leaving a good review for your contacts on their social media pages. Also, use social media for market intelligence. Look at what your competitors, clients, industry are doing and saying. This can help you better target your message and where you promote it.

Problem #5. Overlooking your follow-up process. The best marketing in the world means nothing if you don’t follow up properly. Document your process for follow-up and track your activities and results to determine if you could be doing better. Explore technology that may help. For example, a CRM (customer relationship management) system may be useful especially if you have multiple employees involved in business development and account management. It provides a more robust database for tracking and managing your contacts and can interface with other programs. Email marketing automation can also help you nurture leads more effectively and with less manual work.

Finally, pay attention to everyone a prospect or referral source may come into contact with on the phone or in person. Poor interactions can easily lose you business, while good ones can help seal the deal. Customer service or sales training may be a good investment for you or your employees to give everyone the people skills they need.

Problem #6. Failing to have a written marketing plan. Before you leap into any significant marketing, create a written marketing plan. This is your roadmap for achieving your goals and putting it all in writing keeps you focused and accountable over the long term so you aren’t distracted and you prioritize your efforts where they count. The worst thing you can do is engage in random acts of marketing where you do a little of this and that without a strategy or thinking about whether it is the best use of your time and money. For more information, read How to Create an Effective Marketing Plan.

Want help with your own marketing, contact us for consultation.

1. Clients are putting less weight on referrals. According to the report, while 59% of clients asked someone they know for a referral, 57% searched on their own through some other means (online search, website, etc.); and 16% did both. However, younger generations (Gen Z and Millennials) gave more weight to a lawyer’s website, online reviews, brand, and image and less weight to referrals as compared to Gen X and Boomers.

Marketing/sales takeaway: It is important to invest significantly in online marketing particularly if you want to attract Millennials and Gen Z clients. Even if that isn’t your client base now, it will be in a few years and you need to be preparing for it. Anyone can search online and find your competitors and make comparisons. While a great online presence may not guarantee you get the business, a lackluster presence could lose you the business as that prospect decides to call another firm before yours.

2. Clients are shopping around and rejecting firms based on first impressions. Regardless of how clients look for a lawyer, 44% believe they need to talk to more than one lawyer to find one that’s right for them, and 57% of those who have shopped for a lawyer say they contacted more than one law firm. Of those who contacted multiple firms, many clients report rejecting firms based on the poor responses of the law firm in their initial contact.

Marketing/sales takeaway: Your first interactions with potential clients are crucial. While marketing might lead someone to you, you could be losing them when they talk to or email your assistant, your associate, or yes, even you personally. The study had some sad statistics about lawyer responsiveness and client service experience. Clio did an email survey of 1000 lawyers and then secretly called and emailed 500 of those firms. Guess what? While the lawyers thought they were doing a good job responding, the reality was very different. Take a close look at how those initial phone calls and emails are really being handled within your firm. Consider sales and customer service training for all lawyers and staff who communicate with clients. All the marketing in the world won’t fix problems like failing to respond in a timely manner or providing vague answers to questions.

3. Clients want concrete information to make their decision. The consumers surveyed indicated that they want to know that a lawyer has handled the type of problem they have and has clients like them. In addition, they are interested in specific information on what to expect from their case, how to proceed and the total cost for their case. If they can’t get answers to their questions, they move on to the next lawyer.

Marketing/sales takeaway. Some of this information can be highlighted on your website and in your marketing (social media, email, writing, public speaking, etc.) Your materials should be clear and concise. Avoid overbroad and generic descriptions of your practice. Showcase your niche expertise instead of trying to be all things to all people. Also remember to provide information in terms your audience will understand. Don’t give them “lawyer speak.” Research your target audience – what they care about, what drives their decision-making and their level of knowledge about the problem they are facing. Tailor your materials to those matters so clients want to talk to you further. In addition, as noted above, all lawyers and staff should be trained to respond to inquiries, so they do not turn off prospective clients.

