Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

A Rising Tide Won't Float All Boats

Over the last couple of years, the advice business has been on a tear. Many consulting firms are enjoying double-digit revenue growth and client demand is showing no signs of cooling off, at least in the near term.

Isn't this a problem we want to have?

But a surging market, like a falling one, has its challenges. In a previous growth spurt, some firms became mere order takers and let their investments in marketing wither. Landing new work was as simple as it ever gets in the consulting business. When the tide eventually turned and clients reined in spending, those order takers were left with little new work in the pipeline.

No matter how strong demand seems, do not let up on your marketing efforts. Instead, consider ratcheting up your marketing initiatives to help you gain new, profitable clients and prevail over competitors.

For some consulting firms, a strong market encourages risk-taking. So don't be surprised to see new, well-financed competitors entering your market. These new entrants may not last long, but they can wreak havoc in the short term.

Making a strong marketing push, particularly if it's focused on growing your important client relationships, is a winning strategy to protect your market as demand grows.

Keep out of Reach of Children

Standing on tiptoes, I barely reached the bottle of spot remover on the top shelf. I nudged the bottle forward and it fell into my hands, with its warning label displayed prominently, "Keep out of Reach of Children." Our own messages should be so unambiguous.

Maybe businesses, and consultants, could learn a thing or two from warning label writers. Instead of gumming up our writing with meaningless generalities, we should aim to be as clear as they are.

Naturally, most business communications can’t be boiled down to six words on a warning label. But we can avoid language like this: "We help clients identify, design, implement, and evaluate the business structure and processes needed to optimize internal efficiencies and leverage external opportunities."

You might as well just go with, "We help clients do stuff better," which says about as little.

Hopefully, your writing doesn’t reach this level of banality, but isn’t there an opportunity to clarify, even just a little bit, almost everything we write?

The Trouble with Testimonials

I once read a story about a professional speaker who relied solely on testimonials to market his business. The story may be a myth, but it goes like this.

Whenever this professional speaker had a qualified client lead, he would place a large stack of his testimonials in a box and mail them to his prospective client. The selling power of those testimonials was so strong that the speaker didn't do anything else to bring in new clients, or so the story goes.

I admit that I read testimonials in marketing communications, but it's a rare occasion that a testimonial moves me to buy. And in some cases, a testimonial makes me run in the other direction. Mostly everyone agrees, though, that testimonials are an important part of a marketing program, and consultants use them a lot.

The trouble with testimonials is that they all sound pretty much the same. And most of them are too short to say anything of substance, so writers often resort to platitudes. With a little effort, it's easy to put more punch in your testimonials.

To begin with, make sure the author of your testimonial is fully identified. It always seems a little flaky to me when the author of a testimonial is someone like Sandra J., CFO of a leading financial services organization. If you can't disclose the identity of your endorser, the testimonial probably won't help you much. If you want to add more weight to an endorser's opinion, be sure that person is willing to be contacted by your prospective clients, with advance notice, of course.

And please resist the urge to publish testimonials from your own employees. Few things are less client-focused than having your consultants wax on about their state of bliss at the opportunity to serve the firm's clients.

You'll rarely--if ever--read a bad testimonial, so  look for ways to make yours stand out.

Interesting...but Useless

The direct mail piece sitting in my mailbox offered me a free "Lawn Analysis." All I had to do was call the toll-free number for this well-known garden supply company, and request the service.

Too bad I don't have a lawn anymore.

That marketer wasted money trying to educate me on a problem I don't have. And according to a recent study of 1,000 managers in the US and the UK, there's lots of other useless information jamming the circuits in our clients' businesses. In fact, more than 50 percent of managers say most of the business information they receive has no value.

That trend hasn't prevented consultants from continuing to crank out articles, books, presentations, special reports, and white papers. The logic is that market visibility follows when you provide valuable information.

But many clients might say that one consultant's perception of value is like someone else's free lawn analysis. So, before you print that report or send that article, ask yourself--what is the relevance, currency, and value of this content for the client? What will the client actually do with the information? Don't publish or send anything until you can answer those questions.

Rules for Rainmakers

Ask ten successful consultants how they land profitable work, and you're likely to get ten different answers. You'll find some consultants who sell with apparent ease and others who sweat every sales encounter.

You'll also find some who, in spite of their best efforts, just can't sell. What separates the rainmakers from everyone else?

In our recent issue of The Guerrilla Consultant, we discuss why client insight will always trump sales techniques when consultants try to close sales, and how rainmakers use this simple rule to land new business.

Read the article.

Webcast: The Art of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

Every consultant knows that balancing client service commitments with marketing efforts is essential to the health of a consulting business.

But the demands of client service often overwhelm a consultant’s best intentions to actively market the business, which can result in dwindling prospects for future client work. And consultants just entering the industry often find that generating a stream of sales leads is a hit and miss process, with fewer hits than misses.

In our upcoming webcast, The Art of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, we'll discuss market-tested strategies and tactics to help consultants grow their market presence and sales whether they’re veteran consultants or just getting started.

The session will cover:

• Why specialists are winning handily in today's market over "generalists"
• How to fit everything you need for your marketing plan on one page
• How to select target markets and a relevant market positioning strategy for the highest probability of success
• Why market differentiators for consultants have changed and what’s working today
• How to decide which marketing tactics and investments are right for your business and which ones are a waste
• How to effectively allocate your scarcest resources—time and money—to your marketing initiatives.

At the end of the session, you’ll have a framework and the marketing tools and techniques you need to attract high-value prospective clients to your practice.

The webcast is scheduled for Monday, October 22, at 1pm ET.

Click to learn more or register.