If you could light a Bunsen burner under a great brand and distill it down to its most basic substance, you’d be left with the brand’s most valuable asset — its name. Even after other critical elements have evaporated away, a brand’s name still packs a punch. If American Express, IBM, or Coca-Cola were to shut down their businesses today (assuming nothing had tainted their reputations), these brands could be revived a few years from now and still be formidable contenders in their categories. Such is the power of the brand name.

More and more professional services companies are recognizing that their firm name can help them stand out in a competitive environment and contribute to long-term customer loyalty. Over the past five decades a whole industry has emerged to help entrepreneurs and corporations name their businesses and products. Larger naming firms employ linguists and proprietary computer programs to develop hundreds or thousands of potential names and name fragments (called morphemes). Smaller firms rely on their experience, wit, and brainstorming techniques to produce options for their clients. Both approaches can produce excellent names. And very poor names, too.

In this post, we take a closer look at firm names — the good and the bad. Names can be broken into five categories:

1. Coined
2. Descriptive
3. Abstract
4. Acronyms
5. Founder/Partner names

Let’s dive into each.

Free Resource

The Rebranding Guide for Professional Services Firms

Learn More

1. Coined Names

A few years ago, names coined from Greek and Latin roots were all the rage, and they still pop up with some regularity today. From Accenture to Zillow, coined names are imbued with latent meaning and are easy to trademark. Trouble is, these names have little meaning to ordinary people who are unfamiliar with classical languages — and they can sometimes be bland and hard to remember. ArcelorMittal and Amedisys don’t exactly roll of the tongue, do they?

2. Descriptive Names

Many names are descriptive of their services. Computer Associates, General Mills, Pre-Paid Legal Services are examples of business whose names reflect what they do. On the upside, people will understand what these businesses do. On the downside, these names can be very generic, making them difficult to trademark. Generic names tend to make poor long-term brand names because they have little traction in our minds. And as companies evolve, these names don’t offer much flexibility.

3. Abstract Names

Other names are pure abstractions, like Amazon, Alphabet, Google, and Karhoo. While many of these are real words, they have little obvious connection to their businesses. Their value comes from their quirkiness, not their connotations. What these abstract names lack in seriousness they more than make up for in the attention they command. They are difficult to forget. There is a danger with these names, however — they have the potential to be perceived as unprofessional, eccentric, or silly.

4. Acronyms

Another popular choice are acronyms — IBM, CVS, and CBS are well-known examples. In almost every case, the name started as something else (a string of founders’ names or a descriptive name) and became condensed over time. Clients, for instance, have a knack for abbreviating long vendor names. The problems with acronyms, however, are legion: they are usually impossible to trademark, they have no meaning or emotional appeal, and they are easily transposed and confused with similar-sounding company names.

5. Founders’ or Partners’ Names

Many companies, particularly in the professional services, are named for their founders or partners (and in larger firms, these names can be a real mouthful). This tradition, which goes back for centuries, makes sense in an industry in which personal connections are all-important. The long-term implications, however, can be problematic. When a named principal dies or leaves the firm, those personal connections are lost. In many cases, as these companies evolve over time, so do their names — as new partners replace old. These transformations can create confusion in the marketplace and makes it difficult to establish a widely known brand name.

This tradition of naming companies for their principals is unlikely to go away any time soon. But firms with an eye to the future may want to choose a name with better long-term branding prospects — one that is short, differentiated from competitors, and unlikely to metamorphose over time. You could select a single distinctive-sounding founder’s name, for instance, and stick with it for the long haul.

Choosing a Good Firm Name

Most experts agree that choosing a good name is important. A name encapsulates all of the content — intellectual and emotional — that people associate with a product or service. Some names make this process of association easier than others. With all of the challenges business owners face, it makes sense to use every advantage at their disposal.

So what’s the right name for your firm? Well, that depends on a variety of factors. Unless you are a startup, your current name carries at least some — and perhaps considerable — equity from its years of use. Adopting a new name at an established firm is no small decision.

But if you are in a highly competitive market with little differentiation among firms, a distinctive name could give you a leg up. In fact, there are a number of reasons you might want to break with the past and introduce a new firm name:

• Your name is easily confused with a competitor
• Your name is difficult to remember, spell, or pronounce
• You are looking for a way to differentiate your firm
• Your name or brand feels stale and old
• Named partners have retired or left the firm
• Your firm is trying to recover from a PR disaster
• You are undergoing a major rebrand or shift in strategic direction

If are considering a new moniker for your organization, you’ll want to choose one that will stand the test of time. Remember, your name has a great deal of potential. It’s an opportunity to establish new associations and expectations as your firm takes on the future.

