Further, many professionals still hold the mistaken belief that the only way to generate new client leads is through referrals and networking. Hello… the world is changing! A new model of business development is already generating significant flows of qualified leads for many professional services firms. 

What is Online Lead Generation?

Online lead generation is a collection of online tactics designed to draw interest and ultimately business development conversations to your business. There are a vast number of online tactics that your team can deploy, many of which we will cover in this post. The key to effective online lead generation is a deep understanding of your target audience’s interests and more importantly, pain points. When those are fully understood, it becomes more clear which strategies you should focus on.

Online Lead Generation Techniques that Work

Like traditional lead generation, the new model is founded on demonstrating expertise and building trusting relationships — but these goals are accomplished online. While online marketing will continue to evolve, here are ten proven lead generation techniques that are working for professional services firms today.

1) Search Engine Optimization

Many potential clients want to learn how to solve the challenges they face. If a prospect is even remotely computer literate (and these days what executive doesn’t have a computer or a smart phone?) one of the first things they do is Google their question, problem or issue. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gives you the tools to match qualified clients with your online content. And if you play your cards right, you’ll end up on their short list when they are looking to purchase services.

2) Pay Per Click Advertising

Another proven way to get on your prospects’ radar is to buy your way onto search engine results pages for relevant keywords. This technique gives you greater control over the keywords with which you want to be associated. As the name implies you only pay when someone clicks on your link. Many times, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) leads are of higher quality because the potential client is often searching for a specific solution. In addition, PPC is completely trackable and typically less expensive than traditional print advertising. That’s an attractive combination.

3) Lead Generating Website

Most professional services websites are not designed to generate leads. As a matter of fact many are almost “anti-lead generators.” Jargon-filled, firm-centric website abound in the professional services — and they are completely passive and unhelpful. If visitors do not understand what you do or what problems you can solve for them, they will go elsewhere. Contrast this with a lead generating website that is designed to make it easy for clients to understand your value proposition, download valuable information and request a proposal. The impact on online lead generation can be dramatic.

4) Online Networking

I could have called this technique “social media,” but I wanted to make a point. The essence of social media is not which platform you choose. It’s the quality and reach of the networking you do. While the style of interaction may vary greatly from Twitter to LinkedIn to Facebook, it is still about making the right connections with the right people. Online networking can produce the reputation and referrals associated with traditional business networking. Expect to get results in proportion to the level of your investment of time and attention.

5) Webinars

A webinar is the online equivalent of a seminar or other educational event. The lead generating webinar is typically offered free of charge. Because it requires registration, you can collect basic information on a session’s attendees. Like its offline cousin, a webinar should be educational — not a thinly-veiled sales pitch. The key to a successful webinar is to select topics that are of great interest and value to your ideal target client. Over time, attendees come to trust your firm and will be likely to consider you when they have a relevant need.

6) Industry Research Reports

A proven online lead generating strategy is to offer executive summaries or full research reports on the industries you serve. You benefit in two ways. First, these documents are an excellent lead generator. Second, they boost your credibility and strengthen you online brand. Be sure your research topics are of exceptional interest to your target client group. In addition, these research studies can be an excellent vehicle for partnering with a trade association or a noncompeting firm to reduce your marketing cost and increase your credibility.

7) Online Marketing Videos

Video is everywhere today, and for good reason. It is an ideal marketing medium for professional services firms. Nothing builds credibility like a flagship client explaining how your firm solved their problem. It’s almost like automating the referral process. Video can be used to present your firm, explain complex services or introduce your team. In each of these roles, video can play an important lead generating and lead nurturing function.

8) White Papers or e-Books

One of the most common online lead generating techniques, white papers can establish credibility and generate qualified leads. You can offer the white paper on your website (either available free or behind a registration screen), or you can distribute it through third-party services. White papers also make great pay-per-click offers. A variation on the white paper is the e-book. Typically longer than a white paper, it serves a similar function. If you e-book goes into great depth on a subject, it can generate a great deal of buzz and establish your reputation.

9) E-newsletter

If your e-newsletter offers high-quality, educational content, you can generate a significant number of new leads when people sign up. And your e-newsletter is a great way to nurture the existing leads on your list. Many firms also use e-newsletters to announce new services and make specific offers. To build your subscriber list, offer a free e-newsletter subscription on your website or in your email signature block. Just remember, the better your content, the more people will read it and remember  you — and the less likely it will be deemed spam.

10) Blogging

I left blogging for last because of its unique role in online lead generation. To be honest, blogs don’t generate a lot of direct leads. But blogging is probably the most effective driver of leads to your website. Because a blog allows you to create a wide range of keyword-laden content that can be found in the search engines, it can draw a lot of qualified prospects to your website (this assumes that you host your blog on your website — which I strongly recommend). You can further promote your blog posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Without a blog, your SEO efforts will be handicapped.

These ten online lead generation techniques alone could become the cornerstone of a robust marketing plan. Add in traditional marketing tactics, such as face-to-face networking and tradeshow marketing (if appropriate), and you have a formidable strategy for building preference in the marketplace. Online marketing and traditional marketing make a powerful combination.

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Inbound lead generation’s potential is real, but it requires a radical shift in mindset, marketing priorities and financial investment. Sponsorships and in-person networking just aren’t going to cut it anymore. Instead, start thinking about an asset you already have—your team’s expertise—and how you can use that pool of knowledge to attract and engage an audience that wants what you have to offer.

Inbound Marketing Techniques Defined

Inbound marketing is the process of helping potential clients discover your firm by making your relevant expertise and insights easy to find. It allows prospects to encounter you, in the channels they prefer, when they are ready to learn and engage. Inbound marketing messages tend to be educational in nature rather than self-promotional. 

By giving away some of your knowledge for free, you can quickly build a prospect’s trust. When they are ready to buy the kinds of services you offer, they are likely to think of you—their trusted resource—first.

Inbound marketing contrasts with outbound marketing, where you try to locate potential clients and interrupt them to gain their attention and deliver your marketing message. Outbound messages are typically more self-promotional and focused on your products or services and less focused on the client’s issues.

Advantages of Inbound Marketing

An inbound marketing strategy has many advantages over traditional marketing. Here are just a few:

• Prospects engage when they are ready, so you don’t have to convince them of a need
• Since they are self-selected, prospects tend to be more motivated
• Your content can explain your thinking and approach, so when prospects reach out, they are looking for exactly what you are offering
• Inbound leads are typically easier to close
• It’s often less costly than outbound marketing
• It expands your reach to new markets and prospects—including people you weren’t even aware of before and never would have found you otherwise

Top 21 Inbound Marketing Techniques

How do you put all the advantages of inbound marketing to work for your firm? Try incorporating some or all of the following top techniques into your marketing program.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (often just called SEO) is the process of making your online content, such as blog posts and services pages, easy to find through search engines like Google. As much art as science, SEO can involve a wide range of tactics (such as keyword research, page optimization and link building) to achieve its ultimate goal: delivering a steady stream of high-quality traffic to your website.

How you might use it: No inbound marketing strategy can ignore SEO. If you publish educational blog content, use keyword research to make your blogging more strategic. Then use on-site and off-site techniques to build visibility for your content.

2. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Another way to drive qualified traffic to your website and generate inbound leads is to invest in pay-per-click advertising (PPC). Most commonly used on search platforms like Google and Bing, PPC allows you to appear on relevant search results pages for search terms of your choice. Unlike the traditional advertising model, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. You have complete control over your target audiences, keywords and budget. Once you have your campaign set up, it works immediately. And you can track results in real time.

How you might use it: Many companies use PPC to supplement their SEO program. If you aren’t able to rank for certain critical keywords using SEO, you can target them with ads that look very much like organic search results. This technique is also very helpful when you need quick visibility, such as with a new product launch or rebranding exercise.

