Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

The Top Ways Clients Buy

For most clients, finding the right consultant is a three-step process: Identify potential firms, assess the choices, and decide who to hire. An online survey of 220 professional services buyers conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit reveals how clients are using a combination of referrals, online resources, and one-on-one interactions to help decide which provider they want.

The top three ways clients find service providers are: Peer and colleague recommendations (65 percent); existing contacts at professional firms (43 percent); and search engine inquiries (38 percent).

When clients need help, 67 percent of them consider the providers they've worked with in the past, but they also conduct research on others who may have the services and skills they need. As clients conduct that research, their opinions on providers are most influenced by one-on-one meetings (74 percent), provider web sites (41 percent), and case studies and white papers (39 percent).

For the majority of buyers, once they've narrowed their list to the finalists, the decision comes down to competence and expertise. For professional services providers, the news is good. Clients are actively engaging with online content and using search engines to find appropriate firms.

Keep your practice well-placed in the search rankings to give you the visibility you need to grab the attention of potential clients. But if you do attract them to your site, be sure your content supports your claims to competence or you'll lose those potential clients before you even have a chance to talk to them. Download the complete report for no charge.

The Power of Firm Branding

Few would argue against the point that personal relationships fuel sales success in the consulting business. But some firm leaders remain wary of the ROI of branding programs.

In their recent study, Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report: Consulting Industry 2008, RainToday.com researchers uncovered compelling arguments for branding the professional services firm.

Firms with strong brands in their markets experience better fee realization, stronger growth rates, and higher profitability than lesser known firms. Granted, many factors contribute to the performance of consulting firms, but with this extensive survey of almost 700 respondents, the case for branding gains strength.

The report offers analyses of current pricing challenges, strategies, and tactics used by every size of consulting firm.

The sections on fee structures, discounting, and pricing models will give most any consultant an excellent benchmark for making strategic pricing decisions.

This report is the best one yet from RainToday.

Prospecting by Email

Every week or so, I receive an unsolicited email like this one:

I just wanted to drop a quick email to you and see if we could assist with any of your current openings? We work on contract AND full-time positions and I am confident that we can find candidates for any of your hard-to-fill openings.

Please advise at your earliest and I look forward to hearing from you shortly. Thanks!

Name Withheld
Account Executive

On more than one occasion, I've gone to the sender's Web site to see for myself who is condoning such a silly approach to business development.

It's frightening to think how much time and money organizations squander by allowing their people to blast emails out there that have no relevance for the recipient.

Many companies fail to use the power of email marketing. According to Jupiter Research, only 4 percent of marketers use some form of personalization in email campaigns.

If you plan to launch an email campaign--and they can be quite successful--be sure your message is targeted to those who will benefit from your message.

Compose an issue-based communication that addresses a known or forecasted problem your prospective client cares about. And make an offer of value. You may have some market intelligence, a report, or white paper, for instance, that clients want to read.

And if you ever discover that anyone in your organization is sending email like the one above, show that person to the door immediately.

Focus

A client once asked me to help salvage a project that had failed due to a scary lack of focus. The problem started with the project team.

Its efforts were dedicated to task completion, which doesn't sound like such a bad idea. But the team lost its focus on the end result. The predictable outcome was that a lot of work got done, but it wasn't the right work.

The simple principle of focus drives the outcome of almost everything we do, whether it's client project work or our own marketing strategy, professional development, or career path. And, when things get crazed, which is often the case in this business, it's easy to lose focus on your end game.

Like that troubled project, dropping the ball on your professional focus has a similar outcome. So, it never hurts to revisit your thinking about the clients you want to serve, what you're offering, and how you're doing in reaching your career goals.

If your focus has lost its edge, the easiest way to regain traction is to take the advice you'd give your clients: zero in on what's truly important.

Too many people address these issues only when they're not busy, or when a new year is approaching. Those aren't bad times to reflect on your business, but shouldn't be the only times either. Where is your focus?

The Trouble with Marketing

If you've ever thought your marketing and sales processes weren't working well together, you're not alone. According to a survey by The Bloom Group, professional services firms' sales and marketing efforts are often out of synch.

Bloom surveyed marketing and sales executives from 224 professional services firms in North America and Europe. The survey found that few firms effectively coordinate marketing campaigns, measure results of those campaigns, or even work from a common client data base.

It's no wonder that only 29 percent of firms are highly successful in creating awareness of their expertise and services with target buyers.

Of course, it's no secret that many firms throw good money after bad in the hopes of making a market impression. But it's equally true that by landing a few engagements, most firms can cover years of marketing costs. And, unfortunately, that seems to be okay with some firm executives.

Have a look at the survey results by visiting The Bloom Group.

Who Reads Your Press Release?

If you've just mailed out carefully prepared, printed press releases about your business, think about this: According to a study by Speaker Magazine, only 2 percent of the recipients will take the time to read it.

Send that same press release by e-mail, and the open rate could get as high as 50 percent. And if you use press release wire services, like Business Wire and PR Newswire, expect journalists to be watching. More than 75 percent of journalists surveyed scan these news sources for ideas.

Loyalty

My subscription to the Wall Street Journal expired recently.

I knew well in advance that the renewal date was looming because I was barraged with mailers from Dow Jones offering me a "special renewal rate" for current subscribers. For $249.00, my service would be uninterrupted, at a substantial savings, for the next year.

With time running out, I finally went to the Dow Jones web site, special renewal offer in hand, to extend my subscription. As I navigated through the site, I learned that new subscribers could get a very different deal. For just $99.00 a year, a new subscriber would receive the same benefits, at a 60 percent lower cost.

I understand that customer acquisition programs sustain a newspaper operation, but that seemed like a slap in the face for my years of loyalty. The company is risking the same reaction from every renewal customer by displaying its rock-bottom, new subscriber offer so prominently on the site.

In our business, client retention is often more important than client acquisition, as most would agree. But it's easy to lose sight of that priority in our zeal to find the next client.

Are your marketing programs targeted toward new clients at the expense of your existing ones? Are you proactively marketing to your best audience--existing clients?

Make sure your marketing tactics emphasize the importance of your current clients. Don't short-change them as you search for your next opportunity because you might just lose them along the way.

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.

What's Compelling?

In the on-going quest to make a splash in the market, the giant consulting firms are still forking over their hard-earned money to ad agencies.

In a full-page ad in BusinessWeek, for example, one firm proclaims:

"Experience has shown us that if we define measurable objectives and set realistic schedules together, build joint teams, and above all, anticipate and mitigate risks together, we can improve our chances."

Contrast that with this ad copy created by Accenture's agency, which appeared recently in Fortune:

"Accenture and Dell conceived and implemented an approach that allows Dell to operate on no more than two hours of inventory at a time. Now in place at Dell's plants around the world, the program paid for itself five times over during the first 12 months of operation."

Setting aside how you may feel about either company, Accenture has made a claim, backed it with data, and named the client to add an extra shot of credibility.

What are readers, or prospective clients, more likely to remember--Documented results, or a consulting approach that will improve their "chances?" Seems like a no-brainer to me.