6 Ways Your Name Can Build Your Brand

1. Differentiate you; contrast you against competitors
2. Aid recall of your brand name
3. Engage your audience
4. Support your positioning
5. Establish your business’ personality
6. Stand for something more universal than your product or service

Read Other Posts in This Series:

• Elements of a Successful Brand 1: Brand Positioning
• Elements of a Successful Brand 2: The Tagline
• Elements of a Successful Brand 3: Personality
• Elements of a Successful Brand 4: Brand Promise
• Elements of a Successful Brand 5: The Name
• Elements of a Successful Brand 6: The Logo
• Elements of a Successful Brand 7: Color
• Elements of a Successful Brand 8: Messaging
• Elements of a Successful Brand 9: Imagery

Free Resource

The Rebranding Guide for Professional Services Firms

Learn More

The post Elements of a Successful Brand 5: The Name appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

M&As are especially popular in the professional services space with the growing wave of retiring Baby Boomers and a rapidly changing economy and marketplace.

So what is the impact of all these mergers? More importantly, does an M&A make sense for your firm?

At Hinge, we’ve studied the factors that drive premium valuations and high growth and uncovered some facts that may surprise you.

Strategic M&A: Seeking a solution to a business problem

There are essentially two kinds of mergers and acquisitions: strategic and financial.

A financial merger or acquisition is pursued, as the name implies, for financial reasons—often to pick up some quick cash or as an investment. But I’m not really interested in financial M&As for this particular discussion.

Strategic mergers and acquisitions offer a solution to a different business problem. Perhaps the acquirer is looking to grab a new product line, add some additional facilities, enter a new market, or gain expertise and intellectual property. For professional services firms, a strategic M&A is often about gaining credibility, adding intellectual firepower, or changing the balance of power in a particular market.

The bottom line is a strategic merger yields value for both the acquired and the acquiring firm. To reluctantly use a hackneyed phrase, it’s a “win-win” for both parties.

So what does a strategic merger look like? Here’s a good example:

A few years back we were researching firms that received unusually high valuations. One caught my attention. It was a smaller firm that specialized in top-secret work and had deep experience and contacts in one of the intelligence agencies. This firm was sold for an eye-popping 10-times revenue.

When we asked the acquiring firm why they were willing to pay such sums, their reasons were perfectly clear.

The target firm offered must-have qualifications and contracts with a must-have client. Not having these capabilities would put the acquiring firm at a significant disadvantage when competing for upcoming work. In short, they believed the long-term value for the acquiring firm was much greater than the inflated purchase price.

That’s a strategic merger.

But when is it advantageous to proceed with an aggressive growth strategy of mergers and acquisitions, rather rely on disciplined organic growth?

When M&A Works as a Growth Strategy

Mergers and acquisitions make perfect sense in a variety of situations. For example, maybe an opportunity presents itself that requires fast, decisive action. Or maybe a competitive threat compels a defensive move to get bigger, faster.

Here are five situations in which mergers and acquisitions have proven useful as a growth strategy:

1. Fills critical gaps in service offerings or client lists

When the marketplace changes in response to external events or new laws and regulations, it can create a gap in a firm’s critical offerings. It is a prime opportunity for a strategic merger.

After 9/11, the national security and defense industry lacked the relevant skills to match rapidly changing federal requirements. Companies quickly realized they would be sidelined without the skills and experience necessary to meet the new security demand. The firms with the requisite experience and relevant client lists suddenly found themselves strategically valuable and highly sought-after acquisition targets.

2. Efficient way to acquire talent and intellectual property

Many industries are seeing an acute shortage of experienced professional staff. Cybersecurity, accounting, and engineering are just a few examples that immediately come to mind.

The reality is, intellectual property (IP) is the new currency of modern business. Once squirreled away and carefully guarded, IP is now actively bought and sold. For many companies, the acquisition of a firm and its IP is the quickest path to market dominance—or at least a roadblock to competitive incursions.

3. Opportunity to leverage synergies

A strategic merger, if done as part of a thoughtful growth strategy, can result in synergies that offer real value for both the acquired and the acquiring.

There are two basic types of M&A-related synergies: cost and revenue.

Cost synergies are all about cutting costs by taking advantage of overlapping operations or resources and consolidating them into one entity. In a strategic M&A, a number of areas are suitable for cost-cutting, such as redundant facilities, workforces, or business units and areas of operation. But cost synergies can also result in an increase in buying and negotiating power thanks to the larger combined budget.

Revenue synergies alter the competitive balance of power and create opportunities to change market dynamics, sell more products, or raise prices. Companies can take advantage of revenue synergies and make more money in many ways, including the following:

• Reduce competition
• Open new territories
• Access new markets (through newly acquired expertise, products, services, or capacity)
• Expand the customer base for cross-selling opportunities
• Develop sales opportunities by marketing complementary products or services.