3. Lead-Generating Website

Driving traffic to your website and blog isn’t enough. You still need to convert that valuable traffic into leads. Unfortunately, most professional services websites aren’t set up to do this very well. A lead-generating website, on the other hand, makes it easy for a visitor to understand what you do, read, watch or download educational materials, and reach out if they have a need. This kind of website is not just about CTAs and conversions (though those are important). It is designed to be easy to read, ooze credibility and build trust.

How you might use it: We won’t beat around the bush: it’s almost impossible to have an effective inbound marketing strategy without a lead-generating website. If you aren’t ready to invest in a soup-to-nuts redesign, you can try retrofitting your current site with some of the features of a high-performance website. But eventually, you will probably want to rebuild it from scratch to deliver a powerful, cohesive experience.

4. Online Networking

There is still a place for in-person networking, but in most industries the spotlight has moved into the digital realm. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, there are well-established platforms where you can meet—and influence—hundreds or even thousands of potential clients. Like its analog counterpart, online networking centers on making connections with the right people, building a reputation and generating referrals, but it is far easier to scale and reach a large group of interested individuals. It has the added benefit of breaking down geographic barriers and exposing you to audiences in distant markets. 

How you might use it: Online networking is not magic. To achieve results it requires some dedication and a consistent approach. If you are new to it, or have only dabbled in the past, select just one platform and be realistic about the level of effort you can sustain. In almost every professional services industry, LinkedIn is your best bet. Try to add a few qualified new connections each week or two. Engage with other people’s content, and publish pieces of your own. When it makes sense, reach out to individual people in your pool of connections to further the relationship.

5. Webinars

Webinars offer almost all of the benefits of an in-person educational event, while adding a host of new advantages. Like an in-person seminar or educational training session, you can demonstrate your expertise, answer questions, and build a rapport with your audience. You can also collect attendees’ contact information so that you can follow up with relevant offers. But unlike in-person events, you can invite people from anywhere in the world, easily conduct live polls, include presenters from multiple locations, and record your presentation to engage people who weren’t able to attend. On top of all that, webinars are easy and cheap to produce.

How you might use them: Consider teaming up with a partner in a related industry that also serves your audience. They will bring their own audience to the presentation, expanding your reach. Or try presenting with a client who can bring a point of view that will resonate with your attendees. End each presentation with a call to action that gets people to take another step. This could be a downloadable piece of content or a free consultation. Experiment and see what works for you. 

6. Research Studies

A research study on your target client’s industry is one of the most powerful tools a firm can use to build credibility and position itself as a thought leader. Besides the valuable insights they gain, firms that use research as a marketing tool are seen as more knowledgeable and trusted for their expertise. Research studies also make exceptional lead generators. 

How you might use it: You can conduct your own original research, usually with the help of an experienced research partner. Or if that’s too rich for your budget, you can sponsor a study being conducted by a third-party. An even less expensive option is to license existing research. Whatever type of research you invest in, you can use it in many ways. You can provide reports for free download behind a contact form or, if you did custom research, you can offer it for sale. But that’s just the beginning. All that data can be used to inspire blog posts, webinars, speeches, social media posts, infographics and more. One study should provide months of material for your marketing program.

7. Online Marketing Videos

There is no more perfect inbound marketing medium for professional services firms than video. It allows your audience to see and hear your experts in a fully controlled environment. In this way, potential clients get a taste of what it might be like to work with your firm before they buy. That’s powerful.

How you might use it: Video can be used to deliver educational content, explain complex services or introduce a firm’s team of experts. High-value video content, such as how-tos, webinar recordings and short courses, can also be put behind a registration form to build your list and generate leads. You can even enlist clients to describe how your firm solved a thorny problem or contributed to their success. By the way, you don’t have to spend a fortune on video. Today, you have many options to choose from.

8. White Papers

White papers have been around for decades—and for good reason. Even today, they can be fantastic lead generation tools. People look to white papers for a serious exploration of a technical or practical topic in a compact format. And many people who need to understand an issue at that level of depth will gladly trade a small amount of personal information to access it. 

How you might use them: Promote white papers on your website, such as your homepage, applicable services pages and relevant blog posts. If you want to use them as an inbound lead generation tool, create a landing page with a short form to turn readers into new contacts for your email list. Another option is to distribute your white paper through a third-party service, expanding your visibility. The focus should be on educating your audience, not self-promotion. You are trying to build credibility and trust, not close the sale today.

9. Guides

Guides are similar to white papers, but they differ in two respects: 1) they tend to cover a broader topic in depth, often consisting of multiple chapters; and 2) they are usually less technical, speaking in plain English to an executive-level audience. A guide explores a topic in enough detail to give a senior-level influencer or decision-maker a high-level understanding. At the same time, they signal to the reader that your firm knows its stuff and would be well qualified to solve their problem.

How you might use them: Use guides to target executives similar to how you would white papers. White papers tend to have a more technical slant. Guides also make excellent lead nurturing content in email campaigns.

10. Ebooks

Like guides, ebooks explore an issue in depth, but they dive even deeper. While there is no minimum length for an ebook, most contain multiple chapters and run at least 50 pages. Many are full-length books running well over 100 pages. Works of this length have a great deal of perceived value, and people will gladly exchange personal information for a free digital copy. To increase the value of the free copy even more, you can use a print-on-demand publisher (such as Amazon KDP or Ingram Lightning Source) to produce physical copies that you sell on Amazon or at other stores. 

How you might use them: Promote your ebook in conventional on-page offers or in pop up offers. You can also market your ebook on your website like you would a traditionally published book, positioning your firm as thought leaders.

11. E-Newsletter

E-newsletters may sound like a quaint relic from a simpler time, but you don’t have to look very far to realize they are still going strong. Chances are, you subscribe to one or two or more, yourself. That’s because they work. The difference is, today you have a lot more platforms to launch yours. While many people use traditional email platforms, like MailChimp and Constant Contact, to deliver their e-newsletters, others have moved to integrated platforms such as Hubspot and Salesforce Pardot. Still others manage them on popular social media platforms like LinkedIn. Why are e-newsletters so effective? For one thing, they provide a dependable outlet for your thought leadership. And by their very nature, they keep you top of mind as new issues arrive on a regular schedule. 

How you might use them: E-newsletters should not be a vehicle for company news, new employee announcements and teambuilding pics. Only the most doting client will care about any of that. To be a truly valuable inbound lead generation technique, each issue should focus on a topic your clients and prospects care about. Usually this means educational content. Promote your newsletter on your website and social media. To minimize friction and encourage the most people to subscribe, require as little information as possible at signup. Many e-newsletters require nothing more than an email address.

12. Blogging

By itself, blogging isn’t really a lead generation technique. But as part of a larger system that includes SEO and gated valuable content, it is the most powerful driver of leads to your website. That’s because people who find your blog posts through Google are likely to be interested in other content on your website—especially if you promote a relevant free guide or whitepaper download alongside your post. That’s how you turn web visitors into leads. And if you get your SEO and blog strategy right, you’ll attract a lot of qualified prospects—people who are highly motivated and interested in your services.

How you might use it: Be sure to host your blog on your website, or you will waste all the Domain Authority “juice” it generates. Promote your posts on LinkedIn and Twitter to maximize your exposure. 

13. Guest Blogging

Your blogging activity doesn’t have to be restricted to your own blog—nor should it be. A great way to amplify your blogging strategy is to guest blog on respected, high-authority third-party sites. This strategy exposes you to new audiences and, if the blog allows it, can supply valuable backlinks to your website. It also helps position you as thought leaders in your industry.

