Harnessing the Power of Professional Services Marketing - 7 Essential Tips

Communicating the value of professional services is a daunting task. It’s a combination of strategy, marketing, and execution that involves constant communication with clients and prospective clients, to ensure they are always about to recognise and recall your services.

That’s why marketing for professional services firms is an art that requires meticulous planning. With so much at stake when marketing professional services, it’s crucial to get it right from the start so you can win clients over to your firm and help your business grow. So without further ado, here are our 7 top tips for marketing professional services...

Be human-centric, not service-centric

A professional services marketing strategy is not a one-size-fits-all approach. But it’s essential to keep in mind a few tipping points if you want to succeed.

Firstly, professional services marketing should be human-centric rather than service-centric. You need to think about the needs of your target audience first and foremost. This will ensure that your brand identity resonates with them and creates a positive association with your services. Professional services companies can have a tendency of focussing too much on what they do and deliver, rather than explaining the problems they solve and the pains they alleviate. Have a think about your niche market and what problems they are experiencing, and how you would go about solving them.

Secondly, professional services marketing must be creative and engaging. That means you must make use of storytelling to emphasise the value of your services and show why they are the best choice for customers and professionals alike. People enjoy stories: Whether that's the history of how your business was formed, how you developed your mission statement, or the stories behind your customer feedback.

Embrace your employer branding

Employer branding is an important tool in the successful marketing of professional services. It helps to attract and retain customers, build trust, and create an enduring impression of the services provided. Employer branding helps showcase the culture you are building and promote the way you work with clients. This can help build trust and market your services effectively.

Your employer branding involves creating a unified brand identity and developing marketing campaigns around it. Whether a client or potential employee is looking at you on Google, Twitter, or Youtube, having a consistent brand will help bring clarity to your messaging. This will help establish your professional services as trusted brand, which can help you boost business growth and profitability.

Your website is your shop window: Make it count

If it's difficult to navigate around your website, what message do you think that sends to potential customers? It could deter potential customers from making a purchase.

To ensure your website is easy to navigate, make sure it is mobile-friendly and user-friendly. This will help potential customers find the information they are looking for and make a purchasing decision with ease. Regularly updating your website with fresh content and new services offered will keep your website stay relevant and up-to-date, which can improve customer perceptions of the business and increase overall sales.

Some of the fastest-growing firms spend thousands a year on their website strategy, making sure they have the best possible lead-generating website that will rank in any search engine.

Virtual networking on LinkedIn

If you are not active on LinkedIn, you're missing out on a great opportunity to market your professional services. LinkedIn is a great way to connect with potential customers, build relationships and set yourself apart in the professional services industry.

To get the most out of marketing on LinkedIn, make sure your personal and business profile is complete and up-to-date. Some professional services businesses decide to launch employee social strategies which involves supporting employees to create their own brand online.

Head to our Notion template where you can download a free social media policy/guidelines for your staff.

Build a content strategy that builds thought leadership

In order to build trust with potential customers, it is important to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. One way to do this is by creating high-quality content that educates and informs potential customers about your industry. This can be in the form of blog posts, case studies, infographics, eBooks, white papers, and more.

When creating content, make sure it is well researched and relevant to your target audience, and have a think about its purpose: Is that blog being written for lead generation? Or is it to help inform potential clients about how they can go about solving a specific problem? This will help you establish how you can distribute the content you're building: Maybe it should be sent via email to your newsletter contacts, or maybe it's a blog that will perform well on Google.

Find your niche and hammer down on it

In order to be successful in marketing professional services, it is important to find your niche and focus on it. This means understanding what services you offer that are unique and how you can market those services to potential customers. Once you've found your niche, make sure all of your marketing efforts are focused on it. This will help you attract the right kind of clients and close more sales.

Maybe you're an accountant looking to serve the SME tech market, or maybe a legal service provider who only works with Web 3.0 clients. Whatever your niche, this gives you the opportunity to be seen as subject matter experts in that chosen niche, and makes it easier for people to recall and recommend you.

Don't let your leads go stagnant: Building a CRM that works for your business

A CRM system, or customer relationship management system, is essential for any business that wants to scale its marketing efforts. A CRM will help your marketing and sales teams keep track of your leads and customers, as well as automate some of your marketing tasks.

Hubspot can be used as a central hub for all of your sales and marketing activities: From developing email campaigns for existing and new clients, sending out newsletters and organising webinars, to reporting on ROI from paid advertising and tracking any referrals that come through your website.

‍