3 Essential Tips For Marketing Your Professional Services Firm in 2021

Michael Zipursky is the Founder and CEO of Consulting Success®, where helps entrepreneurial consultants build profitable consulting businesses. 

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2020 changed marketing for many industries, and especially for the professional services firm.

Try and go to a conference, networking event, or visit clients on-site.

Depending on where you are in the world, doing so is either very difficult — or flat-out impossible. 

Relationships, networking, and referrals have always been at the heart of professional services marketing.

But now, relationships start online. 

Most B2B buyers start their buying process with a search, not a phone call. 

They're looking for the best firm, not necessarily the firm they have the best relationship with.

Your firm’s digital presence has never been so important. 

If you want to get clients for your professional services firm in 2021, don’t fight this change. 

Embrace it. 

By the end of this article, you'll have 3 tips to drastically improve your marketing results this year — and beyond.

Ditch The Automation (& Start Personalizing)

How quickly can you recognize that a message is automated?

By now, you can tell within a second or two if a message or email comes from software instead of a person.

If you're like me, you delete any message that looks remotely like an automated one. 

Your prospects are the same way.

Automated messages are efficient because you can write them once and send them thousands of times. 

But they don't foster a relationship with your prospective client.

If you want to stand out and get the attention of a prospective client, take a few minutes to research them. 

Then, personalize your message to them.

Not only will this help your message pass their mental "spam detector" it almost always leads to greater response and engagement.

The best way to personalize your message? Use video.

Nothing says personalization like taking the time to record a video, show your face, and say their name.

With a simple webcam, microphone, and recording software like Loom, you can record and send highly-personal outreach messages to your potential clients.

I'd bet that very few (if any) of your competitors are doing this. So, if you do it, you'll immediately stand out and get your prospect’s attention.

In a time when it's difficult to meet with potential clients face-to-face, video is the next best thing.

Schedule & Write In-Depth Content

Many people have heard about the benefits of long-form content — but very few still write a 1500-2000+ word piece.

Why?

First, writing is hard. Writing consistently is even harder.

But you can't ignore the benefits of publishing content to your website or on other platforms that your ideal clients frequent. There's almost nothing better you can do for your marketing.

One study found that B2B companies that blog generate 66% more leads per month than companies that don't.

Think about it from your potential client's perspective.

They're looking for a firm that’s the best fit to solve their problems and get them the results they want.

Four of five prospective buyers will look at your website before doing business with you — and one thing they are looking for is your expertise.

Educational content demonstrates your expertise.

And if you lack educational content to demonstrate your expertise, your potential clients will look for the firm that does.

So, how do you sit down and get content on your website?

On our website, we've published hundreds of long-form content pieces over a decade — from proposal templates to full-length guides. 

Here's how.

1. Create a schedule to keep yourself accountable. Start by committing to one long-form (1500-2000+ word topic) article per month.

2. For each article, start with a topic. Choose a particular problem that a client has asked you about. Problems are the best topics. Break that topic down into 5-7 categories for your article outline.

3. Start a daily writing habit. If you want to publish a 2000 word article every month, that's a mere 100 words a day. Even if you dislike writing, you can write 100 words in 15 minutes.

With a schedule, educational topics, and a daily writing habit, we generate tens of thousands of prospective clients every month to our blog — organically.

Don't plan on pulling in those numbers in a few months.

But consistent, long-form educational content will eventually serve as one of your best lead-generation strategies.

Delegate Everything You Don't Need To Do

Think about everything you do when you publish a new piece of content.

You have to...

• Outline the content

• Write the content

• Edit the content

• Optimize the content for SEO

• Promote the content on social media

And within each of these larger tasks, there are smaller steps to complete. 

There are a lot of "moving parts" that make your marketing work — and you should not be doing it all.

Instead, you should only be doing the parts that are within your zone of genius. 

Delegate the rest.

I get it. You're terrified to delegate anything because you're afraid someone might make a mistake

I've been there. 

And it's one of the most harmful things you can do: keeping you trapped working IN your business instead of ON it.

I'll give you an example.

I used to post all of our new podcast episodes the Consulting Success® Podcast to my own LinkedIn.

Even though it was a quick process, it was another task I had to do.

So, to make my life easier, I wrote down the process to complete the task:

1. Copy and paste a link to the podcast

2. Open up LinkedIn

3. Click on "Start a post"

4. Paste in a link to the podcast

5. Write a 1-2 sentence introduction

6. Tag the guest and the Consulting Success® company page

7. Add hashtags

8. Click "Post"

That's it.

Once I wrote down the process for the task, I realized that I didn't have to be the one to do it.

I could delegate it to someone else.

Now, we've hired someone to perform these marketing tasks. That way, I can focus on my highest-value work.

Here's how you do it:

1. Break down all of the things you do to market your business into tasks

2. Then, for each task, record yourself doing the task, talking through the steps

3. Finally, watch the video of you doing the task, and write down the step-by-step process to complete it

Once you've followed this process to "systematize" your marketing, you can then hire people to do it for you.

They'll have a video and a step-by-step written process to help them.

By doing this, you'll create more time and energy to focus on where you can add the most value to your business.

And your marketing will continue to run — or even get better since you'll have the time for more strategic marketing work.

Imperfect Action

Marketing is no longer limited to conferences and networking events.

The professional services firm that will succeed is the one that is best able to adapt to the digital age. 

If you haven't already, it's time to take your online presence and digital marketing seriously:

• Personalize your outreach and use video to stand out from your competitors and build authentic relationships

• Schedule and write long-form content that educates your prospects and positions you as an authority in your industry

• Write processes for your marketing tasks so you can delegate them, freeing you up for higher-value tasks

Your marketing will be more personal, effective, and take up less of your time.

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Michael Zipursky is the CEO of Consulting Success® and Coach to Consultants. He has advised organizations like Financial Times, Dow Jones, RBC, and helped Panasonic launch new products into global markets, but more importantly, he’s helped over 500 consultants from around the world in over 75 industries add 6 and 7 figures to their annual revenues. Over 35,000 consultants read his weekly consulting newsletter. Michael is also the author of the Amazon Best Sellers ACT NOW: How successful consultants thrive during chaos and uncertainty, The Elite Consulting Mind and Consulting Success®, the book.