How you might use it: Look for blogs that speak to your target audience. These could be standalone blogs, online business publications, industry organizations or businesses at the periphery of your industry (for example, attorneys and CPAs often serve the same clientele but don’t directly compete with each other). When you contribute to high Domain Authority blogs, you can often target keywords that you would otherwise have little hope of ranking for. 

14. Podcasting

Podcasts are more popular than ever, and this medium is only expected to grow. Fortunately, the cost of entry to podcasting is low—you can buy a quality microphone for less than $130 and several popular audio software apps are available for free (such as Audacity or Apple’s Garage Band). You’ll also need a podcast hosting service (many excellent low-cost options are available—we use Libsyn). A podcast is an excellent vehicle to showcase your firm’s expertise, build trust and connect, in a personal way, with your audience. If you distribute your episode to even one or two of the popular directories (such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or TuneIn), you have the potential to reach hundreds or thousands of new listeners—many of whom may never have heard of you before.

How you might use it: Use your podcast to explore current issues and trends that are important to your audience, discuss how you solve specific problems, interview other experts, or even invite clients to share their challenges. 

15. Visible Experts^®

Your firm is filled to the brim with experts. What if you could make some of them far more well known, even outside your marketplace? What effect would that have on your firm’s growth? At Hinge, we call these upwardly mobile individuals Visible Experts^®. They not only bring more visibility to your firm, they can often command higher fees. But that’s not all. Visible Experts also help your firm attract better, more profitable clients, close business faster and attract top talent. In short, they can elevate your firm to a new level of prominence. But how do you build your experts’ reputations? They can either follow a self-guided process or hire an outside consultant to mentor them and step them through the process.

How you might use it: If your firm is small, elevating even a single professional to Visible Expert status can make a huge difference. Larger firms may want to put a team of professionals through a formal program to multiply the impact.

16. Pop-up Offers On Your Website

Pop up offers aren’t just for B2C websites. They can be a powerful lead generation tool for professional services firms, too. Use them to convert your website and blog visitors into leads. If you use a flexible dedicated tool, such as OptinMonster, you can easily set up different offers that align with the content on your pages. 

How you might use them: Experiment with a variety of offers (many of these tools even allow you to conduct A/B tests) such as white papers, guides, e-newsletter subscriptions, webinar recordings, live demos and free consultations. Just be sure that each offer is relevant to the content on the page, includes clear, enticing benefits and requires the person to fill out a form to access the material.

17. Dedicated Landing Pages

An offer should always lead to a place where it’s fast and easy to complete the conversion. In most cases, this means a dedicated page with language that quickly orients the user, continues to “sell” the product and minimizes the roadblocks to completing the download or other action. 

How you might use them: Writing and optimizing landing pages is always as straightforward as you think. You may need to test different copy and visuals to optimize conversions. You can set up Google Analytics (or a CRM like Salesforce/Pardot or HubSpot) to see not only how many people reach the landing page, but how many actually follow through with the download. Some tools will even allow you to A/B test different landing page versions concurrently. 

18. Live Chat

Prospective clients are on your website every day. A live chat app gives them a way to interact with your team in real time (at Hinge, we use Olark, but many good options are available). Unlike chatbots, which rely on AI or preprogrammed responses, live chat allows web visitors to have conversations with designated employees. In marketing, responsiveness can be critical to a firm’s success. This low-friction tool allows people to ask questions and get answers right away, dramatically improving lead generation. 

How you might use it: In most cases, installing a Live Chat app is as simple as adding a plugin to your website. If you have a CRM, you may be able to integrate it with that, as well. To start, assign one or two people on your staff to monitor the chat app. Select people who are both familiar with your services and have business development skills. You’ll be surprised how often simple inquiries turn into serious opportunities.

19. Online Course

Today, more and more professionals are looking online for high-quality training and education. That makes producing an online course of your own an attractive inbound lead generation technique. Whether you hire a professional videographer or do it all in-house, producing an in-depth course on a topic of interest to your buyers can be a great way to widen your market exposure and show off your expertise. Now, producing a high-quality course takes a lot of planning, time and effort. You will need to navigate a large number of factors, including video, audio, slides and other visual aids, video hosting, quizzes (if you want them), worksheets or other supplemental materials, and the platform you will use to deliver your course to your online audience. But there are few better ways to show people how you think and solve problems. It’s not unusual for buyers of online courses to later become buyers of your services.

How you might use it: You can either give the course away as a powerful lead magnet and marketing tool, or you can sell it online as a self-serve product. Use the size and scope of your  course as a guide in making this decision. An 8-hour video course with quizzes and supplemental materials is a huge investment—and probably worth charging for. A 2-hour webinar-style training, on the other hand, is a perfect piece of valuable content to give away for the price of a name and email address. Whatever topic you choose to cover, make sure it is of real interest to your target audience and dovetails with a service you offer.

20. Email Nurture Sequences

While not technically a lead generation technique, an email nurture sequence makes your lead generation program far more effective. When you acquire a new email contact through any of the techniques described above, you can use a pre-programmed sequence of emails to send out highly relevant educational content over a period of days or weeks, as well as provide opportunities for the prospect to take a next step in the relationship. If you are a firm of any size, chances are you’ll need multiple email sequences to address different interests, service lines and audience segments. The benefits? You stay top of mind, keep your contacts engaged for a prolonged period of time and continue to provide the trust-building thought leadership that turns a casual interest in your firm into raging fandom.

How you might use them: You’ll need a tool designed to handle sequenced emails. Do you have a marketing automation platform such as Hubspot, Marketo or Pardot? Then you already have what you need. If not, look for a cloud-based tool specifically designed to deliver nurture sequences (ConvertKit is a popular option). If you have a library of educational content, look for pieces that would address a common issue or set of related issues. If you don’t have a library of content, create new content (it doesn’t have to be lengthy) or repurpose existing materials, such as blog posts, speeches and webinar recordings.

21. Digital PR

Digital Public Relations is a collection of techniques used to broaden your firm’s exposure, promote your thought leadership and strengthen your website’s Domain Authority. It can include many tactics, including publishing articles and press releases, engaging with reporters and providing expert answers to their questions, researching and addressing trending topics, building relationships with bloggers, podcasters and other influencers, developing greater social media presence, and more. Not long ago, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller said that digital PR is even more important than technical SEO to your website. So ignore it at your own risk.

How you might use it: Digital PR can seem overwhelming at first. Start with one or two techniques and build from there. Don’t worry about churning out press releases—they’ll have little or no impact without a solid strategy behind them. Instead, try reaching out to a few influencers and see if they might be willing to publish a guest blog post or host one of your experts on their podcast. Perhaps you can arrange a joint webinar with a strategic partner. Small incremental steps can produce outsize results.

These 21 inbound lead generation techniques would make a formidable marketing plan by themselves. But if you have limited resources, you can still make great strides toward developing more quality inbound leads by picking a few to focus on. They don’t have to replace any traditional techniques that are working well for you today. In fact, high-growth firms almost always use a combination of digital inbound and traditional marketing tactics to reach a wider range of people. By accelerating your transition toward an inbound-forward marketing strategy, you will be better aligned with today’s buyers—and become an active participant in the way they find, learn to trust, vet and select their professional services partners. 

The post Top 21 Inbound Lead Generation Techniques appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

We hear it all the time. As a marketing agency exclusively focused on professional services, Hinge has these types of conversations daily.

For good reason. In 2013, more than 70% of buyers reported turning to their personal network when they needed a new service provider. While referrals remain the top search method for professional services, less than 60% of today’s buyers ask for referrals — a 15% decrease.

Why has there been such a dramatic change?

Today’s professional services buyers have adopted digital techniques. With visibility levels decreasing across the marketplace, it’s becoming more important for firms to maintain a visible online presence.