4. Add a new business model

Many professional services firms are based on a billable-hours business model, but that is certainly not the only option. Some firms generate revenue as a fixed fee or through performance incentives. Others may employ subscription models (popular in the software industry).

Of course, the value of an effective M&A growth strategy is not just about how you are paid. A merger may also offer a new type of service, such as brokerage, insurance or money management. If you’re considering a new business model, the easiest way to develop and test it out is to acquire a firm that’s already using the model successfully. That way you avoid possible missteps from inexperience.

5. Save time and long learning curves

Much like adding a new business model, a strategic M&A may help you save considerable time and expense in your growth strategy.

Let’s say you’re considering a new service for your business. Your firm is fully capable of developing and delivering that service on its own, but it will take more time, money, and resources than you’re willing to devote. It might be easier and more cost-effective to simply acquire the capability.

Not only is this a practical and smart shortcut to the sought-after service and expertise, you also acquire a built-in customer base and target audience. Bingo!

When M&A Falters as a Growth Strategy

But not everyone succeeds when mergers and acquisitions are part of the overall growth strategy. Sometimes a solid strategy is derailed by problems in implementation or flaws in the logic or reasoning behind the strategy.

Let’s explore how an M&A growth strategy can go wrong:

1. Cultural clash

Different firms have different cultures. No surprise there. But the difference in cultures can be problematic.

You can guard against culture clash by being clear about the culture you want and using all tools at your disposal to ensure you achieve it. For example, education, the right incentives, and a focus on your employee brand is most helpful when looking at a possible merging of corporate cultures.

2. Loss of differentiation

Avoid mergers when the features—and benefits—that make one firm valuable are not relevant to the other brand. Rather than add critical assets, capabilities, or value, the acquired or merged firm dilutes the brand and competitive advantage.

A merger should be the result of a carefully researched brand analysis. It should NOT be an ego-driven trophy deal.

3. A major distraction

Mergers and post-merger integrations are resource-intensive activities that usually involve some of the most senior people in the firm. If they are not prepared for it, they can easily be distracted by other critical, but less urgent activities.

The potential for distraction is greatest—and most profound—after the deal is done and the focus moves to integration. If senior management gets too distracted, you risk having the merger flounder as well as damaging the underlying business.

4. Marketplace confusion

Let’s say Firm A, a highly respected accounting firm that specializes in manufacturing, acquires Firm B, a cybersecurity firm with specializes in helping retailers. The acquisition seems very strategic. Seeing an opportunity, the combined firm, A+B Associates, tries to add retail to their specialization. The result is a confusing marketplace.

Does A+B still specialize in manufacturing? Are they no longer an accounting firm?

The confusion can be even worse if the only rationale for the merger is growth for growth’s sake. The whole confusing mess could be avoided with a solid, research-based plan to position the merged brand and help current and potential customers understand the rationale and benefits of the merger.

5. Loss of brand strength

If the marketplace is confused, the strength of your brand will suffer. After all, brand strength is the product of a simple equation:

Reputation x Visibility = Brand Strength

Where reputation is what you’re known for and visibility is how widely you are known for it. Understanding this equation can help you avoid the perils of diminished brand strength.

An ill-timed merger can quickly diminish the strength of both the acquiring and acquired brands. Here’s an all-too-typical example:

Brand M, which has considerable visibility in the Midwest, wants to expand into the Southeast. To accomplish this, Brand M acquires Brand S, a southeastern-based firm. But there is a problem. The Midwestern brand is unknown in the southeast, so its overall brand strength is actually diminished by the acquisition. And, when the southeastern firm adopts the brand identity of Brand M, its brand strength is also diminished. Everybody loses.

Free Resource

The M&A Guide for Professional Services Firms

Download Now

So how do you overcome this problem? Sometimes a gradual transition to a new brand is the right answer. Other times a concerted focus on building the visibility of the new brand in the market where it’s less known is the key.

Watch out for situations where you must change both the focus of the reputation and increase visibility. These are the most challenging mergers.

Developing Your High Growth Strategy

Achieving high growth starts with a true understanding of the marketplace as it really exists and how your firm is actually perceived (not as you’d like it to be perceived). Do your research and understand fully what each firm—the acquired as well as the acquiring—bring to the equation.

In the end, a successful high-growth strategy will include the following elements:

It is forward-looking—A good strategy is not just a response to what has been. It’s about what can be achieved. Where do you really want your firm to go? How will you get there? What needs to happen to do it?

It doesn’t require complete consensus—If absolutely everyone thinks it’s a great plan, then you’re not taking appropriate risks.

