OUR BLOG

LEADERSHIP

Who Should Be On Your Leadership Council?
When Service Firm Leaders Perfect Deliberation, They Reignite Growth
Five Reasons Service Firm Leaders Should Score Their Business Monthly
What Should You Expect From Your Service Firm Leadership Team?
Do You Have A Leadership Team Or A Leadership Council?
Ten Traits Of Organizationally Healthy Professional Service Firms
To Grow Your Professional Service Firm, Prize Culture Over Strategy
TP35: The One Tipping Point Mid-Size Service Firms Must Address To Keep Growing
Seven Reasons Most Mid-Size Service Firms Don’t Grow Very Much
Five Reasons Mid-Size Service Firms Need A New Leadership Operating Model
How Leaders Can Address The Growth Tipping Point For Mid-Sized Service Firms
Five Reasons Professional Service Leaders Should Prize EQ Over IQ
Why Mid-Size Service Firm Leadership Teams Need Collective Objectives To Grow
How To Grow Your Mid-Sized Service Firm: Jealously Protect Your Focused Energy
Why Professional Service Firms Should Consider Circle Of Seven Mentoring Networks
How A Leader’s Energy Field Impacts Team Productivity
Don’t Trade Misery For Money: How Professional Service Firms Can Leverage The Great Resignation
Strong Personality Vs. Strong Person: The Makeup Of A Leadership Council
Custer Or Marshall: Why Mid-Size Service Firms Must Choose Their Leadership Model
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Define And Defend Your Values
If You Want To Grow Your Mid-Size Service Firm, Establish A Formal Leadership Council
Want To Grow Your Professional Service Firm? Focus On The One
If You Want To Grow Your Midsize Professional Service Firm, Align Your Leaders
Why Midsize Service Firm Leaders Must Think Like Entrepreneurs To Grow
How To Grow A Mid-Size Professional Service Firm Today
Why It's Important For Great Leaders To Tell Great Stories
How Great Leaders Persuade Using Word-Pictures
How The Say-Do Ratio Influences Trusted Advisor Status And Profits
Why Service Firm Leaders Should Nurture The Entrepreneurial Instincts Of Their Top People

SALES

Five Strategies For Midsize Service Firms To Break Through Revenue Plateaus
How Pro Service Firms Can Fix The ‘Drop Everything — Chase Money’ Problem
Prospect, Originate, Navigate: How To Fill Your Professional Service Pipeline
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Think Carefully About Your Promise
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 7
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 6
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 5
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 4
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 3
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 2
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 1
How Mid-Size Service Firms Can Acquire Great New Clients On LinkedIn
Five Ways The Consultative Sale Improves Profits
How To Win The Complex Service Sale Consistently
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
How To Break The Grip Of Rainmaker Culture
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
How To Know When Prospects Are Ready
How To Pull Prospects Into Conversations
Nurture Organic Relationships Online
How To Build Relationships With Jaded Prospects
Do Prospects Want To Buy Or Be Sold?
Close Deals Faster Using Proof Statements
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough

MARKETING

How To Market Managed Services - Part 3
How To Market Managed Services - Part 2
How To Market Managed Services Today – Part 1
Why Service Firms Need A Multichannel Digital Marketing Strategy
Does Your Website Attract Ideal Clients?
Why Service Firms Need The Ultimate Digital Marketing Stack
The Myth Of The Time-Starved Service Buyer
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
Why You Need A Generous Brand
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
Are You Measuring Your Time Funnel?
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Five Digital Marketing KPIs
Do Your Users Experience Content Regret?
Content Registrations Are Not Enough
Is Your Website Open For Business
How To Build A Great Digital Marketing Plan
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
The Value Of An Idea Driven Website
Who Benefits From Your Content?
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
How To Get The Greatest Value From Content Marketing
Why You Should Absolutely Give Away Your Best Ideas
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough
How To Nurture Ideal Prospects

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WHY SERVICE FIRMS NEED A MULTICHANNEL DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY

THIS IS CRUCIAL TO REALIZING YOUR GROWTH POTENTIAL

I want to ask you a question.  How close has your firm come to achieving your growth potential?  When you look at the number of clients you are doing business with today versus the number you could be doing business with, how big is that gap?  What size of the pie do you own today?

If you are like most leaders of service organizations I speak with, you feel that you’ve only just begun to tap your potential.  You recognize that there are far more clients out there you could and should be working with.  Does this frustrate you, motivate you or both?

After working with literally dozens of service firms who feel this way, I’ve come to realize that a digital marketing strategy is a key part of realizing your potential.  And a key part of the digital marketing strategy is a multi-channel approach.  Let me share with you why you need a multi-channel strategy and how this will really benefit your firm. 

KEY TAKE-AWAY:

 

THE PROBLEM WITH REFERRALS IS THAT YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL OF THEM.

You Don’t Have To Rely On Referrals To Grow

Most mid-size service organizations rely on referrals to grow.  This is the tried and true approach to client acquisition in the service space.  You do great work for a client and they tell their friends and colleagues.  Referrals are fine.  But the problem with referrals is that you are not in control of them.