LinkedIn has more than 830 million members world-wide, including more than 250 million in North America alone. It goes without saying, any professional who wants to develop, monitor, and nurture connections must have a presence on the go-to social media network for business.

But it’s really about more than just “being there.”

To get the greatest return on your (time) investment, there are certain factors that matter more than others. The ultimate goal, as always, is growth – personally and professionally.

1. Look the Part

Like all technology, LinkedIn, and social media as a whole, serve to replace or augment aspects of less-digital life. It’s generally accepted that with networking and business development, a positive first impression can make the difference.

Now consider this scenario – You’re walking into the event hall of the most important conference of the year. I’m guessing you don’t look like you were up till 4am at a client mixer (even if you were!) and you certainly aren’t wearing a tank-top. No, you’re suited-up, Barney Stinson style, with a pocket full of business cards and those all-important talking notes memorized. It’s go-time.

The same needs to be true for your LinkedIn profile—the digital version of your legendary first impression. Remember that buyer behavior statistic I mentioned above?

Nowadays, buyers rely on their own recognizance to make key decisions. A quick Google search of a question can land them on your blog (like this one) or social media profile. Then, it’s go-time and you need to be ready.

Here are a few key tips:

Use a professional photo. Excluding those making a living in the professional rodeo circuit, it’s unlikely you would attend a professional event wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. The same goes for a LinkedIn profile picture. Wear professional attire and have a professional take your photo. Use Instagram for snapshots of you and your dogs (I certainly do).

Create a disruptive headline. LinkedIn uses your current position at your organization as the default headline for your profile. That’s cool if your goal is to disappear into those nearly 600 million profiles. You can and should do better. Think of your headline as the words that follow an initial handshake. Keep it to 220 characters or less and make sure to describe what you do and how you are different.

Use the Summary section to tell a (short) story. Here is your next best chance to make an impression. The summary section should share your story and explain how you got where you are today. Write in the first person and explain how you help solve client’s key challenges, the kind that keep them up at night. It’s not enough to say that you are great at what you do. Everyone does that. Consider describing how you approach problems and what you do differently to solve them. If you’re not the next Charles Dickens, feel free to use bullet points to list strengths or specialties.

Complete your profile. It really does matter that you include previous experience and provide examples of expertise. Just like you would at a conference booth. Fill out anything that is relevant, including links to articles you’ve written and professional organizations you belong to. If you set up your profile a few years ago and haven’t touched it since, it’s long overdue for an update.

2. Make Connections

If you’re already on LinkedIn, it’s safe to assume you’ve already connected with some of your friends and colleagues. It’s time to take it to the next level and expand your online network of connections. Your network is what you make of it, whether it’s to keep in touch, generate leads, or even find a new job.

The best time to connect with people is shortly after meeting them in person or over the phone. Make this habit part of your typical follow up protocol. Find them on LinkedIn by searching their name and hitting “Connect.” But you’ll have much better results if you send the people you want to connect with a personalized note to remind them who you are and when you met.

Edit this message to explain your reason for connecting. Make sure to mention anything you may have spoken about to help jog their memory.

If there’s someone that you want to connect with but haven’t met personally, see if you have any connections in common. Then ask your mutual connection to introduce you. To make it easier on them, you could even craft a message for your connection to use.

3. “Engage!”

Sir Patrick Stewart made that phrase famous (shout out to the Trekkies), but I’d challenge that engage(ment) is even more relevant to social media.

As a best practice, we recommend taking just 15 minutes out of your day to engage and participate in relevant LinkedIn News Feed and Groups discussions. When done correctly, it can quickly help build your network and generate leads. Use these avenues as an opportunity to share your organization’s content and personal expertise.

Ask a question to get started. To start a discussion, use an open-ended question to ask how others have solved a specific problem. For example, instead of asking “Do you want to buy my digital lead generation product?” try a question that’s more likely to stimulate discussion, such as, “What social media tactics have helped your firm generate leads?”

Read the group rules and abide by them. Most LinkedIn Groups allow for discussion but frown upon spammy sales tactics. So that means no “Check out our new great digital lead gen product” posts. Blasting your services is a surefire turn off and can also get you banned from the group. Instead, try to make it educational. Have you just written a brilliant blog post on how to leverage LinkedIn networking in business development? Share it.

Post quality content. Make sure that everything you share is relevant to your audience. This means a healthy mix of your firm’s content as well as external content. You don’t want to come across as overly sales-y.

Don’t leave the event early. You wouldn’t make a connection at an event before exchanging business cards! So why start a discussion and then ignore the conversation that follows? LinkedIn actively promotes engagement, both good and bad, that generates discussion. Monitor your LinkedIn notifications for responses and continue the dialogue. Do you know someone who might be good to loop in to keep the ball rolling? Go ahead and @ them! Keep a discussion’s momentum going by ending your responses with another open-ended question. Also, make an effort to comment on other conversations and offer your expert opinion or shared experience.

Haters are going to hate. Remember that LinkedIn is a professional network. If someone posts a snarky comment, most people will recognize it for what it is. Avoid the temptation to respond in kind. A simple, polite response is usually sufficient and equally satisfying.

You now have a better idea of how to look the part, increase your LinkedIn connections, engage in groups, and grow your influence online. The time is now to make LinkedIn a key part of your professional networking strategy and remember, always be closing.

The post LinkedIn Networking Tips: Making Connections and Getting Business in 3 Easy Steps appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

A lead generating website: As the name implies, lead generating websites are meant to generate and nurture new business leads. There are variations in the types of leads a website might be looking for. For instance, one site may be focused on recruiting while another may be more interested in generating new business teaming partners.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System: CRM systems are intended to collect information on prospects. The information you can gather in a CRM on your contacts can include their website, email, phone number, mailing address, content downloads, and open opportunities you may have with them. Your firm can customize your CRM based on the information your firm needs to qualify your leads.

A Content Marketing Strategy: A strategic plan focused on generating and distributing educational content to your target audience on a consistent basis.  An end goal of your strategy could be to drive your audience through the content funnel, gaining their trust, having them view you as the expert, and then contact you when they are ready to buy.

A Content Calendar: A resource tool that marketing teams can use to plan all content marketing activities for both traditional and online marketing. The benefit of using a content calendar is being able to visualize and strategize how your content is distributed.

Basic Terms of a Lead Generation Campaign

Lead: A prospect that has some level of potential in becoming a client. The individual usually shows interest and provides his/her information to your firm.

Qualified Lead: A prospect that meets all of your firm’s qualifications and criteria necessary to be considered more likely to become a client.

Lead Generation: The initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of your firm.

Lead Generation Campaign: The process of capturing and generating interest in a service or product for the purpose of developing leads. This includes a strategy using a particular media source and an offer to create inbound leads.

Nurturing: Some leads qualify early on, while others may take more time. Many of your leads will need some nurturing through frequent communication until they are ready to be contacted by someone from your business development team.

Hard Offer: This is typically an offer for a service or product that usually requires the prospect to act immediately. Often times these offers are limited to a few people or may have an expiration date.

Soft Offer: This type of offer usually doesn’t require an immediate response. An example of a soft offer is an email newsletter subscription.

Lead Capture: The use of marketing automation systems, allows marketers to gather contact information from web forms, landing pages, and email campaigns.

Landing Pages: A page that a visitor can land at or arrive on in response to clicking on a link or offer.

Building Your Lead Generation Campaign

Imagine this scenario for a moment; you are at home when suddenly you receive a phone call from a local moving company. Earlier that day you filled out a form on their website. You input your name, phone number, zip code, and services you are interested in. While on the website you also downloaded a guide on how to get ready for your move. In doing so, this local moving company generated a new lead, and that lead is you. With the information captured, they are now able to contact you with further value and information. That is how the lead generation process takes place.