It does require buy-in—Senior management must be on board and embrace what needs to be done. Without management buy-in, any strategy is doomed to failure. But don’t forget your employees. Workers at all levels should be enthusiastic about what the firm is gaining and where it’s heading.

It focuses on implementation—High growth requires careful implementation of every aspect of a business strategy and plan. Follow through with implementation.

If M&A is a part of your growth strategy, focus on the emerging culture and brand and carefully shape the new firm. And consider carefully how the merged firm will generate organic growth.

Free Resource

The M&A Guide for Professional Services Firms

Download Now

The post Mergers and Acquisitions as Part of Your Growth Strategy appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

We’ll walk through nine steps that will help sell the value of your services and win new clients.

1. Figure out the why

“Why do you need a value proposition?” If you can’t easily articulate why prospects should hire you, prospective clients won’t be able to either. It’s important to understand the value you have to offer your clients and express this clearly and succinctly. 

2. Really understand what you do

Take some time to understand exactly what services you provide so you can communicate this in your value proposition. When it comes to defining your “what,” consider these factors:

• Areas of business you serve
• Types of problems you solve
• Types of firms you serve

You could do this as a team exercise and have your colleagues write out what they think the organization does and compare notes. As part of the process, reflect on your firm’s positioning statement, if you have one.

3. Define your target audience

Narrow your target audience and let your expertise with that audience shine. Not only will it help differentiate your firm from the competition, but prospective clients will be more likely to engage your services knowing that you really understand their business.

4. Determine the how

• Think about the problems that you solve for your clients. 
• Think about the benefits you provide to your clients.
  • When you communicate these make sure you are speaking about benefits, not features. Often, people identify features (such as best approach or best expertise) rather than actual benefits (such as ability to eliminate bottlenecks, improve organizational productivity, etc.).

Start with a list and narrow it down to the ones that will make the biggest impact and distinguish you from competitors.

5. Prove it

Providing proof of your abilities will create another important layer of credibility. Develop a list of strong references that you can share with clients. In addition to this, think about where you can showcase studies of your success to boast your company’s credibility. Could this be done on your website? Social channels? Word of mouth? The opportunity here is endless. 

Don’t be afraid to add specific details such as clients you’ve served or years of expertise. These details that distinguish you from your competitors.

6. Create it.

Use this simple formula from Consulting Success to create your value proposition:

Who your customers are + What you provide them + Why they buy from you

Read over your value statement and make sure you’ve addressed all three points. Next, be sure that your statement is clear, no longer than a few sentences, and that it differentiates you from the competition. Your differentiators need to highlight something you do well that your competitors aren’t highlighting. 

7. Use it.

Your value proposition is part of your branding so use it everywhere—your website, as part of presentations, on collateral, social media sites, and anywhere else an opportunity exists!

8. Test it.

You need to make sure you’ve crafted a value proposition that will win new clients. The easiest way to test your value proposition is by trying it out! When you chat with prospective clients, see how people respond to you. Is it clear for people to understand? Do they seem to understand the value you offer? Do they seem to believe that you can deliver on your promise?

If you answered no to any of these questions, it’s back to the drawing board. Remember it’s worth the effort to get your value proposition right.

9. Revisit it.

As your company grows and services expand, you may want to revisit your value proposition. For management consulting, it’s especially important as services change and you develop new expertise.

Developing a value proposition for your firm is a crucial way to distinguish yourself from competition and easily be able to explain your services to prospects. So make sure you carve out the time and mental focus to develop one.

Already have a great value proposition? Have more brand building suggestions? Share them below.

The post 9 Steps to Building a Unique Value Proposition for Consulting Firms appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

For years, professional services have been marketed through personal relationships, referrals and a variety of networking and educational events. It was all about who you knew.

But all that is beginning to change. There is a new generation of buyers on the scene who have grown up with the Internet at their fingertips. They expect to be educated for free. They expect transparency in their professional services providers. And importantly, they expect to find a firm that fits their needs exactly, whether they work in Bangor, Maine or Bangkok, Thailand.

As a result, marketing today is no longer about who you know, but what you know. And how well you can spread the word.

The Rise of the Expert Through Content Marketing

This trend has provided fertile ground for a new, Internet-fueled incarnation of an old concept: the high-profile industry expert. More and more experts are rising from obscurity to become well-known names in their fields. We call these stars Visible Experts®, and they are leveraging content marketing to power their rise to prominence.

Interestingly, the rise of content marketing has also driven the development of outsourced marketing. Today, the skills required to market a firm are vast and varied. And because many of them are driven by technology, they require a great deal of expertise to keep up with the pace of change. Many firms don’t want the headache of keeping on top of all this change. So they turn to outside marketing firms to fill in the gaps, or even take the reins. In fact, we’re seeing evidence that firms are spending roughly 3 times as much on outsourcing today than they were two years ago.