If you want to take control of your growth potential, digital marketing is a great strategy.  I believe it should be a crucial part of the marketing and business development plan of nearly every mid-size service firm, those with 15-150 staff and several million dollars in revenue. 

Firms who fit this profile usually serve a niche market and a specific type of clientele.  I call these ideal clients.  In my experience, most service organizations have to really sharpen their pencil when it comes to understanding what matters to their ideal clients. 

One of our first tasks, when engaging with new clients, is to develop a deep-dive profile of their ideal client.  We interview their top clients and ask them all sorts of questions.  We develop clear statements of their ideal client’s top 5 goals, opportunities and challenges.  We use these statements to build an editorial calendar, the kind that publishers use. 

All of this activity leads to a focused content marketing plan where we use articles, reports, research, ebooks, webinars and other types of content to pull new prospects toward our clients.  It’s a really effective strategy because the content focuses on what matters to ideal clients.

But just because you have great content, this doesn’t mean that the marketplace will sit up and take notice.  Even if your content is full of great insights that will really expedite your ideal client toward their goals, this doesn’t necessarily mean your content strategy will be effective.  I’ve seen this happen.

If you want to move beyond referrals as the primary means of client acquisition for your firm and if you believe that great content marketing and thought leadership is the path to do so, let me tell you what else you need.  You need a multi-channel approach. 

Where Do Your Ideal Clients Congregate In The Digital Space?

I love the movie Field Of Dreams.  The classic line from that film is “if you build it, they will come.”  I wish that were true of content marketing, but in our experience, it’s not.  We’ve tracked content assets of all types and see a clear trend. 

Those assets with great insights for ideal clients which are heavily promoted to the right channels produce great results, like registrations and sales conversations.  The same type of content asset with great insights that is not heavily promoted will produce poor results, usually low registration numbers.

The truth of the matter is that you need to build it – and promote it – through the right channels, and then they will come.  So that raises an important question.  What are the right channels for mid-size service firms? 

My answer is that this depends on several factors.  A good ideal client profile includes psychographics – like goals, opportunities and challenges – and demographics.  The psychographics tell you what content assets to build.  The demographics tell you where to promote the content.   

Demographics include factors like age, race, education, industry, title, responsibilities, geographic location, annual income and the like.  So when choosing the channels to promote your insightful content assets, you can use the demographics as a barometer. 

You can ask yourself one simple question.  Where do our ideal clients hang out in the digital space?  The goal is to connect with an ever-increasing number of prospective ideal clients through digital channels by offering them insights they cannot resist.  This is how digital marketing and content marketing helps you grow much faster than referrals.

KEY TAKE-AWAY:

 

WHEREVER PROSPECTIVE IDEAL CLIENTS HANG OUT IN THE DIGITAL SPACE – THAT’S WHERE YOU SHOULD BE.

Digital Channels That Should Be In Your Mix

While every service organization is unique, we see seven effective digital marketing channels today that work for us and our clients.  Those channels include:

  1. Website
  2. Email
  3. Social media
  4. Third-party sites
  5. Press
  6. Public speaking
  7. Search Engine Optimization

Your website is your most important digital channel.  You are completely in control of this if you have a good content management system.  This means you get to deliver the right experience to prospective ideal clients.  In my opinion, all digital channels should lead back to your website.  This is also where registrations typically take place and where prospects enter your sales funnel by way of your marketing automation platform.

Email marketing is still a crucial strategy for mid-size service firms.  We have a few clients where email marketing constitutes more than 80% of their outbound strategy.  Email marketing is more challenging now because of the increased effectiveness of spam-blocking tools.  But if you do this the right way, email marketing can be your most effective digital channel.

Social media is another very important digital channel.  Over the last several years, we’ve seen this channel grow in popularity and importance.  I could write an entire book on what we’ve learned about social media marketing and how to be effective with this channel.  I have come to believe that social media is now just as important, if not more important, than email.

Third-party websites that aggregate your ideal client and that accept submissions for publication should also be a part of your mix.  I now write articles for Forbes every month.  I also allow several third-party publishers to re-publish certain content pieces.  Some of our clients partner with industry associations and write articles for them and then speak at industry meetings.  You should consider this as an option for targeted exposure and traffic.

The press can be a real boon for certain types of content assets.  One of our clients produced a report this past year that was highlighted by several industry trade publications.  This produced a spike in traffic, in content registrations and in esteem in the eyes of their market.

Public speaking is typically thought of as non-digital.  But our experience is that most public speaking engagements include a digital component, where the meeting and often the speaker are promoted through digital means.  Even if an ideal prospect does not attend the speech, you can still get exposure through digital means and this can be valuable.

Finally, search engine optimization, or SEO, is still a consideration as a digital channel.  SEO has become rather passé over the last few years.  But we have a long-standing client relationship that came to use because of a long-tail search.  While I would not make this a huge part of your digital marketing budget, all of your content assets should be developed with an eye toward SEO and driving traffic to your website.

Is It Worth It?

A multi-channel digital strategy can be very effective for pulling ideal prospects toward your organization and queueing them up for sales conversations.  You have to produce meaningful insights on topics that matter to your ideal client.  You have to promote the content through numerous channels.  You also need to track all of this activity to know what’s working and what is not working.

