1. Who do you want to reach? Identify your ideal client or referral source including their demographics (age, profession, income, location, etc.). That’s who you want to target with your public speaking. Then research where and how to get in front of them. In other words, don’t pursue every speaking opportunity that comes along; be selective so you focus your efforts on the people that matter most to you.

2. What topic(s) should you discuss? There are 2 parts to choosing a topic(s). The first is to determine your audience’s interest. Again, do research about their concerns and pain points so your presentation focuses on those issues. The second part is deciding what you want to be known for (i.e., your niche or specialty). Typically, this is the area that would be best for your business. You should analyze what types of matter and clients are most profitable to your business currently or have the most potential for the future. Your topic should hit the sweet spot between what people want to hear about and the expertise you want to promote.

3. How will you market your program? If you want people to show up and listen, you need to market your program using a variety of methods including social media, email, publicity and possibly advertising. Also leverage employees to help promote the program through their networks. In addition, try to partner with others who can use their own channels to promote the program. You may want to bring in co-speakers and sponsors or pitch your idea to an organization/association that will market the webinar. For ideas on how to market your event, see Top Strategies For Marketing Your Speaking Event. Also keep in mind that even if people don’t attend your program, your marketing is still going to increase your visibility and can bring in business.

4. How will you follow up afterwards? It is rare to get business from one speaking event. You need additional touchpoints with those contacts in order to build a relationship that will eventually turn into business. Ideally, you should try to get the names and contact information of the attendees so you can follow up using phone, email, and social media. If you cannot get their information because someone else is in charge of registrations and will not provide it, you still want to engage in post-event marketing. Use social media and email to offer attendees and non-attendees helpful material from the program (a recording, outline, summary of key points, etc.). You can also provide related content over the course of months as a way to continue to nurture these leads. If you partnered with others, look to leverage the relationship in your post-event marketing.

5. What are your goals and how will you measure progress? Consider what you want to accomplish through public speaking. Yes, you ultimately want more business, but break that down into smaller concrete goals. For example, maybe you want to increase referral business. Obviously, every aspect of your plan needs to be geared towards this goal as discussed above. So, you want to target a specifically defined group of referral sources (ex. accountants) with a relevant topic and appropriately market the program to them before and after the program. To gauge your success, you can track various metrics such as growth in the number of referral sources (the number of individuals who could refer you business), calls from referral sources (new or existing ones), calls from prospects who were referred to you, referred clients who actually signed with you, and/or revenue generated for the firm from referrals.

However, note that establishing a direct ROI in marketing is difficult because the path to new business isn’t a straight one. A prospect may have gotten your name from a referral source who regularly hears you speak, but also gets your emails, follows you on social media, and sees you at networking events. Regardless of whether the source first met you at a speaking event, your public speaking is helping your credibility and visibility with referral sources and is contributing to your ROI. Marketing has a cumulative impact, helping you stay top of mind with referral sources in a positive way, so you get the referral opportunity.

6. What resources do you have or need? Public speaking can be time-consuming. What resources can you devote to booking, preparing for, and marketing those engagements? Do you have enough resources internally? What work can you outsource? Remember you need time/money/expertise to effectively implement your plan. Put in writing who will be responsible for each task and establish deadlines to keep everyone accountable.

Figuring out these issues in advance will help ensure the success of individual speaking engagements and your marketing as a whole. Ultimately, your speaking engagements should support and complement your other marketing and vice versa so it is most effective and generates the best return on investment.

If you need assistance with obtaining or leveraging your speaking engagements, contact us for a consultation.

A while back I spoke on the topic of The Vital Role of Marketing in Succession Planning and the main takeaway from that program is that no matter what stage your business is at, marketing is a long-term investment that can make your business more valuable in ways you probably never imagined. To really make the most of your marketing, consider how it can help you achieve these goals:

1. Increase referrals. Many professionals don’t invest in marketing because they feel that referrals are the best source of business. However, marketing helps you stay top of mind with your network of contacts. We all meet people every day and it can be hard to remember who does what. Also, we often know more than one person who does the same kind of work. If you want to be the one your contacts remember to refer, you must constantly keep in touch with them and networking is not enough to do that. You need other methods like email, social media, writing and speaking, public relations and other methods.

