The Importance of Business Research for Your Firm: Top 10 Questions to Drive Growth & Profitability

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

In researching high growth professional services firms we made an eye-opening discovery. Those firms that did systematic business research on their target client group grew faster and were more profitable. Further, those that did more frequent business research (each quarter), grew the fastest and were most profitable.

Think about that for a minute. Faster growth and more profit. Sounds pretty appealing.

The first question is usually around what kind of research to do and how it might help grow your firm. I’ve reflected on the kinds of questions we’ve asked when doing research for our professional services clients and how the process has impacted their strategy and financial results.

The result is this list of the top 10 research questions that can drive firm growth and profitability:

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SEO for Accountants: A Case Study

By Sean McVey

I recently chatted with Richard Rawson, Director of Marketing at E. Cohen and Company, a CPA firm in Rockville, Maryland.  Richard and his team of forward-thinking executives manage to generate approximately 40% of their firm’s leads from the web.

Our conversation revealed several key takeaways that I believe any accounting firm should understand before taking on an online marketing campaign.

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Rethinking Thought Leadership:  7 Tips for Gaining New Clients

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

If you follow this blog regularly, one of the things you know is that we have a strong commitment to researching high growth professional services firms.  Perhaps one of the most startling findings was when we discovered that average growth firms were actually more likely to pursue a thought leadership strategy than were their high growth peers.

At first I was perplexed.  But as we dug deeper, I gained a better appreciation of what people meant when they said they were pursuing a thought leadership strategy.  The result was a new view of the entire topic:

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Architecture Firm Finds 90% of Leads Online

By Sean McVey

My recent conversation with Derek Leavitt, founder of Modative Architects, yielded some interesting stats on the firm’s lead generation:

• Approximately 90% of the firm’s leads come through its website
• They receive around 4 warm leads per week online
• The firm’s web traffic increased from 10 visits a week to 400 per day in a short period of time

 
My two reactions to these shocking numbers were:

1. Wow!
2. How?

 
Find the Right Keyword Opportunity

Derek and his team were able to use search engine data to find some great keyword opportunities. They were careful to select terms that receive heavy search traffic but which don’t appear on many websites. Often these are highly specific keyword phrases, such as:

“small lot subdivisions”

This is a niche keyword that they felt they could own.  It accurately describes one of their core services so it was ripe for the taking. Ok, now what?

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Hinge’s Fab Five: January 2012

Top Professional Services Marketing Content from January 2012

By: Lee Eliav

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!

How Google’s Social Search Shift Will Impact Your Brand’s SEO
By: Erin Everhart, 352 Media Group on Mashable

How changes in Google’s search will affect your SEO strategy.

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LinkedIn Strategy for Professional Services Executives: 4 Building Your Online Brand

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

In this series we’re exploring how LinkedIn can help busy professional services executives achieve their objectives. So far we’ve covered the basics of LinkedIn, explored the tools that are available, and laid out a basic 10-minute-a-day plan.

In this installment we’re going to cover the basics of using LinkedIn to develop your individual brand. There are a couple of fundamental reasons that you may want to attend to your online brand.

• To help drive new business to your firm
• To find a new position
• To avoid having someone else define it for you

 
In achieving any of these objectives, LinkedIn is a good place to start. As the premier business oriented social network it is often where people start when checking you out.

Here are the basic steps to building your online brand:

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