Before we dig into this phenomenon and its implications for you, let’s begin with a definition.

Outsourced Marketing Defined

Outsourced marketing is the practice of contracting an organization’s marketing functions to an outside firm. Both strategic and operational functions can be, and often are, delegated to a third-party marketing partner, which has the specialized expertise, tools and professional staff to provide a complete suite of marketing services. And because it is responsible for the program’s performance, the outsourced partner usually reports regularly on the program’s performance.

Of course, professional services firms rely on different degrees of outsourced marketing, from handling everything in-house to outsourcing every function (see Levels of Outsourced Marketing Activities below).

For example, one marketing function commonly outsourced by professional services firms is website design. Very few firms have the expertise in-house to design and develop a complex website. It is a task best suited to a firm that designs and builds websites every day.

Some businesses, on the other hand, outsource every aspect of their marketing. This allows their leadership and professionals to focus intensely on their core business. They rely on their marketing partner to propose the strategy, implement it and report on its progress. Their marketing firm is a critical partner in their success.

Who Uses Outsourced Marketing, and Why?

Outsourced marketing is common in professional services firms of all sizes and across all industries. Even individual experts and practices within larger firms often seek outside marketing expertise.

There are many reasons firms outsource some or all of their marketing. Here are a few of the most common situations:

1. A firm can only devote a limited number of hours each week to marketing and they want to improve the quality and consistency of their marketing.
2. A small firm has no budget for a full-time marketer. Outsourcing frees up valuable, often billable, time they can spend serving their clients.
3. A large firm understands that outsourcing certain functions, such as content marketing, can be cheaper and higher quality than doing it themselves.
4. A marketing department uses an outside marketing firm to take over routine, repetitive or tedious tasks, such as designing and setting up email campaigns, so that they can focus on more strategic tasks.
5. A firm wants top-drawer marketing. Outsourcing to a reputable partner provides access to a team of highly skilled experts across a wide spectrum of marketing disciplines.
6. A firm’s partners are tired of investing in marketing yet never knowing if they are getting results. Their new outsourced marketing firm provides full accountability, measurement and reporting.
7. Leadership believes their marketing department is out of fresh ideas. So they hire an outside firm to provide marketing strategy, as well as implementation support in areas the in-house team is weak. Everything is handled by professionals who keep up with the latest trends, technologies and techniques.

For more reasons, check out the section below on the 5 Benefits of Outsourced Marketing

Levels of Outsourced Marketing Activities

Many firms outsource marketing functions in a haphazard way. Often, outsourcing decisions are reactive — filling unexpected gaps in resources. Firms don’t always understand that outsourcing can be a strategic asset, one that can vastly improve the efficiency and quality of their marketing. But to make the most of it requires at least some advance planning.

To help you better understand your situation, we have developed a scale of outsourced marketing maturity. Marketing tasks tend to be either specialized or routine. Specialized functions are needed infrequently and require a relatively high level of skill. Routine operations are conducted on a regular basis and require less skill, though they are not necessarily easy to implement or manage.

This scale is a tool you can use to determine your firm’s level of investment in outsourced marketing. It is not a measure of marketing sophistication (for instance, a Level 5 is not necessarily better than a Level 1), nor do individual levels correspond to firm size. But if you are evaluating outsourcing as a strategy, this scale can help you understand how you compare to other firms.

Level 1 – All functions in-house. This level tends to apply to firms at both extremes of sophistication — those that do little marketing at all and those with large, highly skilled marketing teams.

Level 2 – Some specialized functions outsourced. Usually this approach is used by firms that try to handle most of their marketing inside the firm even if they aren’t expert at them. These firms outsource only when they don’t have the skills to carry out a particular task (such as designing and coding a website).

Level 3 – Outsource specialized functions. Retain routine operations. These firms want experts working on the most technical aspects of their marketing. A relatively low-level in-house marketing team takes care of the more straightforward tasks.

Level 4 – Most specialized functions and some routine operations outsourced. Firms at this level maintain a very small marketing team to handle a few tasks that they want to keep close to home. But the majority of their marketing is conducted by an external firm that coordinates with the in-house team.

Level 5 – All functions outsourced. At Level 5, all marketing, including much of the strategy, is handled by a third-party team. This team works closely with management to align the marketing strategy with overall business objectives. Firm management is kept apprised of performance at frequently, regular intervals.