The process begins with several main components. These components are necessary in order to maximize the number of qualified leads that you receive. Below are a few components to consider:

Generating Leads Through a Successful Plan

By understanding the basic terms and having all of the components that make up an online lead generation campaign, you can then start to develop your plan by going through these 5 steps. It’s important to know that your process will vary depending on your objective, target audience, and use of media.

1. Set your campaign objective: Your objective can vary based on the outcome that you want to achieve. You may want to start off by defining your goal by either the number of leads expected or revenue per lead. These are just a few examples of what your campaign objective could possibly be. In order to better define your objective you may want to ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• How will you reach them?
• What do you want them to do?
• What call to action do you want to offer them?
• What are you going to offer them?
• How will you follow up?
• When will you will follow up?
• Who will follow up?
• What will you do or what will you ask when you follow up?
• How will you record and report on the results of the lead?
• Who will you report these results to?
• When will you evaluate your lead generation efforts?
• What will you consider a success?

2. Evaluate and select your campaign target: This may come from your current list of contacts that you have or you may want to focus on an entirely new target group for your lead generation campaign. Either way, make sure you have identified who those groups are and what their pain points and issues might be that your firm can answer with content.

3. Determine your media outlet: While there are many different media outlets ranging from email marketing to eBooks and guides, our research has shown that firms generating more than 60% of their leads online are 2x more profitable than their competitors. Therefore, choosing an email campaign or holding a webinar would be an example of a great strategy for generating more online leads

4. Develop an offer: To reiterate, a lead is a prospective client who has peaked interest in your firm’s product or service. In order to identify these prospects in your list of contacts, you may want to send out an offer. This could be a free download to a guide, registration for a free webinar, etc.  When the lead responds to your offer, their information is captured. They are then pulled into your lead generation campaign where you will continue to nurture your leads until they are ready to close a deal.

There are several main mechanics to creating an offer. First, you must create a landing page where a prospect lands for a distinct purpose. This is usually prompted by an offer and a call-to-action in which the prospect is prompted to fill out a form. Your hard or soft offer respondents become, as what we at Hinge like to call, a “new hot lead.” There are several different places you can promote these offers such as on a blog, on a webpage, on social media, in an email…these are just to name a few.

5. Create a communications strategy process: This includes what your follow-up process is going to look like. Strategizing how you will respond to your leads, what kinds of material will you share, who will contact them, and finally defining what your proposals will look like as well.

Looking at all the elements of a successful lead generation campaign can make your head spin a bit. So in conclusion, make sure your campaign includes a clear understanding of your target market, multiple media channels to capture and narrow down your leads, compelling offers, and a strong strategy that tracks performance. If you have all of these then you are good to go!

Free Resource

The Lead Generating Website Guide

Learn More

The post How to Run a Successful Lead Generation Campaign appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

First, accounting is a service that every business needs, so there is a lot of competition. And since many of the same accounting principles and skills apply across industries, many firms are competing for every company out there.

Second, there are compliance requirements that force businesses to use certain services (audit and taxes, for starters), so there is a sense that if I must do it, at least I should try to minimize costs.

The result is as inevitable as death. Accounting services become commodities. It’s difficult to differentiate between firms, and fee pressure becomes intense.

Not all accounting leads are equal

There are ways to free your firm from this dilemma. Here are some of my favorite strategies for tipping the scale in your favor:

1. Become a specialist.

There’s no need to be everything to everyone. There are a number of powerful advantages to specialization, including being able to command higher billing rates, generating more leads, and being able to close sales more easily.

You can focus on understanding an industry so well that you know all the non-accounting business challenges they are facing. Then you can have meaningful conversations about how your services help that industry solve other problems — problems that other CPA firms will completely miss. This is a big advantage and will bring you better leads because you offer more solutions.

Other types of specialization that can help differentiate your firm include:

• Service type specialization
• Geographical specialization
• Specialization in a certain role within organizations
• Specialization in certain types of problems

2. Become a Visible Expert® in your field.

Develop superior expertise in an area, then couple it with high visibility on an important emerging issue. If you choose the right issue and promote it effectively, your firm can develop a Visible Expert. This professional is a go-to person on an important topic. The presence of that person in your firm will not only raise the profile of the firm in the marketplace, it will also improve the reputation of the whole firm.

A Visible Expert is different from a “rainmaker” who brings in business through personnel connections. The Visible Expert generates high-quality leads through widely recognized competence. But beware. It’s not just about technical competence. It’s also about communication and helpfulness.

3. Do a major study on an important topic.

Nothing adds credibility and visibility like the release of a groundbreaking study. Of course, if you make the study relevant to a specific industry and answer a question everyone is dying to have answered, you stand a good chance of being noticed and taken seriously. It also helps to partner with a trade association or another industry player to add credibility and increase your reach.

4. Publish very useful content.

Forget the usual newsletter babble. Find a topic that will be very useful to your target group and explain it in very simple terms. In our research, we found that one of the top ways that buyers are convinced of expertise is when someone is able to explain a complicated subject in an understandable way.

Don’t be afraid to share your secret sauce. Today’s buyers have changed and expect free education. And if your accounting firm isn’t providing that education and expertise, you can be sure that someone else is. More helpfulness equals better accounting leads.

5. Get serious about social media.

Social media is not a fad or a treat to utilization. It’s continuing to grow in popularity and is simply the online version of networking. If you don’t have a strong presence on social media, you are missing an important communication channel to your potential clients.

In fact, about 60% of your accounting services buyers are checking you out on social media before purchasing. Social media has big benefits for accounting firms, including:

• It increases the visibility of your firm and its experts
• It promotes and increases the reach of your content marketing
• It allows your firm to stand out
• It builds trust and credibility

6. Invest in search engine optimization (SEO).

A recent study of 500 professional services firms found that SEO was the single most effective tool for generating online leads. It is also probably one of the single most cost-effective approach for generating high-quality accounting leads.

It works best when combined with very useful content (content that is also SEO optimized) and social media (to help share that content). At a high level, SEO consists of two main components:

• On-site SEO: Use targeted keywords or keyword phrases to communicate what the content on your site is and its relevance to what searchers are looking for.
• Off-site SEO: Obtain high authority and relevant links to your website through outside engagements and articles.

7. Put them all together.

The greatest impact on your lead quality and quantity will come from combining all of these techniques and strategies into a unified, ongoing campaign. While each of these tips helps raise the quality of your new leads, putting them together builds a sustainable advantage. It both distinguishes you from other firms and communicates a powerful message to potential clients. It clearly communicates that you provide value beyond the “me too” firms that flood the marketplace.

Well-targeted, clearly differentiated, obviously more value… sounds like a formula for better accounting leads.

The post 7 Strategies to Generate Better Accounting Leads appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

For this to happen, each team needs to understand the other and how to best support one another. But time and time again, we’ve seen that this often isn’t the case.

There are quite a few opportunities for these two distinct groups to work together toward their common goal: growing the business. To be successful though, it’s important to understand each team’s different roles and responsibilities and then examine how the two can best collaborate to support each other’s efforts.

What’s the Difference?

While both business development and marketing are responsible for growing the firm’s client base, they each have separate roles in achieving the same goal.

Here is a brief definition of each department’s roles and responsibilities:

• Business Development – Responsible for forming partnerships, strategic relationships, and other professional contacts in target markets in order to bring in new clients.
• Marketing – Responsible for understanding the needs and wants of the target market and developing a strategic plan to establish the firm’s overall messaging, benefits, capabilities, and for communicating those out to the target audience.

