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Professional Services Marketing Blog
Hinge’s Fab Five: February 2012
By Lee Eliav
Top Professional Services Marketing Content from February 2012
Each month, an enormous amount of content is published on marketing. This monthly column will help you keep up with the best marketing articles on the web. Enjoy!
Lethal Generosity: The Key to Your Online Content Strategy
By: Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute
Joe Pulizzi explains the keys to a successful content marketing strategy in this great article.
The New Lead Generation Process for Professional Services
By Lee W. Frederiksen; Infographic by Brian Lemen
(Click image to see full-size infographic)
Looking for a new lead generation process to boost the growth and profitability of your firm? There is a whole new model that is revolutionizing the way professional services firms find new clients. To understand how it works, check out this latest infographic from our studio.
Trust is still important. But these days it isn’t built on a golf course or through personal referrals.
It’s also being built by engaging potential clients online. Busy executives want answers, and they want them now. They want to be educated on the issues and possible solutions. And they don’t want to waste precious time.
The New Lead Generation Process Defined
The online lead generation process involves building trust one step at a time.
You start with content that interests prospects at various stages of the buying process. How do you know what content? That’s where research on clients and keywords and website analytics come in.
Outsourced Lead Generation: 5 Services Worth Your Investment
By Sean McVey
According to our latest research, 31% of professional services firms contract outside help for at least part of their online marketing efforts. Additionally, 66% of firms plan on increasing their online marketing spending within the next year.
If all of these firms are paying for outsourced lead generation, what exactly are they buying? As a marketing firm, we are quite aware of what firms are paying for and which services are actually driving new leads and business. Here are five sure-fire lead generation tactics to consider outsourcing if you are looking to grow your company quickly:
Trends in Lead Generation for A/E/C Firms
By Sylvia Montgomery
This month’s A/E/C “virtual coffee” TweetUp focused on the topic of “Generating net new leads for you’re A/E/C firm.”
For those of you that missed it, here are highlights from the discussion. Three themes rose to the top: lead generation, lead nurturing and geographic proximity to leads.
How is your firm engaging business development/marketing and technical staff in generating new leads?
A participant described how their firm has allotted a percentage of time that technical staff should spend on BD. That same firm has also carved out time to educate its staff on how to best spend their BD time to nurture leads. They’ve had group training sessions and soon they plan to sit down with staff one-on-one to help them find their personal style for conducting business development. Nurturing is a persistent effort. You can’t convince anyone overnight — they need to gain your trust. When you network, you are nurturing, so why not combine both? — #nurturenetworking.
Top 10 Branding Ideas for Professional Services Firms
By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.
If you are looking for new ideas to brand your professional services firm, consider these two facts:
- Professional services are different. What works for branding a car dealership or pizza restaurant can be a total waste of time and money for your firm.
- The world of professional services is changing. The new professional services buyer expects to be educated and informed. This has led to the rise of content marketing.
What’s needed is some new thinking.
Branding ideas defined
What do I mean by branding ideas? They are simply a way of increasing the awareness or visibility of your professional services brand. To many firms, this sort of branding has involved sponsorships (golf tournament anyone?), trade show exhibits, branded clothing (hand me that polo shirt), space ads in trade publications and the like.
Here’s the rub. While these approaches may increase awareness, they say very little about your firm or why someone would want to work with you. “Wow, what a great polo shirt. I think I’ll have you develop our strategic plan.” “Love that logoed golf ball. Why don’t you do our taxes?”
Not doing it for you? Instead, consider trying one or more of following branding ideas to build credibility and awareness:
3 Lead Generation Methods that Are WASTING Your Money
By Sean McVey
You’ve got to spend money to make money. But how much are you willing to spend? As inbound marketing techniques such as SEO have emerged, I’ve become highly skeptical of a few popular lead generation methods. Let’s get right to it…
1. Telemarketing — For many professional services firms, good old fashioned cold calling is still a core lead generation technique. You bug tons of people until you hit a good one. Life is too short… why waste people’s time (both the caller and the called) on sales calls when such a small percentage ever convert into leads?