If you’re wondering how to make your professional services business the company of choice in your field, then we’re here to help you get started on developing a marketing strategy.
A good professional services marketing strategy will include:
- Your business’ brand and personality
- What you want to achieve through your marketing work
- The tactics which you plan to use to achieve these aims
Your business’ brand or personality
A marketing strategy should distil what your company and its ‘brand’ are. An understanding of what your company offers, its strengths, and its reputation will help you to tell that story to others through your marketing.
The aims of your marketing work
It may sound straightforward, but identifying what you hope to achieve from your marketing up front is an important first step.
Defining success in this way creates a useful framework which you can refer back to as you execute your marketing strategy. When considering investment in marketing, it will mean you have the tools in place to ask yourself, does this support our aims?
What you aim to achieve from your marketing activity will be unique to your professional services business.
Some examples are:
- You may be focused on attracting new business leads, perhaps in a specific sector or niche.
- Perhaps you are focused on recruiting quality staff and want to put your business in front of the top talent in your industry when they are seeking new opportunities.
- You may be looking to strengthen your brand recognition and reputation to support client retention.
Marketing tactics
Tactics refers to the marketing channels and execution of marketing activity which is carried out based on your strategy.
Marketing tactics for the professional services sector can range widely, depending on your business and its marketing budget.
Our team are experts in public relations (PR), social media campaigns, content and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – which are all key ingredients of the marketing mix and provide measurable results.
A robust, ongoing PR campaign, supported by a drumbeat of SEO work and quality social content, can make all the difference and ensure that your business is being seen by the people who are looking for the services which you offer.
An integrated marketing approach can ensure your business and its offering is seen consistently across all of your marketing channels.
Getting started on your professional services marketing strategy
If you’re looking to develop a marketing plan for professional services firms, here are some of the key questions you can ask yourself as you develop your plans.
What does your business want to be known for?
Your business will likely offer a wide range of services, but it’s helpful to identify which of these are the biggest priorities to help you define your marketing strategy.
Perhaps you’ve recently made a key hire who is an expert in a particular field, and now you’re looking to attract more work within their specialism. With the right marketing, you can elevate this person’s reputation as an expert and highlight the services which they offer through your business.
How will consumers search for the services you provide?
While your approach to marketing will be looking from the inside of the business outwards, it’s important to remember that consumers don’t think like this.
Often, consumers don’t use industry jargon because they’re not familiar with the terms – the way that they search for the service which you provide may use everyday language.
It’s also important to understand the phrases which consumers are searching to find the service which you offer – consumers may be asking a direct question or searching for a simplified version of what your service is called.
Keyword research is the first stage of understanding this journey and developing an SEO strategy – by understanding what consumers are searching for in your professional services niche, you can use language which captures that search volume and leads people to your website, instead of one of your competitors.
What expertise are there within your team?
A strong PR strategy will showcase the knowledge and credibility of your in-house experts which, in turn, enhances the reputation of your business and the services it provides.
A good starting point is to review the expertise of your team to identify topics which they can offer comment on with authority.
For each expert in your team, it is helpful for them to have a professional headshot photograph taken and for their online presence – their biography on the company website and their LinkedIn profile – to be up to date. This demonstrates that they are who you say they are and provides evidence of their expertise for consumers and to journalists who may be looking to write about your business.
There has been a sharp increase in AI ‘experts’ being quoted in reputable news outlets and journalists and publications are taking fact-checking to another level to ensure they aren’t caught out.
Looking for inspiration to get started on your strategy?
There’s a wealth of resources available online to help you through the process of creating and executing a marketing strategy. If you’re looking for inspiration for a PR campaign or social media content, try our professional services awareness days calendar.
Reading about examples of PR campaigns in your sector can also help to spark an idea – for example, take a look at our recent PR campaign for a client in the legal sector and our reactive PR work for an accountancy client.
Creating and executing a media strategy is a big undertaking and, even if you have dedicated in-house resource for marketing, it can be helpful to have the support and expertise of a marketing agency to call upon.
Our team are experts in professional services marketing and have worked with clients to achieve national media coverage and top rankings on Google’s results pages.
Our team are immersed in the sector, well-versed in its media, and experts in how to achieve results for clients. So, if you’re wondering where to start with creating marketing strategies for professional services, get in touch.