You might be wondering if this is all worth it.  Let me tell you a quick story.  A long-standing client of ours was recently acquired by a larger organization.  Our client is very excited about this transition for many reasons.  They told us that the company who is acquiring them was very impressed by their content marketing strategy.  This was a driver in the acquisition decision.

I believe the payoff to your organization will be an improved market position, being perceived as a thought-leader, greater exposure for your top people and acquisition of ideal new clients who lean in over time.  The other thing to bear in mind is that if you are not doing this, almost certainly you will get left behind by competitors who will do it.  So is it worth it?  I think it is.

Next Steps

You might be wondering where to go from here.  I have a resource for you that can really help.  I’ve developed an action guide called 7 Steps To A Content Marketing Program That Consistently Yields Ideal Clients.  This free tool contains 7 videos and numerous downloadable tools that you can use to build a great digital strategy.  If you like the ideas I’ve presented here, you’ll love the action guide.

About The Author

Randy Shattuck is a seasoned entrepreneur who works hand-in-hand with senior leaders of mid-size professional service firms to grow revenues, acquire clients, open new markets, increase profits and effectively position their brands.

OUR BLOG

LEADERSHIP

Who Should Be On Your Leadership Council?
When Service Firm Leaders Perfect Deliberation, They Reignite Growth
Five Reasons Service Firm Leaders Should Score Their Business Monthly
What Should You Expect From Your Service Firm Leadership Team?
Do You Have A Leadership Team Or A Leadership Council?
Ten Traits Of Organizationally Healthy Professional Service Firms
To Grow Your Professional Service Firm, Prize Culture Over Strategy
TP35: The One Tipping Point Mid-Size Service Firms Must Address To Keep Growing
Seven Reasons Most Mid-Size Service Firms Don’t Grow Very Much
Five Reasons Mid-Size Service Firms Need A New Leadership Operating Model
How Leaders Can Address The Growth Tipping Point For Mid-Sized Service Firms
Five Reasons Professional Service Leaders Should Prize EQ Over IQ
Why Mid-Size Service Firm Leadership Teams Need Collective Objectives To Grow
How To Grow Your Mid-Sized Service Firm: Jealously Protect Your Focused Energy
Why Professional Service Firms Should Consider Circle Of Seven Mentoring Networks
How A Leader’s Energy Field Impacts Team Productivity
Don’t Trade Misery For Money: How Professional Service Firms Can Leverage The Great Resignation
Strong Personality Vs. Strong Person: The Makeup Of A Leadership Council
Custer Or Marshall: Why Mid-Size Service Firms Must Choose Their Leadership Model
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Define And Defend Your Values
If You Want To Grow Your Mid-Size Service Firm, Establish A Formal Leadership Council
Want To Grow Your Professional Service Firm? Focus On The One
If You Want To Grow Your Midsize Professional Service Firm, Align Your Leaders
Why Midsize Service Firm Leaders Must Think Like Entrepreneurs To Grow
How To Grow A Mid-Size Professional Service Firm Today
Why It's Important For Great Leaders To Tell Great Stories
How Great Leaders Persuade Using Word-Pictures
How The Say-Do Ratio Influences Trusted Advisor Status And Profits
Why Service Firm Leaders Should Nurture The Entrepreneurial Instincts Of Their Top People

SALES

Five Strategies For Midsize Service Firms To Break Through Revenue Plateaus
How Pro Service Firms Can Fix The ‘Drop Everything — Chase Money’ Problem
Prospect, Originate, Navigate: How To Fill Your Professional Service Pipeline
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Think Carefully About Your Promise
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 7
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 6
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 5
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 4
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 3
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 2
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 1
How Mid-Size Service Firms Can Acquire Great New Clients On LinkedIn
Five Ways The Consultative Sale Improves Profits
How To Win The Complex Service Sale Consistently
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
How To Break The Grip Of Rainmaker Culture
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
How To Know When Prospects Are Ready
How To Pull Prospects Into Conversations
Nurture Organic Relationships Online
How To Build Relationships With Jaded Prospects
Do Prospects Want To Buy Or Be Sold?
Close Deals Faster Using Proof Statements
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough

MARKETING

How To Market Managed Services - Part 3
How To Market Managed Services - Part 2
How To Market Managed Services Today – Part 1
Why Service Firms Need A Multichannel Digital Marketing Strategy
Does Your Website Attract Ideal Clients?
Why Service Firms Need The Ultimate Digital Marketing Stack
The Myth Of The Time-Starved Service Buyer
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
Why You Need A Generous Brand
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
Are You Measuring Your Time Funnel?
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Five Digital Marketing KPIs
Do Your Users Experience Content Regret?
Content Registrations Are Not Enough
Is Your Website Open For Business
How To Build A Great Digital Marketing Plan
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
The Value Of An Idea Driven Website
Who Benefits From Your Content?
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
How To Get The Greatest Value From Content Marketing
Why You Should Absolutely Give Away Your Best Ideas
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough
How To Nurture Ideal Prospects