2. Develop a more valuable and diverse client base. One of the variations of the 80-20 rule says that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients. That can be dangerous to a business especially if you have an aging client base or a niche that may not be as lucrative anymore. You need to think about where your business is headed well in advance of those changes. If you wait until the clients are already dropping off, you will be playing catch up and spending a lot of money when you don’t have it coming in. Remember too that if your business seems to be stagnating, it will be less appealing to potential clients, employees, partners and buyers. Marketing can help you develop a more diverse and profitable client base that will enable you to continue growing into the future.

3. Brand your firm with a separate identity. You can also use marketing to develop a distinct “brand” for your firm. This is particularly important for small firms where the practice and business development are based on the efforts and reputation of 1 or 2 people. If the plan is to eventually sell the business, it won’t be as valuable to a buyer if the practice is closely linked to one individual and there is a risk that clients will leave once that person goes. Developing a firm brand helps to separate the key people from the business and make the business more attractive to others.

4. Improve employee recruitment, engagement and retention. Marketing can help you attract new employees and get them more involved with your business. Millennials in particular are looking for workplaces where they feel their ideas and contributions matter and there are opportunities for advancement. Your marketing can communicate to existing and prospective employees that you offer a workplace and culture that will appeal to them. Social media is an especially good way to humanize your business to employees. In addition, encourage employees to get involved in marketing the firm. Help them to help you by instructing them on how to grow their network and present themselves and the firm.

5. Attract potential partners/successors/buyers. Businesses that commit to marketing are demonstrating to the world that they are actively looking to grow. That’s important especially if you are nearing retirement and/or considering your exit strategy. Even the process of developing a marketing plan itself can make your firm more valuable. If you were thinking about buying into a business, wouldn’t you be pleased to see it had a written marketing plan that shows what the owners have been doing to market the business; that they have marketing policies and procedures set up and could demonstrate what successes they have had with marketing?

So, if you are a business owner who is forward-thinking, who’s grooming the next generation or looking for new opportunities or successors to continue the success of your business, you should invest in marketing.

Interested in the long-term growth of your business? Contact us for a 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.

1. Do focus on your unique value proposition. What sets you apart from your competition? How do you solve your clients’ problems? Your marketing needs to make it clear why clients should hire you over someone else.

2. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Too many professionals define their business and their skills broadly, afraid of turning away potential business. However, when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up with a generic message that gets lost among a sea of competitors. People want specialists, not generalists.

3. Do know your target audience. Take the time to identify your ideal client or referral source. Understand their demographics, interests, needs and pain points so you can craft a compelling marketing message and promote it in the places where you are likely to find them.

4. Don’t pitch to clients; educate them. Providing useful information that helps people with their problems is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and build trust and credibility with your audience. Writing and speaking helps you attract new attention and stay top of mind with the people you already know.

5. Do use a mix of marketing channels. You get the best results from engaging in several different types of marketing, such as networking, writing, speaking, email, social media, public relations, search engine optimization, etc. The more ways you get your name out, the more likely someone is to see and remember you.

6. Don’t neglect social media. At a minimum, use it for market intelligence to stay abreast of business, industry, competitor and client issues. However, it is most valuable as a tool for increasing visibility and demonstrating expertise. Every time you share information you have the ability to reach new audiences as well as stay top of mind with your network of contacts.

7. Do test marketing tactics and measure results. Marketing involves trial and error. There will always be some things that work better than others. It’s important to test your marketing tactics. However, make sure you put in a real effort to make it work and give it a reasonable amount of time to see whether it is making a difference. Then as you gauge your results, you can make adjustments as needed.

8. Don’t expect an immediate ROI. Give it time. Marketing is a long-term investment where many activities build on each other to get you results. Just like going to one networking event isn’t likely to get you a client; one speaking engagement or mention in the press won’t bring in business by itself.

9. Do have a written marketing plan and budget. Write down what you want to accomplish with your marketing. Who are you targeting and why? What are your specific goals and how will you go about achieving them? Then set aside time and money to get it done. Even if you’re doing most of the work in-house, you need to understand what resources will be needed – whether you have the bandwidth and the skills to implement your plan and what trade-offs may be needed. (Time/money spent on one thing means time/money away from something else.)