As you can see, both departments address the same issue—how to engage prospective and current clients—but they have different reasons and means for doing so.

Why the Disconnect?

It’s common for marketing and business development departments to not work together. In fact, across professional services industries, only a slight majority (54 percent) said marketing and business development activities were strongly coordinated. However, a lack of integration between the two teams can result in wasted efforts and lost opportunities for the firm.

There are a number of reasons why this disconnect might happen. For many firms, it’s just the way they’ve been operating for years. There aren’t real processes or intentional opportunities for getting the two departments to communicate. And they might not even realize how important it is.

In other cases, business development and marketing teams might be at odds. Although both teams should be working toward that common goal, it’s not always obvious from day-to-day. Business development team might press their marketing teams for more and better qualified leads, while marketing might expect business development to improve the way they nurture and close leads.

Ideally, marketing creates messaging, content, and collateral that will resonate with clients and prospects. Yet, no one is in a better position to inform marketing on industry trends and client pain points than business development folks. Business development teams are talking to clients day in and day out, so it’s likely that they have a pulse on what’s going on with target clients.

Likewise, when marketing creates the right content that generates interest, coordination with business development ensures that these warm leads can get nurtured, not lost.

How to Get on the Same Page

With a better understanding of each team’s roles and how collaboration can be beneficial, the next question is, in what ways can they collaborate?

Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities for joint activities that align with client-focused priorities. Here are a few:

• Strategy development – From the onset, business development and marketing should work together to determine the best strategy for communicating the firm’s message, following up with leads, and measuring the results of both teams’ efforts.
• Content development – The marketing team should create educational content like blog posts, articles, and webinars on topics that business development believes will resonate most with the target audience.
• Campaign development – Marketing’s role should be to create and promote campaigns, including events, while business development reaches out to the target audience for follow up.
• Speaking engagements – Marketing can work with business development to pitch to the firm’s SMEs to speak at industry events and conferences. Meanwhile, business development should attend these events to meet prospective and current clients and follow up afterward.

If you want to grow your business the right way and with a ton of momentum, then marketing and business development need to be focused on the same goal – working together to attract the right clients, clients who will truly benefit from your services.

Firms that make this commitment will stand out against the competition. And, when business development and marketing work together to attract ideal clients to the firm, less time is wasted and the team drives more revenue.

Ready to step up your firm’s approach to growing its business?

The post Driving Business: When Business Development and Marketing Are in Sync appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

And by partnership marketing, I’m not talking about simply sponsoring events. While sponsorships can certainly get you in front of the right crowd and may even generate a few leads here and there, they are more costly and less effective than partnership marketing that is more project oriented.

Download The 2021 High Growth Study Executive Summary

For example, you might consider conducting a research project with your partner or starting a special educational program. An innovative, high-profile project is more distinctive than your logo on a crowded sponsorship banner — and is a far more compelling when it comes to explaining to people why they should be doing business with you. Large, well-known businesses, trade associations or universities are all good partnering candidates.

At Hinge, we either do this ourselves with our own partners or walk our clients down the path of strategic partnership marketing. Here’s a list of the top most effective strategies that have actual results.

1. Write the definitive book on your signature topic.
This requires that you and your partner know your stuff. We always recommend that a book written in this spirit should be written for clients, not fellow professional practitioners. Probably the most time consuming of the top tactics, if you can manage to make a complicated topic easy to understand and appreciate, you and your partner will be seen as leaders by the people who matter most.

2. Produce quality webinars.
You and your partner can generate an entire webinar series around the content of your book. Webinars are a known commodity in the world of lead generation and brand building. Leverage the hard work that goes into a substantial thought piece like a book and tell the story with a compelling webinar series.

3. Conduct a groundbreaking research project.
Does a major question remain unanswered in the industry you collectively serve? Do people understand their competitors, or is perception foggy at best? Industry players rarely conduct research on their own, and when they do, they usually keep it proprietary. As service providers to the industry, you and your partner have more freedom. Do the research, share the results widely, and count the leads that come your way.
The research might be the foundation for other types of content, such as a book, a webinar series, or smaller pieces like joint white papers. The point is that research produces data, and data grounds the intuition upon which so many strategies and recommendations are built upon.

4. Develop a guest blogging strategy.
Posting your blog posts on your partner’s site accomplishes two goals in one. Having someone else pitch your expertise catapults your credibility and visibility with an audience much bigger than your own. It is also beneficial for SEO as guest posts drive traffic directly to your site and increase your search engine visibility. Just as with your own blog strategy, make sure the blog you’re pitching to your partner’s site is something that potential clients and referral sources want to read — having a blog just to have one won’t cut it. And it isn’t the time for your sales pitch.

5. Organize a specialized program.
While the bulk of the most effective strategies are going to have a digital component to them, more traditional means work too. Conference participation is a proven way to build credibility around your expertise and generate leads. Speaking and sponsorships are both tried and true. But you want to be a leader.

Why not be bold and develop your own specialized conference with a known partner? Let’s say your IT firm handles cloud computing security, and you have customers in the health care industry. Instead of presenting a panel at a health care conference, organize an entirely separate event centered on your topic. Set a clear focus on an emerging niche that is not currently addressed. Keep the conference small and specific at first, bringing in as many partners as needed to make it successful. As the conference grows, so will your audience.

Download The 2021 High Growth Study Executive Summary

Another type of highly effective program is a high-profile interview series. Let’s say that you market your services to CIOs. Imagine that you set up video interviews with the most visible CIOs from the entire industry you serve. Now all these high-profile CIOs know your firm. Other CIOs are interested in what the leading CIOs have to say; now they are also exposed to your firm. Everyone assumes that your firm knows a great deal about CIOs (which it does). In short, you generate leads through the promotion of others’ credibility and visibility. Make sure to share the full videos, excerpts, summaries, etc. in a variety of formats to maximize your overall visibility. Whether on your own or with a partner, educational programs deliver the goods.

Not convinced or think these are too time consuming to actually make happen? Like anything, once you get past the exploratory phase, things can fall into place surprisingly fast – as long as you’re aligning your partnership marketing strategy with your core capabilities. The above strategies are really about jointly promoting your expertise so that you can spread the marketing work load when it comes to the nurturing and promotion that needs to happen for an effective lead gen campaign. They also allow you to leverage each other’s customers, contacts, and other partnerships that might be in place, and lastly, your own customers can benefit from an expanded referral pool of trusted resources.

The post 5 Ways to Generate Quality Leads through Partnership Marketing appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

In reality, virtual marketing is a trend with an extensive history and many well-developed practices and procedures. At Hinge, for example, we’ve been using this approach for over 10 years, and we have helped countless professional services firms make the transition.

In this post, we want to share some of what we have learned to help firms gauge where they currently are and what approaches are already working for other firms in your industry.

Virtual Marketing Defined

Virtual Marketing is the use of online or digital techniques to achieve strategic marketing and sales objectives without resorting to traditional in-person marketing strategies such as networking at live events, face-to-face meetings, seminars or trade shows. Instead, digital substitutes such as earch engine optimization (SEO), social media, webinars or video conference calls are used to attract, engage and close new clients.

Virtual Business Development refers to that part of the overall new business acquisition process that involves qualifying new business opportunities, preparing proposals and turning prospects into clients. In other B2B situations, these activities are often called sales. However, in professional services, the traditional sales function is usually referred to as business development.

For the sake of simplicity, we will use virtual marketing as the most inclusive term, referring to the entire process of finding, nurturing and closing new clients. We will use business development when we are referring to the traditional sales function.

The Importance of Virtual Marketing

Virtual marketing has taken on an increased urgency since the introduction of widespread work-from-home restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic. But the push toward virtual marketing for the professional services started well before this disruptive event. It has gained importance over recent years for a couple of very key reasons.

