Individuals who are in a professional services industry are not known for the marketing acumen.  Lawyers, Doctors, Financial Advisors, Real Estate Agents, Mortgage Loan Officers, Bankers and Accountants are typically very skilled at their unique skill set, but not always fruitful in their attempts to market their business services.  Here is a list of 29 ways to market a professional services business to get new clients and retain current clients.  It is a lot cheaper to keep a current client than bring on a new client, but that is a topic for another post.

1. Give away physical objects with your company name and contact information.  Real estate agents are fond of giving out refrigerator magnets with their pretty picture as well as the schedule for the local sports team.  Other examples include pens, keychains, calendars, briefcases, toothbrushes…
2. Join Professional organizations specific to your industry on a national and local levels. Some of these organizations may have certification exams or to uphold a certain standard of ethics.  These organizations can be helpful for not only creating credibility with letters after your name or badges of associations on your website for prospective clients, but also networking with other professionals who may have business in your target niche.  Side benefit to keep informed of latest industry news to share with clients and prospective clients.
3. Create Monthly Newsletter and send to your warm network and people you meet at networking events.
4. Directory Listings.  Get listed in both online and offline directories so prospective clients can find your services when they are looking for the services you offer.
5. Network. Each time you meet someone on the street, you can always be asking what they do for work and they will most likely ask you what you do for work.  Attending specific networking events such as Chamber of Commerce, Meetup Groups, Charitable functions and Political fundraisers.
6. Social Media. Utilize online communities such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to build your position in the market.
7. Blogging. Creating your own blog and posting on a regular basis is helpful to connecting with the community about topics that are of interest to them.
8. 20 Second Commercial.  Prepare a 20 second commercial that allows you to share with others exactly what you do and who you typically do it for by highlighting common challenges you resolve.  This enables you to get the most out of each networking event.
9. Host a Lunch. Invite some of your best clients and prospective clients to meet in your office or a local restaurant for some time to get to know each other and see if you can create business for other people.

Implement these 9 strategies to grow your professional services business.

In order to effectively market through building relationships, it helps to have a list to actually build that relationship.  Every marketing activity that a company does, should be focused on providing value as well as growing a list.  List Building can take place organically such as adding new clients to a monthly newsletter, but here are some strategies to build a list quickly to grow the quantity of people you communicate with on an ongoing basis.

1. Pay Per Click- Running Pay Per Click campaigns on Google and driving traffic to a landing page that captures name and email information is a good way and will also cost some money.  Make sure that what you are sending people is valuable enough for them to give you their email address in return.
2. Joint Ventures- If you have an associate in your industry who has access to their own list of people who fall into the same niche as you, it can be effective to agree to do a mailing to your respective lists on behalf of each other.  Typically, each person can continue to market to those people who opt in to receiving information from the other list.
3. Search Engine Optimization- Optimizing a website that promotes an offer in exchange for a person’s email address can add names to your list
4. Interview An Expert- You can contact a leading expert in your respective industry for a topic that is of interest to the people on your list and promote this conference call or webinar to a new group of people.  Oftentimes, experts will agree to be interviewed for free as long as they get a copy of the recording or have a spot to promote their own product.
5. Social Media- Posting a message in your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter accounts can be a good way to soft market to people you are connected with in these online communities and send the traffic to a landing page.
6. Blog- Building a Blog around a niche idea of interest to people is a good way to attract new people to what you have to offer the community.

List Building is an activity that should be done consistently as you give people more and more value as your build a strong relationship with your list.

Utilizing the internet to leverage sales for any business is a good idea, but the marketing system to bring in sales or generate leads depending on the business model is absolutely crucial.  Recently, we were approached by a sales training company to help them with their internet marketing.  As we got a full understanding of their business, it became apparent that while they still love doing Sales Boot Camps for their clients, the trainers ideally wanted a system to monetize the high quality content they had created over the last 30 years to being successful sales trainers.

After discussing a variety of approaches to utilize the online training modules, 2 audio CD’s of role play lessons, 2 books explaining their sales system, we agreed to implement a Product Launch to generate sales quickly for products that had already been created.  We did decide to bundle the 5 products with a group coaching call, so it was really a no brainer for salespeople looking to improve their sales in 2010 when we packaged this at $47.  Crafting a series of email messages spread over a 6 week period and giving a valuable report, training video with each email communication, our clients were able to generate more online sales in a 72-hour window than they had generated in the any 3 month period during all of 2009.  The package was bundled as “Sales Boot Camp In A Box” and sold as a “Thank You” for being a loyal subscriber to our client’s weekly email newsletter.