4. Lack of confidence in running the business is a problem. The survey showed that while 92% of lawyers are very confident in their skills as a lawyer, only 53% are confident in running the business side of their firm. Those feelings have an impact on their level of engagement in some key business aspects of their firm. For example, 70% of lawyers who are more confident in their business skills indicated spending time on marketing compared to only 49% of those not confident in their business skills.

Marketing/sales takeaway. When people are not confident in doing something, they tend to avoid it or minimize its importance. However, lawyers cannot grow their practice if they don’t invest resources in marketing and business development. If you fall into this category, you must actively seek out more opportunities to get education and training in business skills, but particularly in marketing and business development. In addition, bring in outside expertise to help guide your efforts. No one can be an expert in everything. Part of running a business effectively is understanding what you must handle yourself and what to delegate.

If you are a professional trying to grow your business, what are you doing to counteract these trends?

For help with your marketing, contact us for a free consultation.

Their efforts can help expand your reach, encourage them to feel vested in the success of the firm and build their skills so they become better employees and future partners. They may be resistant, but there are ways to help get past that.

1. Offer lots of choices. Some people enjoy networking at parties, but that’s not the only option. There are many ways to market. They can get involved in an organization – professional association, charity, or business group. For those who don’t feel comfortable socializing, they can write articles or blog posts, do research, help with social media or other tasks.

2. Give them training. No one is born knowing how to market effectively. Depending on the firm’s needs, bring in trainers or send employees to seminars so they can learn how to network, improve their public speaking, use social media, manage their time, and develop other necessary skills. Remember to also educate them on the firm’s brand message so everyone is consistent about what to communicate about the firm.

3. Provide support. In addition to training, firms can maximize employee efforts in other ways such as by creating marketing materials, researching potential prospects or networking opportunities, making appointments, maintaining an updated contact database and other tasks. There are many marketing-related activities that should be delegated to marketing and administrative staff or outsourced to those better able to handle those tasks effectively. That leaves employees free to focus on their specific contribution to marketing.

4. Develop individual marketing plans. Employees should have their own marketing plan which outlines who they want to target with their marketing, what specific steps they will take and establishes specific goals (ex. number of events they will attend, follow up meetings, articles written, etc.). This helps ensure employees are strategic and focused in their marketing efforts.

5. Ask for their feedback and ideas. Employees often are the ones fielding daily questions from clients and may be able to offer insights about what prospects want to know about. This feedback can help you develop the right content and messaging. In addition, some of your employees may have experience with marketing from prior positions and can make suggestions for improvements or be a source for new ideas. Asking for their thoughts also helps them feel engaged in the firm and that their contributions matter.

6. Use a carrot and stick approach. It’s always best to find ways to incentivize employees to want to market. Public praise for their efforts, touting their successes and monetary recognition (salary increase, bonus, gift cards, etc.) certainly help. You want to show them they are truly valued, and you’re not just dumping work on them that they don’t want. On the other hand, if marketing isn’t a requirement at the firm, many employees will opt-out. This means there must be a consequence for not participating. Make it a part of each employee’s annual review and tie it to compensation and promotions.

Everyone doesn’t have to be a rainmaker, but they can contribute to bringing in new business and spreading your marketing message. Use these tips to help encourage their efforts and give them the tools to succeed.

1. Revisit your marketing efforts year-to-date. What have you done to market your business this year? What has worked and what hasn’t? Are you on track to meet your goals for the year? If you did not set goals, set them now. You should have a written marketing plan documenting what you want to achieve and how you will get there.

2. Set up one-on-one meetings. Summer is a good time to check in with your contacts. Follow up is an essential part of business development. Go out to lunch or coffee. Find out what is going on with your contacts but be prepared. What do you want to accomplish with this meeting? If you are hoping to get some business leads, information or introductions, think ahead of time about how you can help them with their business. It’s better to give than to receive when you are trying to build relationships.

3. Work on your contact database. Too many businesses have incomplete information on their contacts and house them in multiple databases (e.g., Outlook, billing system, email platform, etc.). That makes it much harder to keep information up-to-date and to leverage it to improve marketing. During the summer have someone work on cleaning up your data – checking that information is up-to-date in all places, looking up missing information, reviewing bounces, segmenting contacts, etc. If you don’t have a list of contacts that you can use for email marketing, now is the time to create one. Email is an important and very cost-effective way to stay in touch with your contacts. Leverage staff if they have the time to do this work or use interns or students who can work on an hourly basis at a lower cost than staff.

