You have to get lucky or get Intelligent at Marketing to be in the Consultancy Business.
What does Intelligent Marketing for Consultancy look like?
This comes from hard earned experience; there is an easy way and a hard way to implement a consultancy marketing strategy. Fundamentally the difference is between Pull Marketing and Push Marketing.
Push Marketing is where you’re actively pushing your message to potential Consultancy Clients such as picking up a yellow pages and cold calling.
Pull Marketing or Attraction Marketing for Consultancy is all about understanding your potential clients and creating opportunities so that your clients find you then building on that relationship.
It is also about selling something people want rather than just what they need.
For example:
Just about all businesses (in my humble opinion) need to implement Intelligent Cost Reduction initiatives, however just because a business Needs something doesn't mean that they will want it. For all sorts of reasons (including personal, political, non-ethical), time and time again I have seen small and large businesses walk away from guaranteed savings because they don't want to do it “ a few of these have subsequently entered into administration (gone bankrupt) all the while not wanting to implement strategies that could have helped save the business.
You can spend a lot of money and time focussing on clients that need but don't want your services or you can take a step back and focus on clients that want and need your services - which do you think is easier (and cheaper)?!!
Understanding how much a client is worth is critical to understanding how much to spend on consultancy marketing. A common problem I see a lot is that the concept of marketing investment is not properly understood.
For example:
The chosen method for attracting clients when I first started out was cold calling (ok I've since moved on!!)
But importantly I tracked all historic call numbers. Cold calling cost (@£200 per day- outsourced), to number of appointments (Approximately 1 per day), to number of successful engagements (1 in 5 1st appointments) and figured out that it cost £1,000 of telemarketing per successful client. As a contract was worth on average over £20,000 - this was only 5% of the average income per client!
However the team I was working with at the time didn't quite see it like this, they had a fixed amount to spend per month of £1000...between 4 people - that's £250 each per month. After 2 months we had 2 clients (as predicted) where as we needed 8 and still no-one wanted to increase the spend in marketing!!! No great surprise that this was one of my shortest working relationships ever!
Don't fall into this trap - understand your numbers, understand how much a client is worth, then spend accordingly.
Spend what you need to spend to find new clients - based on what you need to achieve - so long as you have tested it first!
If you don’t have a good handle on your numbers then perhaps you shouldn't be spending anything! Small Consultancy Businesses today cannot afford to spend money on Marketing if the effects of that Marketing are unknown.
Track everything, test different marketing methods on a smaller scale then once you understand the numbers scale up the investment. Take risks - sure - but don't gamble.
Make sure though that you start small first test at least 4-5 different marketing approaches then scale up the best 2-3. Try and get into the habit of testing new marketing methodologies every month.
· Tele Seminars (audio conferences)
· Webinars for potential clients
· Social Media for contacts and Testimonials
· Free Events
· Pay Per Click
· Referrals
· Advertising
· Search Engine Optimisation
· Seminars for potential and existing clients
· Conferences
· Articles about Your Consultancy
· E-book
· Conduct Surveys
· Direct Mail
· Email Campaigns
· Cold Calling
· Warm Calling
· Direct Sales
· Indirect sales
· PR
· Affiliate marketing or Joint Ventures
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