The product launch process not only created a healthy amount of online sales, but also re-engaged the list of 7,000 subscribers, many of whom our clients had lost personal communication with throughout the years.  Imagine what it is like when prospective clients email in to say “Thank You” for the great content and are excited to purchase the product when it becomes available.  Best of all, our clients landed a new training client that is worth as much as the product sales combined.  We will be using the success of the 1st product launch for our client to partner with other sales trainers and create a monthly coaching program, stay tuned.

Conversion Optimization is the fundamental concept upon which WebHeat was built upon, it drives our every action as we interact with clients.  There are a plethora of internet marketing strategies to drive additional traffic to a website including but not limited to: Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing, Social Media, Email Marketing, Direct Mail and so much more, but the question is what happens to the website visitors once they land on your website?

Many of our clients contact us initially about utilizing some of the above internet marketing strategies to increase the quantity of visitors to their website each month.  We love talking about any and all things marketing, especially internet marketing, but simply increasing traffic to a website or even a brick and mortar retail store is only 1 slice of the pie to growing a business efficiently.  The majority of businesses are always looking to grow, so increasing traffic is usually a good thing, but may not always be the most cost effective strategy in growing a business.  After all for most small business owners who are not looking for their company to get acquired in the near future, profitability is more important that just revenue increase.

We have started working with a client recently who spends $50,000 per month on marketing for his real estate business, but our now client had no usable way to measure the return on this $50,000 monthly investment.  Our initial phone call was about listening to what the goal’s of the business are in the short term and long term.  What we realized is that implementing a few of our conversion optimization strategies could help this business owner understand the impact of his marketing investment.  We could have easily told him that to increase business he has to double his marketing spend to $100,000 per month, but we first needed to discover was how to maximize the current $600,000 he is spending on marketing each year.

In the most basic form, conversion optimization is increasing the % of visitors who ‘convert’ or do a desired action.  For a florist, the desired action could be purchasing a bouquet of flowers, for a lawyer the desired action could be filling out a form to request a free consultation about their pending case.  Out of 100 visitors to your website, how many are taking the desired action?  Is it 2% is it 34%?  Is this Good?  How do you improve this?  This is the cross roads of the science and art that is conversion optimization.

I had the great pleasure last week to give a presentation covering social media to 22 lawyers on the Marketing Committee of Wertz McDade here in San Diego.  After I realized that these marketing lunches were catered with Chinese food, I was not quite sure if the fine lawyers at Wertz McDade were really there to hear me or simply enjoy the free lunch.  Regardless of their initial intentions, we spent an hour together discussing social media strategies for lawyers.

Here are some of the key points from the presentation that can be applied to numerous industries:

• Facebook Page- Each Firm should create a Facebook Page, even if it is merely used as an information site and no real marketing efforts are exerted to increase business through Facebook.  I have spoke with Lawyers in the last month who were currently spending over $2,000 per month on Facebook Ads, but it is important to measure results.  It is FREE to create a Page for the Law Firm.  Each Individual can handle their personal Facebook communications in a professional manner or choose not to use Facebook socially.
• LinkedIn- Not only is it best for each lawyer to have their own LinkedIn profiles that are up to date, but the Law Firm needs to have a profile on LinkedIn.  Join relevant groups to your practice area or industries you focus on serving and start networking with the world around you.  As with any marketing strategy, listen to the needs of others and contribute by resolving their challenges before asking for business.
• Twitter- Many of the lawyers feel that Twitter is a waste of time, so we reviewed how some lawyers are using Twitter to position themselves and their respective law firm in a positive position for online marketing.  The search function on Twitter also provides a great way to stay connected to important topics in your industry.
• Blog- It is a known fact that lawyers love to communicate, and have their opinions heard.  This is why many lawyers are hired in the first place.  I drilled this point that having a corporate blog is no longer a choice, it is a MUST DO.  Generating content for a Blog can be as simple as using papers already created by the lawyers in the firm or setting up a rotation schedule for each lawyer to write 1 blog post per month.  The time of lawyer’s is extremely valuable and dedicating 30 minutes per month is a wise decision.

Overall, I think that everyone who attended the lunch presentation not only enjoyed the Chinese food, but also a few words resonated.  The open forum Question and Answer session was helpful for me as I learned about concerns surrounding Social Media for Lawyers.