When we talk about marketing professional services, we’re referring to a range of activities that include traditional marketing approaches, content marketing, and social media strategies.
1. Rules Of Marketing
Marketing your professional services firm is both an art and a science, and the industry is rapidly evolving along with the changes in the audience you’re trying to reach.
As a result, you need to be more aware of your clients’ needs and be transparent about your firm. Your clients have easy access to information about your company online, and they will use it to make decisions about whether to do business with you.
This means your marketing team needs to be just as active and aware as the consumers you’re targeting. This also means your marketing approach needs to be authentic, relevant and focused on the client. This is the key to successful modern marketing, also known as “inbound marketing.”
1.1 How you treat people with your marketing is a reflection of your brand.
If you want to avoid getting negative press for saying one thing and doing another, your marketing should emphasize that your business is meeting client needs and that you are actively following through on that unspoken promise.
To do this, you might start by creating a marketing campaign that includes:
- Responsive live-chat messaging that gets answers to your clients sooner.
- Upbeat client service emails – without canned generalizations – and modern signature etiquette.
- Curating careful content that takes an empathetic stance on an issue relating to your client – or no stance at all.
- Following up on every client review with a positive response and solution, showing your appreciation for their feedback and business. This one needs to be both organic and professional.
1.2 More than ever, you need to get to know your client.
It is important to understand what motivates your clients and what values they hold that influence their decisions regarding your marketing. This applies to not only their current behavior but also their future behavior.
To do this correctly, take the time when developing your strategies to ask yourself:
- What kind of deeply-ingrained pain points do my ideal clients have?
- Do I offer products, services, or other solutions that solve these problems?
- Which keywords are going to attract and engage clients and support my inbound marketing approach?
- What kind of in-depth research do I need when creating a marketing persona that accurately reflects my potential clients?
1.3 Give your clients results-oriented content.
Clients aren’t just interested in results, they also want to know how you achieved those results and if the process is ethical.
To provide results-oriented content, consider trying some of the following tips:
- Show your clients how your business’s products or services solve their problems in a way that acknowledges them as more than a dollar sign.
- Stay current without appearing opportunistic: your clients are smart, and they can tell when you’re being real with your sense of understanding or if you’re just milking the moment.
- Continue to provide well-researched content for your clients to drive organic growth, and update what isn’t working to keep your quality consistent.
2. Digital Marketing Rules
Investing resources in email, social media, and your website should be a priority for businesses that want to stay successful.
2.1 Provide quick insights
Clients have a very short attention span when it comes to websites. They can usually tell within seconds if the website has what they’re looking for. If not, they’ll move on. This is often referred to as “The Blink Test”. Because of this, infographics are one of the best ways to deliver value to clients.
This type of image is not only easy to scan, but it also provides the important information that your client needs. People process digital messages 60,000 times faster than text, which makes infographics one of the most effective ways of engaging with clients – especially on social media.
2.2 Make finding you easier
Overall, more than 60% of smartphone users have tried voice search services, with 55% of teenagers using them daily. The most popular voice search services include Google’s voice search, Alexa by Amazon, and Apple’s Siri.
Digital marketers need to focus on keyword research to ensure their business comes up in results when people use voice search services.
3. Email Marketing Rules
Email is still a powerful communication tool, especially considering that by 2023, 4.3 billion people are expected to have access to email.
Since so many people rely on email for communication, it’s important to know email marketing etiquette and how to do it effectively.
3.1 Make your call-to-action pop
If you want clients to take action, your call to action (CTA) must be clear and concise.
3.2 Focus on one product or service
If you offer too many products or services in one email, it will confuse the reader, and they will be overloaded with information. Having too many choices in an email can also make your call to action less effective.
3.3 Make sure it’s personalized
Make sure to include the client’s name in the body of the message, in addition to the greeting.
To engage clients at a deeper level, insert the client’s name in the middle of a sentence when talking about your product or service. If you’re using automation for your marketing emails, this is crucial to include.
3.4 Create clickable images
If you want to know when readers are clicking on internal links and images in your messages, you can try creating clickable images with a tracking URL. Another option is to embed video in your email and keep track of who clicks on it.
3.5 Use plenty of space
Instead of putting links or other content close together, space them out so that the message is easier to scan and the links are more clickable.
3.6 Keep it simple
Email messages with a lot of imagery, video, and other content might not be optimal for people with a slow internet connection. So, you should offer faster loading email options for people who prefer plain text.
3.7 Don’t forget the subject
When creating a subject line for an email, you should keep three things in mind: it should be interesting, make the recipient feel a sense of urgency, and be relevant to their needs.
4. Social Media Marketing Rules
Marketing on social media platforms is very important for the success of your business in 2022 and in the years to come. By looking at the statistics for each platform, you can get a good idea of which ones are most popular and where you should focus your marketing efforts.