4. Create evergreen content that you can use for your marketing in busy months. Evergreen content is content that doesn’t go out of date quickly. Develop blog posts, articles, video or other content that you can use months or even years from now, so you have material you can promote when you don’t have time to create something new.

5. Leverage content you already have. While you are creating content to carry you through the busy times of year, you don’t want to worry about also writing new stuff to market during the summer. Look at what you already have. There is probably information that you can repurpose relatively easily. Also keep in mind that for social media and email purposes, you can repromote evergreen content you wrote previously. Take a blog post or article you wrote a while ago and share it again. Some people may not have seen it the first time or they may not remember it well.

6. Attend summer networking events. During the summer, many groups go on hiatus, but not all of them. Those that have events often schedule more casual networking which can offer the opportunity to network in a relaxed environment. These summer parties may bring out different people than ordinarily attend the regular networking events, so you also meet new people.

7. Do some reading. No one intuitively knows how to successfully build a business. Pick 1 or 2 marketing or business-related books or check out relevant magazines, newsletters or blogs to give you motivation and inspiration to grow your business.

Get started today with these tips to improve your marketing.

Interested in more advice? Contact us for a free 30-minute consultation.

1. Have a plan. The best way to ensure you are spending money effectively is to first develop a marketing plan that outlines your marketing message, who you want to target and how you are going to reach them.

The plan should also lay out your strategic and financial goals. Are you looking to grow revenue? Raise your profile and increase brand awareness? Move into new markets? Be very specific about your goals. For example, it’s not enough to say you want to make more money. How much do you want to grow? Where do you want to grow (e.g. focus on a certain part of your business or up-selling existing clients)?

2. Understand where you are now. In building your budget for next year, first review your marketing expenses for this year. Analyze exactly where your money went and evaluate each expense to determine whether to increase, decrease or eliminate the expense. If you are new to marketing, you will need to do research to figure out the various costs for different types of marketing.

Next, you should look at your business. Are you satisfied with how you are doing? What is working best/worst in your business? Also consider future trends (short-term and long-term) in your business, industry, client base and the overall economy. Often firms will continue with the same budget year after year. They are hesitant to try anything new and they don’t make changes to reflect their business reality, trends or goals. Marketing takes time to work so you don’t want to wait until your business is in a downturn to start marketing.

3. Track and review your results. Part of understanding where you are now involves looking at real metrics rather than assuming you know what is going on. There is rarely a straight line between a marketing expense and actual new business. Instead, most business comes after multiple and consistent touch points with the prospect or referral source (ex. networking, meetings, emails, calls, social media, etc.). However, you should still look at metrics. For example, track calls, social media engagement, website and email analytics and other activities. Know the process for how you get new business – how many calls turn into a consult, how many become clients, how did the person hear about you, how did you meet the referral source, and did the prospect look at your website or social media before they called you. Focus on the metrics most important to your business, marketing plan and goals.

4. Determine your real costs. As mentioned above, write down where you are spending your money now as a starting point. However, you want to make sure you have factored in all the costs, including planning, implementation and monitoring your marketing. Also look at time spent on marketing. For example, if you have someone within the firm who is handling marketing along with other responsibilities (ex. office manager, receptionist, etc.), you should allocate a portion of the salary to marketing. In addition, you should consider how time is spent by you and others at the firm on marketing. Can some of those activities be delegated? Remember time is money so if someone else can handle a task more effectively (because of their skill level) or less expensively, then it may make sense to delegate. Just because you didn’t write out a check for marketing, doesn’t mean it didn’t cost you anything.