5 Benefits of Outsourcing Marketing

Why is outsourced marketing so popular with professional services firms? As it turns out, the reasons are rooted in the changing nature of professional services marketing, itself. Here are five compelling reasons that firms invest in outside marketing:

1. Marketing is not a core function of most professional services firms. Professional services firms tend to be run by accountants, attorneys, management consultants, engineers, or other professionals in their fields, not marketers (though there are some exceptions, to be sure). These professionals are often unfamiliar with the latest marketing trends and techniques — and they may not be inclined to become experts in yet another specialty.
2. Effective content marketing requires a growing, diverse skill set. Once upon a time, firms could get by with home-grown talent. Scheduling networking events and attending an occasional trade show require few specialized skills. Today’s marketing, however, requires highly developed technical expertise such as search engine optimization, landing page design, offer development, website analytics, persuasive writing and marketing automation — to name just a few.
3. Outsourced marketing is less expensive. While the fees for outsourcing may seem high at first, they can, in fact, be quite cost effective. You get access to a very diverse, high-quality set of skills without having to hire, train and supervise a team of specialists. You are only paying for what you need when you need it. And since you are using the talents of experienced specialists, they are also likely to produce better outcomes.
4. It helps keep your most valuable resources focused. Traditionally, professional services firms have relied on their most valuable people to write thought-leadership content and do the networking required to generate new business opportunities. But these demands take away from a professional’s billable time — an unending source of frustration for marketing directors everywhere. Outsourced marketing is changing that balance. An hour-long interview with an expert can provide enough information for an entire content marketing campaign. This can save many painful hours that experts might otherwise spend writing content themselves. Further, the outsourced marketer typically produces a superior outcome.
5. Outsourced marketing provides a single point of accountability. With the ascent of content marketing comes the rise of trackable marketing. Modern analytics and marketing automation tools let you track results very accurately. Accurate monitoring allows for clear accountability. In short, your outsourced marketing partner is accountable for results. That should be music to every managing partner’s ears.

3 Risks of Outsourced Marketing

Like any investment, outsourced marketing comes with certain risks. Here are three of the possible costs associated with outsourced marketing:

1. Internal morale and accountability issues. Depending on what functions you will be outsourcing, your existing marketing staff may feel threatened when you bring on a new marketing partner. In addition, your team may not be used to the pace and pressure of a results-oriented marketing program. To manage these problems, you will need to clearly define people’s roles, let staff know that they are part of a larger team now and explain that success depends on everyone doing their part.
2. Less on-site access to the marketing team. In some, but not all, outsourcing situations the team performing the marketing function may be located off site. This arrangement may or may not be new to you, depending on your firm’s remote work policies. Getting used to working with off-site partners on a daily basis may be frustrating and a difficult adjustment.
3. Potential higher cost. Most outsourcing advocates report that outsourcing costs less. After all, it allows you to avoid the long-term costs associated with hiring and supervising new personnel. You pay for only the services you need. Some firms, however, find that outsourcing increases their marketing costs. We believe this happens when firms do not sufficiently fund marketing to achieve success. When they began an outsourcing program their costs are higher because they are now paying for the resources it takes to generate results.

Typical Outsourced Marketing Services

We turn now to the core marketing functions of a marketing department — all of which can be outsourced. Keep in mind that there are many different ways to describe the wide range of marketing functions. For example, you can outsource a senior marketing executive or a particular operation, such as telemarketing.

1. Research — Includes researching your marketplace, competitors and clients. Research can uncover a wealth of insights into market opportunities, buyer personas, service relevancy and pricing. It can also help you understand your employer brand and recruiting strategies.
2. Strategy — Covers a wide range of high-level guidance for every level of the organization, such as overall firm-wide growth strategies, go-to-market strategies for specific practices, personal development strategies for individual professionals and succession planning. It also includes developing differentiators, positioning and messaging to different audiences.
3. Creative — For the most part, this function encompasses graphic design and writing. It includes logos and brand identity, marketing materials, website design and development, marketing copy, signature content pieces and anything else that requires a creative touch.
4. Training — Building business development skills is a continual challenge at many firms. This category includes training relevant staff in business development techniques, CRM and marketing automation technologies, networking, social media and other marketing- and sales-related skills.
5. Operations — This consists of running day-to-day marketing operations. Examples include content production and editing, public relations, social media support, events, webinars, email campaigns and database support.
6. Analysis — You can’t fix what you can’t measure. An effective modern marketing team has to be able to track, analyze and report on every aspect of its program — such as online analytics, email performance, lead generation, opportunities, proposals and wins/losses. Armed with this information, your team can adjust your plan as needed.

Inside the Outsourced Marketing Department

How is a typical outsourced marketing department structured? Now, I’m not talking here about individual freelancers — they require direct supervision from your team and have limited strategic value. I’m referring instead to Level 3, 4 and 5 engagements on the outsourced marketing maturity scale. How would such an arrangement function?