10. Don’t start with a big marketing initiative. If you haven’t done a lot of marketing in the past, then begin with a smaller scale campaign so you get a sense of what will be needed. A lot of firms have ambitious plans, but then other obligations get in the way or they realize they don’t have the resources and it all starts to fall apart. What’s worse is that everyone gets discouraged and it’s hard to get going again because it seems easier to abandon the whole thing instead of trying to scale back.

Whether you are new to marketing or have been doing it for years, apply these dos and don’ts to your marketing to improve your results.

If you need help with your marketing, contact us.

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.

With 86% of B2B marketers using content marketing, you would think making a business case for investing in it would be easy. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

Content marketing is a long-term strategy and successful professional service firms realize that returns are measured in more than just dollars. What are some of the benefits these firms are realizing? Here are 5 success stories to inspire your own investment in content marketing.

1.  InsideOut – 388% more leads

The global provider of leadership, management and corporate training began focusing on content marketing last year. The company developed visually appealing “bite-sized” chunks of information, including slide decks, articles and videos. It put special emphasis on featuring material from the company’s thought leaders to give its content a unique perspective. Content was pushed out via email, social media, website and third party publications and press releases.

Results:

Email distribution of the content showed the most significant results. Compared to its sales-based emails, content-based emails had a 20% higher click-through rate, 87% lower opt-out rate and generated 388% more leads.

Takeaways:

• Your content has to be compelling and unique to stand-out from the crush of information your readers receive.
• Make the information clear and simple to digest. Focus on giving the reader the most critical points.
• Even if you’re getting solid results with your current approach, content marketing can bring better results.

2.  Fisher & Phillips – 51K page views

The law firm was part of a 2 month pilot project with LinkedIn’s publishing platform. Before being selected for the pilot, the firm was already actively creating and pushing out content and had embraced online content as a core part of its marketing strategies. The firm promoted the posts via its social media channels and encouraged attorneys to do the same through their individual accounts.

Results:

During the pilot, its 25 posts generated 51K page views, 5.5K interactions (likes, shares, etc.) and 380 followers. LinkedIn pulse channels picked up nearly half the posts. It was well received by potential clients. Within the firm, more attorneys are now publishing and sharing content.

Takeaways:

• Use LinkedIn as a platform for thought leadership and to build your network and credibility. It provides a great way to share knowledge and reach others who are interested in or need your expertise.
• Be consistent to build readership. You’re more likely to be noticed if you’re regularly putting out informative content.
• Introduce new hires to the publishing platform and encourage them to write and share content.

3.  Medix Dental – 37% open rates

The IT company, which provides technology solutions for dental offices, wanted to maintain a close relationship with clients as the company grew. It decided to commit to creating a monthly newsletter that would improve client retention and brand awareness. The goal was to make the newsletter friendly, personable and interesting and get clients reading it.  An important element of the newsletter was sharing relevant industry news and knowledge. Distribution was to clients and subscribers who signed up for it.

Results:

The company doubled its recipient list by promoting sign-ups via social media. The open rate for emails was 36.9%, which is 10% higher than the professional services industry average and got click-through rates of 10% compared to the industry average of 3.21%. Client feedback was also positive.

Takeaways:

• Clients appreciate a more personable conversational tone. Don’t sound like you’re announcing or selling them something.
• Focus on getting subscribers to read the content and on staying top of mind. You don’t want to get too focused on high click-through rates.
• Offering your industry knowledge for free shows you’re knowledgeable and helpful and when clients need someone, they will think of you.

4.  Crowe Horwath – $250K in revenue

The public accounting and consulting firm won the 2013 Killer Content Marketing Lead Nurturing Award for its content program targeting C-suite leaders at financial institutions over $1 billion in assets. The company developed 48 pieces of content in four different topic areas, including executive briefs, case studies, infographics, checklists, Q&As, and a video. The focus was on helping marketers to identify key prospects and track and nurture them until they were ready to make a purchase.

Results:

The campaign engaged almost 800 contacts with a 70% open rate and 2 engagements worth $250,000 in revenue.