First, there is the simple expedient of being where your prospects are looking. Our previous research has documented an increasing shift in professional services buyers’ behavior toward the use of digital techniques in the researching of business issues and selection of professional services providers.

At the same time, the use of traditional approaches to finding professional services providers, such as asking a friend or colleague for a referral, has seen a corresponding decline. Our research shows that over 70% of pre-engagement activity already happens online.

The second reason is that a virtual or digital approach has important economic advantages. Firms that employ effective digital strategies grow faster than their more traditional peers. But it doesn’t stop there. They are also much more likely to be highly profitable.

Let’s face it, flying around the country and attending live events are time consuming and expensive. And while these traditional approaches can be effective, they are not particularly efficient.

As you might imagine, virtual marketing has a number of significant advantages.

Advantages of Virtual Marketing

1. Allows you to be visible where your prospects are looking. Perhaps the single most important benefit of a virtual approach is that it focuses your presence in the channels where your potential clients are already looking for business insight and guidance. When faced with a business issue, most prospects will first take the easiest and fastest action—they will look online. If they find your useful content there, they will know that you are a good candidate to help them. 
2. No geographic constraints. Because you have a virtual presence, you are accessible around the clock and around the globe. Suddenly a remote location is no longer an impediment to offering your services to clients anywhere. Many clients already have large, geographically dispersed operations so they are already used to doing business remotely. Plus, you have the option of hiring talent from any geography.
3. You can easily demonstrate your expertise. The challenge with demonstrating your expertise is that it is invisible. You can’t tell if a person has expertise simply by looking at them. So how can you make your expertise visible? You do that by making it tangible—writing an insightful blog post or delivering a helpful webinar. And unlike a traditional face-to-face educational event that only happens once and is only seen by a limited audience, a virtual webinar can be accessed over and over again. Your potential audience is greatly expanded.
4. You can offer high-value specialized expertise. Specialized practices used to require a large population base or a life lived on the road. That is no longer true. Miami or Seattle, no problem. You’re hopping on a video conference call, not an airplane. Since you have access to any type of potential client, you can build a practice that is highly specialized and highly valued by your target audience.
5. Services can be packaged and branded. Given that you have access to a vast number of potential clients, it is practical to offer services in branded packages. Not every potential client will be a good match for your branded services package. But that is not a problem. Since you can access such a wide selection of prospects, you can shape your content and marketing strategy to attract those prospects that are a perfect fit with your offering. And those that you do attract will be much easier to convert into clients since they are looking for exactly what you are offering.
6. Saves time and money. In almost all cases, virtual marketing is less costly and less time consuming than the traditional alternatives. Most travel is reduced or eliminated. Instead of taking two or three hours to attend a live networking event, you can spend 20 minutes on social media. It comes as no surprise then, that firms that generate more of their business virtually are more profitable.
7. Drives faster growth. Just as virtual marketing drives greater profitability, it also drives greater growth. The figure below shows that the greater the level of your online business generation, the faster your firm grows. Why would that be the case? We believe that a strategy centered on virtual marketing and business development more closely mirrors the way today’s buyers go about understanding business challenges and selecting professional services providers.

Virtual Marketing and Business Development

Many folks realize that virtual marketing strategies and techniques work well to attract new business leads. What they may not realize is that a virtual approach is also well suited to nurturing those leads until they turn into opportunities and then convert those opportunities into paying clients. In short, a virtual approach works on the entire marketing and sales funnel.

As potential clients move through the new business funnel, different virtual techniques become more or less relevant. For example, SEO is very important in attracting potential leads, while video case studies are more applicable to closing new business.

There are also a number of techniques which work well at multiple stages of the funnel. For example, social media can be useful in both attracting and nurturing new leads. And video conference calls work well during both nurturing and closing prospects.

In the next section, we’ll identify and describe some of the most widely used virtual marketing techniques and show you where they might be employed in an overall strategy. 

Virtual Marketing Techniques

Virtual marketing and business development employ a variety of digital tools, some very familiar, and others less widely understood. We have grouped the most widely used techniques together, to help you understand how these tools can be used to execute a modern virtual marketing strategy. But keep in mind that many techniques are applicable to multiple stages in the new business development pipeline. 

Techniques to Increase Visibility

These techniques help you be found by your target audience, so they are generally top-of-the-funnel techniques. They also tend to convey credibility and signal your areas of expertise.

Search Engine Optimization When faced with a business challenge, most potential clients’ first step is to do a web search. “Googling it” is a fast and easy way to acquire both information and a perspective on how to approach the issue. SEO is the process you use to be found for relevant searches. It involves understanding which terms and issues you should target (keywords), having helpful content that speaks to that issue, offering a well-designed, mobile-friendly website and cultivating high-quality links to that page (backlinks) that tell search engines influential websites think your content is helpful. If this sounds like a lot of work, you are right. But it is worth it. Beware of shortcuts or “hacks.” There are none. These are scams.

Guest Authorships Guest authorships are blog posts or articles you write for other people’s blogs or online publications. These are typically trade publications or influential thought leaders’ blogs. Many are free, but some publications offer sponsored (paid) content. These guest authorships increase your visibility among target audiences and boost credibility (usually). Another big benefit is that you can sometimes get a link back to your website, which helps your site’s ability to be found (see backlinks above).

Digital Advertising There are many variations on paid digital advertising. Ads that show up on the same page as search results (paid search) are an alternative to SEO, for example. You can also target specific company or role profiles (e.g., CTOs or HR Directors in large firms). This is helpful when you are trying to reach a new target audience or have a new message to communicate. Digital advertising in not widely used by professional services firms, as it is not always cost effective. 

Techniques to Communicate Expertise

These techniques typically involve deeper engagement and the opportunity to share your expertise and communicate your story in greater depth and richness. We tend to think of these techniques as mid-funnel, as they build and nurture a relationship. However, in many cases they are also helpful in attracting new prospects and closing new business. 

Blogging A blog is a dedicated section of your website where you publish helpful content, usually articles or short videos. Blogging is a classic way to demonstrate your expertise in a very tangible way. These blog posts are often the “content” that is found by the search engines. It should be educational and helpful. This content both attracts traffic to your website, increasing visibility, and conveys your expertise.

Digital Publications There are many types of digital publications, ranging from white papers and executive guides to research reports and e-books. What they share in common is that they are “premium content,” in exchange for which prospects are willing to fill out an online form to receive. This is a critical technique for building an email list . If your content is truly relevant and valuable, most people will gladly exchange a small amount of personal information for it. The depth of this content also conveys your expertise more fully.

Webinars These online educational events serve a similar function to the digital publications described above. The primary difference is that they are aural and visual rather than written communications. As such they have a greater appeal to some people. If they are “live,” rather than prerecorded, they also allow for interactive elements such as Q&A and polls. Many formats are possible. Think of them as digital seminars. 

Podcasts In some ways, podcasts as similar to radio programs. They are audio recordings of interviews or monologues on topics of interest to your target audience. Often popular with people facing long commutes or looking to learn while they exercise, these formats are often very personal as well as informative. As such, they cultivate a comfortable familiarity and help build a relationship.

Virtual Events Virtual events are the logical extension of webinars. They typically run longer, however—from a couple of hours to multiple days—and they may include multiple presentations, panel discussions, Q&A sessions and the like. Think traditional conferences and events migrated to the virtual world.

Video Case Stories and Testimonials Professional services have a long history of using case stories and client testimonials to convey their expertise and show prospective clients how they can help them. Capturing these stories on video allows them to be accessed repeatedly without having to bother your clients to give “live” testimonials. These help prospects get a better feel for what it’s like to work with you and how your expertise might apply to their situation. 