To keep everything running smoothly, you need an account person (or team) that handles ongoing communications and manages your engagement. Competent project managers can make a tremendous difference in the quality of your partnership.

Of course, the outsourced marketing team will include individuals who do the work. Typically, these will be specialists in critical areas: research, strategy, design, social media, SEO, writing and so on.

There should be QA process that double checks all work before you ever see it. It’s far too easy for embarrassing mistakes to sneak through without it.

A critical component of the engagement is reporting. You and your account team should be meeting on a regular basis — usually once a month, though it can be as often as once a week — to review work in progress, go over performance metrics and discuss any adjustments or changes in course. Reporting not only provides an opportunity for the teams to collaborate and monitor progress, it establishes accountability on both sides, as well.

Should You Outsource Your Marketing?

Is outsourced marketing right for you? It’s a question more and more professional services firms are asking. Most firms already outsource at least a few tasks, such a graphic design and writing.

In many industries, competitive pressures like automation, legislation and market changes are forcing them to revisit every aspect of their operations, including marketing. Other firms want to move away from staffing non-core functions in which they don’t necessarily excel, focusing on the things they do best, instead. There is also a well-established and growing trend of offloading key tasks to subscription-based services.

As you review your marketing program, look at each piece and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is this activity central to what we do?
2. Do we know how to find and manage the talent it requires?
3. Does it have a steep learning curve? And can we afford to climb it?
4. Does managing this function feel natural?
5. Can we afford the fixed overhead?

If you can answer yes to all five questions, that function should probably remain in-house. A single “no” puts a function on the fence, and you should think about how good a fit it is for the talent and time you have on your team. Could a specialist do it better? If so, is the extra quality worth the potential cost? What would your internal resource do instead?

If you answer with multiple “no’s” to the five questions, then it’s a good candidate for outsourcing.

Conclusion

Outsourced marketing is an important way that professional services firms today keep up with the pace of change in the marketplace. While some firms use it to address distinct, short-term needs, others turn to outside marketing firms to deliver the sophistication, power and performance they could never attain with in-house resources alone.

Chances are, you will be using outsourced marketing resources, yourself, in the near future — if you aren’t already. As you consider your needs, use this post to guide your conversations, and be sure to check some of the valuable resources we link to in this piece and the sections below.

The post Outsourcing Marketing for Professional Services Firms appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

An important body of Hinge’s research, Inside the Buyer’s Brain, Fourth Edition, found that most buyers who are trying to select a firm rely heavily on a firm’s relevant experience and expertise. These factors are represented by two of the top three bars in the chart below. This makes intuitive sense — if buyers know you are an expert in your service area, they are more likely to buy from you.

Just like any personal relationship, business relationships require continual maintenance.  A mutual benefit and ongoing communication are important ingredients to success. In the long run, having close and trusting contacts will give you an edge, especially when other marketing tactics aren’t working.  Here are 5 keys to building and maintaining business relationships:

1. Routinely Reach Out to Important Contacts

It is impossible to have weekly or monthly conversations with all of the contacts in your CRM system.  But you can focus on the valuable ones.  Pinpoint your best clients, partners, and vendors and continually check up on them. Express your interest in their business and let them know that you are here to help. If you want to keep the relationship alive make this outreach routine.  If you let too much time go by, your eventual contact will seem less genuine. And don’t ignore the power of your LinkedIn connections. When executed properly, a social media strategy is the digital sister to in-person networking – and it can be fast and efficient way to ensure your are routinely reaching out.

2. Offer Help Before You Ask for Help

Building business relationships doesn’t mean tapping into your resources whenever you need something.  If the only time you ever contact a former client is when you have a new service offering, your gesture won’t seem authentic.  Similarly, if you call your vendor only when you are looking for a good deal, don’t expect to get one.

Spend time figuring out how you can help your important business contacts. What value can you offer to spark the conversation?

3. Ask for Feedback

Instead of assuming your clients and vendors are happy, ask! Open communication is a basic component of any relationship. When you ask your contacts how they feel, you promote a two-way conversation that can uncover areas for improvement.  Some firms conduct client satisfaction surveys to gather feedback.  But usually it’s best to pick up the phone and talk to your closest contact at a firm.  If this is your top client, you want to make sure they are content.

4. Find Ways to Connect with Less Valuable Contacts

As new contacts enter your world, try to build trust over time with email marketing.  Because you can’t interact with everyone in your email address book on a weekly basis, leverage technology to do some of the work for you.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems allow you to set up email sequences that will routinely send email to your contacts. This is no substitute for a real relationship, but it will at least keep your firm on the top of people’s minds.