Takeaways:

• Understand why your clients need your services, who makes the buying decisions and when, and what your competition is offering. You want to target the right audience with the right content at the right time.
• Start by looking at all the data you already have on what people are interested in reading and when, where and how they read.
• Use a variety of content formats. Different formats appeal to different readers.

5.  Heron Financial Group – 40% growth rate

Over the last few years, the RIA firm has been expanding its social media presence and making it an integral part of its marketing strategy. Social media drives traffic to its website and amplifies its content marketing efforts. Each piece of content is leveraged to reach a broader audience. For example, a 15 minute appearance on Bloomberg was shared via social media to thousands of followers resulting in 50 customer leads.

Results:

Heron has doubled its assets under management and has been growing in the 40% range since adding social media to its marketing strategy. Prior to its efforts, the firm’s growth was in single digits. The firm attributes its growth to multiple factors, but credits social media with being “a force multiplier” for a good marketing plan.

Takeaways:

• Dedicate at least 30-60 minutes a week posting content on social media platforms and use the top 4 social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
• Ask yourself if you would want to see your content on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. If not, don’t post it.
• Social media makes a good marketing plan better, but it won’t fix a bad marketing plan.

Hopefully these case studies will inspire you to look at the short and long-term benefits of content marketing to support your own investment. For more examples of metrics to help measure the success of your own initiatives, see Understanding ROI. Want more case studies? Here’s a good compilation from B2B Marketing Experiences blog.

1. Pay attention to design.

Not everyone has a budget for a sophisticated design, but even small changes can make a difference in readability. Lots of dense text will discourage reading. Adding white space, using bullets, changing fonts and including subheadings can help. You can also box off and highlight statistics, interesting quotes and takeaways from the text. You want to make sure readers can quickly scan it if they are in a hurry. It’s especially good to add visual elements to break up the text like charts, graphs, infographics, and photos. Studies show that 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Remember to think about design in each format that someone will read the newsletter. Firms often create a PDF version of the newsletter for mailing or downloading as well as versions for email and web.

2. Distribute it through multiple channels.

There are lots of options here including regular mail, email, website, blog and social media channels. I know some people don’t want to print and mail copies anymore, but firms still have clients who like print and printed materials may get noticed over emails. Remember to get individual members of the firm involved in helping to distribute the content through their own networks. If you went to the trouble of creating the newsletter, you should be making sure your audience sees it. Different people have different format preferences. As with advertising, it also helps for people to see the same content a few times before they pay attention to it.

3. Include calls-to-action tailored to the distribution channel.

Entice your readers with some additional action. If you’re distributing the content via social media, you want to push readers to sign up for your newsletter so you get their contact information. If you emailed them, encourage them to download a whitepaper or sign up for an event or webinar. The idea is to continue to interact with your audience and build the relationship.

4. Test headlines and subject lines.

It’s hard to get attention when everyone is being bombarded with content. You only have a few seconds to get a reader’s attention. Make headlines and subject lines interesting and keep track of what types of language get better results.

5. Slice it up.

The newsletter can be pushed out in whole, but then repurposed and promoted as individual “chunks” of information for different social media channels. Articles can be shortened or rewritten for a blog or LinkedIn post. Even those charts and infographics can be separately marketed.

6. Reuse and repackage it.

Periodically you should go through your old content to look for opportunities to get extra use out of it. If you have good relevant content, find ways to update and promote it again. You can also pull together a bunch of related articles that were previously published. Revise them where needed with new developments, takeaways, lessons learned, etc. and repackage it as a multi-part series, a whitepaper or ebook. Looking at the content this way also may give you ideas for additional articles you could write in future months to help fill in gaps. It also may be helpful in identifying topics for webinars and live events. Those articles can then be distributed to attendees as supplementary materials.

7. Enhance it.  

It’s beneficial for design reasons to add visual elements like charts and infographics, but even more importantly it’s great for content purposes. It grabs attention quickly and gives the reader some useful content at a glance. A great visual also entices people to read the text that explains the picture. Some other ways to enhance the content include adding in checklists, FAQs, case studies, interviews, surveys and video segments. You can also curate content that your audience would be interested in – that is, give them suggestions for other great resources (beside you) they would find helpful on the topic.

Your client newsletter can be an excellent vehicle for content marketing. Start with great content and then make the most of it.