4.1 Develop content your audience finds valuable
Your audience does not want to see posts about your products or services. They want to see stories about how your company can solve their pain points.
4.2 Focus on reputable content
Do you avoid difficult subjects? You should consider whether the content you are posting could damage your company’s reputation. If you are responding to comments, think about whether your responses could be seen as damaging. It is also important to consider whether you are avoiding any subjects that could be seen as difficult.
No matter if conversations on social media are happening in groups or one-on-one, they should be focused on engagement in a positive way.
5. Collaborate And Engage
Each time you engage with your audience on social media or elsewhere, aim for authenticity and transparency. See what conversations are happening in your network and think of ways your company can contribute valuable information.
6. Don’T Force Engagement
In today’s business climate, businesses need to interact with their clients on the clients’ terms. This means that businesses can’t just talk “at” their clients to try to get them to engage.
The companies that are succeeding are not just developing relationships but developing relationships that are targeted and focused on certain topics. This allows for more effective conversation between the company and its potential clients, which is the goal of inbound marketing.
7. Automate Within Reason
While it is a good idea to have some content prepared in advance to keep people interested, the platform you use should allow you to be flexible enough to change your content at a moment’s notice.
A profitable firm needs its marketing to be both genuine and trendy, stable and flexible. This dichotomy in business is what makes inbound marketing powerful for the growth of companies.
In a workplace where everyone is always busy, it is important to be efficient and convenient.
8. People Expect They Can Access What They Need When They Need It
The amount of information that can be found through a Google search is astounding. This creates a feeling among consumers that they should be able to find whatever they are looking for easily and quickly. If they cannot find the right information about your firm – such as what you do or who your target audience is – they will not waste their time trying to search for it. Increasing your visibility in search results is essential so that people can easily find relevant information about your business.
Companies nowadays usually don’t have a lot of extra employees because of recent productivity improvements, recessions, and competitive pressures. This means that the people you would interact with from a potential client company are probably very busy.
The reason more and more professionals tend to use quick, convenient, and asynchronous methods of communication and information-gathering is because it is more efficient in today’s fast-paced business world.
9. Professional Services Buyers Expect A Lot Of Interaction And Responsiveness
The new generation of consumers is very time-sensitive, so buyers of professional services expect to be able to email you and get a quick response. They want to be able to interact with you on social media and have their questions answered quickly.
This means that you should be responsive to emails and monitoring your presence on platforms such as LinkedIn or Twitter. It should also be easy for people to contact you through your website.
10. Professional Services Buyers Expect Transparency
As a professional services firm, your buyers should know your specialties, your experience, your team, and your way of doing business. They should know what they’re getting when they buy services from you. If you’re unclear about what you do, it will make them skeptical.
A long time ago, a company could lie about its experience to get into a market. But now, if a company does that, it will fail miserably. The internet makes it very easy for people to look into a company’s experience in great detail, so if a company is not completely honest, it will not be successful.
11. Free Education Is The Rule – Not The Exception
In today’s world, there is a lot of information that can be found online for free. People have become used to being able to learn about any topic they want by searching the internet, and they do not expect to have to pay for that information.
One of the new rules of marketing professional services is that you must educate potential clients. Creating free educational content is a great way to make your expertise more visible to people who need it.
12. Your Firm Must Live Out Your Messaging
The quality of your design should be reflected in everything you do on the web. Likewise, if you say that your firm is responsive and client-centered, your audiences will expect your actions to embody those promises.
If you want people to believe what you say about your company, you need to make sure your actions support your words. This is especially important now that there is so much information available about businesses. If you can show that your actions match your statements – for example, by having a good design or responding quickly to inquiries – you will make your company seem more trustworthy. If your words and actions don’t match, potential clients will be able to tell.
Buyers are not interested in being sold to or manipulated.
This is a new way of marketing where potential clients are engaged through social media and educational content. This will show them your areas of expertise and give them a reason to follow your company. As they engage more with your content, they will get to know you better. When they are ready to buy, many of them will come to you because they will already know what you do and how you do it.
13. Your Firm Must Be Easy To Find Online
If someone can’t find you online, they won’t think they just need to keep looking. They’ll think that there’s something wrong with you, like you’re not experienced or up-to-date enough to show up in search results.
If you’re not visible on social media and your website isn’t designed for search, it’s easy for potential buyers to write you off. Being present on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, where industry conversations are happening shows you’re credible and trustworthy. If you want buyers to invest their time in you, make sure you’re easy to find.
14. Your Firm Needs To Communicate With Buyers In The Way They Prefer
If you would rather communicate with potential clients over the phone, that is perfectly understandable. However, they might prefer to reach out via email, online forms, instant messaging, or social media. This could be due to familiarity or simply because it is more convenient for them. In any case, you should be prepared to correspond through the method of their choice as this is what they will expect.
0 comments