5. Figure out what you want to spend. A common question firms ask is how much to spend on marketing. That depends on where you are starting from, where you want to get to and how much time you have to accomplish your goals. If you’ve done little marketing in the past or you are now moving into new markets and you want to grow significantly in a short period of time, that’s very different than if you have been steadily marketing your firm and now want to focus on incrementally increasing your revenue in your core business. Firms often want to know what others spend. You can easily use Google to find out average marketing expenditures in your industry, but that tells you nothing about how successful the average firm was with their marketing. Marketing should be viewed as an investment in your business, not a cost. You must figure out what the investment is worth to you. If you are fearful, then start small and gradually increase your investment over time.

6. Have some unallocated money set aside. Over the course of the year, you may want to make changes to your budget. Maybe you want to take advantage of some unexpected opportunities or you need to counteract some negative business developments. It’s good to have some extra money in the budget for these possibilities.

There is no optimal budget for firms. If you want to be successful, start your year off right with a budget that is tailored to your needs and goals.

If you need help creating a marketing plan or budget, contact us for a consultation.

Here are a few more takeaways from the event:

Karen Tenenbaum, Esq., CPA, LL.M – Consistently look for ways to build your credibility and stay top of mind, such as through writing, speaking and public relations. Also, be organized about your marketing. Know who your target audience is and create a “bingo chart” that lays out what you will be doing to market your practice every month to reach those audiences.

Ken Cerini, CPA, CFP, DABFA – Become an expert in a specific niche area of accounting. There are less accountants specializing in auto dealerships or food services than there are accountants providing tax services. You have a higher likelihood of succeeding against 10 competitors than 1,000. Create specialized materials, write articles, start a blog, attend trade association meetings and engage in other activities that will get you in front of your target audience.

Sharyn O’Mara – If you want to get publicity, then get to know a couple of reporters in your local area or who focus on your area of expertise. You want to build the relationship beforehand, so the reporter thinks of you when they need an expert for a quote or will respond to you when you make a pitch. Whether it’s in the PR or another context, try to be a connector. It’s not about getting business; it’s about creating strong relationships with people.

Allison W. Rosenzweig, Esq. – When you are marketing yourself, be genuine. Don’t always be “selling.” Instead you should focus on building a strong reputation. How you are perceived by others is crucial. Also look for ways to stay visible whether in person, online or in the press.

Matthew E. Rappaport, Esq., LL.M. – Figure out what sets you apart from your competitors and make sure you can clearly articulate the differentiating factors in a few sentences. Also, don’t hesitate to give away some value in the form of knowledge or expertise for free to establish relationships.

Edie Reinhardt – Don’t engage in random acts of marketing. Have a written marketing plan where you think through who you want to target, how you will reach them and what you want to accomplish. You can keep it simple especially if you haven’t done a lot of marketing in the past. Start with a small targeted plan and then as you build on your successes you can expand your efforts. Also, don’t be afraid to test different tactics. A lot of marketing is trial and error.

Thanks to my fellow panelists and the conference organizers.

There were many great takeaways from the program, but as a marketing consultant to professional service firms, I think these are some of the key ones:

1. Understand your purpose and positioning. It is crucial for firms to have a clear message about what work they do, and more importantly, why that’s relevant to clients. They need to specifically express how their services help clients and offer unique value. Many firms just list their services without talking about how they solve client’s problems and in what ways they are different from competitors.

2. Analyze how you make money. Too few firms actually look at their business critically. Often they don’t know which types of matters are the most profitable. They may know which ones generate the most revenue, but they don’t take the extra step of looking at their profitability. How much did they actually collect after write-offs or discounts? Are they properly accounting for all time and costs related to a matter? Different types of work may be more or less profitable. Of course, it may be worth keeping less lucrative work for other business reasons, but firms should analyze their rationale.

3. Clients are not equally valuable. Many firms also don’t look at who are their best and worst clients. Again they should look at profitability, but also look at other factors, such as how long do clients take to pay, do they repeatedly request that you write off time or reduce bills, are they unreasonably demanding or difficult, what is the potential to upsell them additional services, and are they likely to provide referrals? Often firms will market to or keep “C list” clients because they fear losing the revenue, instead of getting rid of these clients and freeing up time to market to better clients. By the same token, it’s important to make sure the best clients are especially satisfied and happy and you maximize that relationship for additional gain.