Techniques to Build Engagement

Engagement is a two-way street. These techniques help you reach out and communicate your message and engage in a conversation. While social media is useful throughout the whole marketing funnel, these are typically used in the business development (sales) part of the process.

Emails As one of the oldest and most universally used digital techniques, email continues to play a critical role in developing new business. It is your direct link to individual prospects and how you deliver your content and offers. It gives you tremendous flexibility to personalize your marketing, especially when paired with marketing automation.

Social Media Social media is the digital equivalent of traditional networking. You can use it to research and find new prospects, monitor marketplace activity, build engagement and even generate referrals. As with traditional networking, success requires time and attention, as well as an approach that involves giving as much as getting. Different social media platforms are popular with different audiences, so be sure you understand the habits of your target audiences before committing to a platform.

Video Conference Calls Conference calls have long been an integral part of most firms’ business development efforts. Changing technology and evolving social norms have now elevated the video call to center stage. No longer a novelty, firms are learning that a video call is just about as good as a face-to-face meeting for most business purposes. Engaging with prospects and closing sales are perfect uses. 

Marketing Infrastructure

While we don’t normally think of infrastructure as a “marketing technique” per se, these software tools enable the implementation of the techniques described above. Here are a few of the main categories you may consider. 

Website The hub of all your virtual marketing and business development activities, your website is arguably your single most important marketing tool. Everything else is either housed there (e.g. your blog) or connected to it in some way. It needs to be a modern, well-designed communications and business development platform. Almost every prospect, job candidate or referral source will visit it, and it can be the single biggest reason you get ruled out as a possible service provider. Take it seriously.

Marketing Automation Marketing automation is a rapidly evolving area, with scores of players. Every year, these systems add to an ever-expanding list of features. In addition to saving an incredible amount of time, they also allow you to personalize your offers and automate the follow-up process.

Communication Platforms These are the platforms that let you communicate easily with you prospects via video (e.g., Zoom, Go-To-Meeting and WebEx), hold a webinar (e.g,. Go-To-Webinar or On24) or send an email.

Limited Function Apps There are also thousands of apps and data services that help automate the research, analysis and implementation tasks associated with any marketing technique. From SEO to social media, they help you lighten the load. 

A Final Thought

The time to consider a more robust virtual marketing and business development strategy is here. Long-term trends in professional services buyers’ behavior have set the stage, and the pandemic of 2020 and beyond has made it a necessity.

While the transition to virtual marketing may be challenging, it is worth the effort. A “virtual-first” strategy is not to be feared or avoided. In fact, it is a direct route to faster growth and greater profits for your professional services firm.

The post Virtual Marketing and Business Development for the Professional Services appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

1. Embrace the new birthplace for leads.

Lead generation is the process of identifying potential new clients. These are the marketing and business development activities that occur on the front-end and are typically lumped in with the process of developing relationships. For most principals and other C-suite executives, client referrals and professional networking have traditionally led their lead gen activities.

Download the High Growth Study 2020: AEC Edition Executive Summary

However for real growth, your lead generation techniques need to go further than tapping into existing clients. Truly effective lead generation today needs to encompass a full range of targeted online and offline measures. Think of it as a system that generates, qualifies, and nurtures leads until they become new business opportunities.

2. Acknowledge that all leads are not equal.

But because some prospects are not ready to buy today, it doesn’t mean that they are not valuable for your overall growth strategy. In many firms, there is a tendency for those in business development roles to devalue and reject leads that are not ready to buy today.

Nurturing long-term leads has an additional payoff, beyond the obvious. These long-term leads can also serve as an excellent referral sources.

3. Educational content actively drives referrals from non-clients.

Traditionally, many firms have thought of referrals as only coming from clients or colleagues from other professions. These are major sources of referrals, but they’re not the only ones. In fact, our research shows that 81.5% of buyers have received a referral from someone they have never worked with.

Where do these non-client referrals come from?

94.5% of these referrals are made based on knowledge of a firm’s reputation, expertise, or visibility. Only 5.5% of these referrals come from someone that the referred firm has met before. So, focusing efforts on building your firm’s brand (reputation x visibility) and demonstrating your expertise are essential for moving beyond traditional client referrals and getting non-client referrals.

While traditional marketing techniques such as networking and sponsorships can help generate brand awareness, it can be extremely difficult to measure their effectiveness. Creating a quality content piece with a conversion action nurtures prospects/referrals, builds trust and grows your email list.

These helpful content pieces can be free, but require an email address or other contact information to download. The idea here is that when someone searches on a specific keyword phrase, they will click through to this resource page. If the content on the page is relevant, the visitor will supply their email address and download the piece.

Download the High Growth Study 2020: AEC Edition Executive Summary

Educational content pieces should be thoughtfully created to be relevant to the issues that are most important to your target audiences. In marketing speak, we call this building the content funnel. Your firm should have a variety of content that will accomplish three goals: attract prospects, build engagement, and convert those prospects into clients.

Architecture lead generation will continue to evolve but today’s firm principals have a new arsenal to drive leads. Embrace the new online channels, think beyond your immediate return, and nurture prospects for the future.

The post Generating Architecture Leads: 3 Important Lessons for Principals appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Among professional services firms and especially within the management consulting niche, there are many factors involved with getting the next contract.  The strength of relationships among buyers and influencers, the brand, where prospects are in their buying cycle – just to name a few – all can affect getting that signature and lead some firms to question what marketing activities to focus on.

Download the The Visible Firm Guide

Fortunately, there is data to guide firms. The Hinge Research Institute has a growing body of research that shows the benefits of engaging in digital marketing.  For example, in a report by Hinge, we found that most prospective buyers do the following:

• Look at your website (80.8%)
• Search online (63.2%)
• Ask colleagues (62.4%)
• Review social media (59.9%)
• Talk to a reference (55.5%)

Understanding that you ignore your online presence at your own business development peril, how should a management consulting firm address its strategy? For lead generating ideas, let’s look at these five points above through another lens:

1. Website.  This is your home base where you control the positioning, messaging, visual elements and level of interaction with audiences.  Be aware of your company’s brand development strategy so that the website reflects the company you want to become.  Consider offering various levels of educational content about issues faced by target audiences.  They will come back for more.
2. Online presence.  With so many prospects potentially Googling you and your firm, you need to exist beyond the website with a strong, business-oriented authority.  Get published with thought leadership pieces in other blogs, get quoted in the press, or speak at an industry event.
3. Ask colleagues.  Since audiences will ask their friends and colleagues about you, you must try and avoid the “I’ve never heard of them” response.  Building your network within your niche with credible content can allow those influencers to respond positively.  You may never even know they did, but cultivating a network creates the foundation for opportunity.
4. Social media.  Here’s where you can really amplify your expertise.  Review your LinkedIn profile and give it a makeover as needed.  Add the right photo and summary statement, join and participate in the right groups, and add links to places where you’ve been published.  Do the same review of your company page.  If there’s only time for one social network in your life, LinkedIn is the one.
5. References.  Professionals you put forth as references will of course say good things about you (or else you wouldn’t use them).  But help them out a little.  Stay in touch with them using that content they’ll find useful.  They will appreciate knowing that you have a position on an issue, are the thought leader on a topic, or otherwise have staked out some area of strength.  It gives them something to talk about other than “he’s a great guy” or “she delivered everything she said she would.”

Download the The Visible Firm Guide

At times, marketing your firm can feel like an overwhelming task. Where do you invest your limited time and money? What will work and what will not? One of the best ways to find answers is to examine how buyers select firms like yours. Our research has illuminated a path forward: invest in your website, build an online presence and build a strong network online and offline. The most successful firms use these strategies with great success. Now it’s your turn.

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