4. Determine where your growth should come from. Is it from going into new markets, providing new services, getting more business from existing clients, pricing, or another way? In order to identify where is the best growth potential, firms need to do research to understand the marketplace, including their target audiences, competitors and economic or industry trends. Once a direction is chosen, firms need to devise appropriate strategies for how best to market and position themselves.

5. Have a plan. It is essential to have a strategic marketing plan which lays out the resources allocated to the plan, what tactics will be used and how success will be measured. Too many growth initiatives fail because of poor planning and execution. There is no magic bullet which will lead to business growth. It requires a serious commitment and a lot of work.

6. Invest what it’s worth to you. Firms frequently ask how much to spend on marketing. The real question is how much is it worth to acquire a new client. It’s important to analyze the average lifetime value of a client – not just in terms of direct revenue from them, but also what other business may come because of them (referrals, reputational benefits, future growth potential, etc.). Then consider how much it makes sense to invest in gaining new clients based on the goals for the business. Of course, it is also necessary to consider how to spend that money – that is, which types of marketing are most likely to generate a return on investment.

As Pete Hayes stated, “many businesses want to grow, but if they want to succeed they need to focus on the fundamentals: 1) Gaining insight on their firm, clients and competitors; 2) Thinking strategically about their markets, offerings and position; and 3) Executing their plan with the proper resources, tactics and metrics.”

Thanks to Pete Hayes and The Alternative Board for a great program.

Interested in using marketing to grow your business? Contact us for a consultation.

1. Stop using canned content. Too many professional service firms buy canned newsletters, blogs and other content to use for their marketing. Although some of the material may be well-written, it is always generic. You want content that is targeted to your clients’ problems and interests; provides your unique insights; and isn’t the same stuff that’s on a hundred other websites. If you need help, get a writer/editor to provide custom content.

2. Provide quality over quantity. It’s crucial to stay active and visible with your contacts through social media, email and other marketing channels. However, quality is a key component. When you share information, make sure it’s high-quality. We are all suffering from information overload. Don’t add to it with more junk.

3. Give free advice. Offer content that is genuinely practical and useful. It will help you build trust and credibility and establish strong relationships. Don’t be afraid of giving too much information away for free. Clients will still hire you because they don’t have the time or skill to do it themselves. Remember having a recipe doesn’t make you a chef.

4. Curate and comment on other people’s content. Writing original content isn’t always necessary. You can provide value by identifying and sharing good content written by others. You are still demonstrating your expertise and interest in helping others. However, when possible, add your own comment instead of just hitting a “like” or “share” button.

5. Use social media as a listening tool. Social media is a great way to learn more about your clients, prospects, industry and competitors. You can use it for research and to stay informed about their concerns and interests. This will help you better target your message and your audience. For those uncomfortable with sharing on social media, the best part is that you don’t have to say a word. Just listen.

6. Set up google alerts. These are a great, easy and free way to monitor what’s going on with particular individuals, companies, topics, etc. Just create a search and have results show up in your inbox daily.

7. Focus on a niche. You will stand out from the competition and get better quality leads if you develop a practice niche. Clients want specialists, not generalists. According to studies by Hinge Research Institute and CEG Worldwide, the top growth firms are those that focus their practice.

8. Use multiple marketing channels. You will get better results if you utilize several marketing channels. Email, website, blog, social media, print, advertising, public relations are all possibilities. You may not want to use all of them every time, but you should incorporate several into your regular marketing.

9. Start small and scale up. Too many marketing initiatives fail because firms were overly ambitious, couldn’t put together the appropriate resources and then gave up. Begin with one project and be conservative in establishing deadlines and goals. You’re more likely to be successful if you gradually build up your marketing.

10. Develop a written marketing plan and budget. Write down what you are going to do, who you are going to target and what you want to achieve. Then set aside time and money to make sure it gets done. Be specific and consider every task, who will do it and what the real cost is to your budget. Remember time is money.

We hope these tips will help you succeed with your marketing in 2017.

Need help with your marketing? Contact us for a free consultation.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!