Note that this does not mean blasting your list with non targeted emails.  Instead, focus on educational content that your audience will find relevant and practical. There are two types of emails to consider:

1. Educational emails provide content that is meant to be informative. These emails give something of value to the reader without asking for anything in return. Because educational emails are highly valued by your audience, they should make up about 80% of the emails that you send out.
2. Offer emails are for when you want the recipient to do something, such as download a presentation or paper, and you are hoping to move them to a deeper level of engagement. Whether this engagement is a meeting or trying out one of your services, you want them to take a specific next step. Although offer emails should account for the other 20% of emails, you wouldn’t want to send these until you’ve created value for your audience. And offer emails should only go to folks who have already downloaded several pieces of your content. Unless specifically requested, you absolutely would not want an offer email to be sent to someone you just met at a networking event.

Here are a few tips we’ve discovered for highly effective email marketing:

• Ensure the look and feel of your email reflects your brand at every touchpoint.
• Ensure they are mobile friendly.
• Segment your distribution list so you can be strategic about which emails go to which list.
• Remember the 80/20 rule. No matter how many or how few emails you send out, the balance of them (80%) should be educational, while the remainder (20%) are offers.
• Make sure you have a way for people to unsubscribe.
• Consider the subject line carefully. To encourage high open rates, go with 40 characters or less, and be very clear. Subject lines aren’t the time to be too clever or leave too much up to the reader’s imagination. Just say what the email is about. Trust us, the payoff will be there.
• Lastly, be aware that there are certain trigger words that can send your email straight into the spam or junk folder. Words like “cheap” or “sale,” and sometimes even “free,” when placed in the subject line can signal the email is spam and it won’t get through the filter.

5. Educate, don’t sell.

If building relationships requires trust and credibility, then educating – as opposed to selling – is a big enabler of professional services relationships.

And the most effective way to educate is through a consistent flow of thought leadership. By definition, thought leadership marketing makes your expertise highly visible to the public. Regardless of whether your experts are publishing on your blog, in other publications, on social media, or elsewhere, their association with your firm makes you more visible to potential leads. The depth of content required to build your profile as a high visibility expert means that potential buyers have the opportunity to learn a lot about your firm before making initial contact.

This level of visibility and expertise increases the trust and credibility of your firm. Think of it this way: there’s a reason that popular brands at a grocery store sell better than store brands, despite typically coming with a higher price tag. People trust what they know.

In your experience, what are some other ways of building business relationships in the professional services?

The post 5 Keys to Building Business Relationships appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

You see, buyer journey mapping encourages you to look at the entire lifecycle of a client — identifying every point of contact between your firm and your buyers.

It’s a tool that allows you to identify gaps in your marketing, sales and service processes. And you’ll see where your tactics, online and off, may break down.

Buyer Journey Defined

Understanding the buyer (or “client” in the B2B professional services context) journey involves researching and detailing the steps a buyer takes to move through the purchasing and use cycle. It’s a systematic and comprehensive view of their experience that you can summarize in a buyer journey map.

The buyer journey mapping process puts you in your clients’ shoes so you can understand and enhance their experience. And better client experiences are a critical ingredient to building your firm.

You’ll be compelled to answer questions like, “What goes on inside your buyer’s brain before they launch a project with a service provider?”, “How do buyers make decisions?” or “What factors impact client satisfaction?” By wrestling with these questions, you’ll be able to improve the way you connect with prospective clients — and boost your chances of closing the sale.

But many firms end their mapping process at the point where a prospect becomes a new client. That’s too bad. You should never think of closing a new client as the end of the process — after all, it could be the beginning of a years-long relationship. So your buyer journey map should also explore what goes on during the client engagement, what happens between engagements and how you can encourage former clients to become reliable referral sources. Such a comprehensive, detailed buyer journey map helps you analyze your clients’ experience and better communicate with them. But where do you start? The rest of this article introduces you to a simple model you can use to map out and enrich your B2B client’s lifecycle.

Buyers Journey Stages

To get started, your map will consist of four parts, each representing a stage of the B2B buyer’s journey:

Here’s how to tackle each part:

Stage 1. The Pre-Purchase Experience 

The pre-purchase experience starts when potential buyers realize they have a problem — one they can’t solve themselves. As they look around for answers, they become aware of your firm (as well as your competition, of course). That’s great! You’ve overcome the first hurdle — your prospects are aware you exist. Next, B2B prospects need to determine whether you can help them. They might talk to colleagues, check out your website (and those of your competitors) or get on social media to find out how others have solved similar problems. Ultimately, B2B buyers want to find out if your firm’s expertise and past experience are relevant to their problems. Once your potential clients decide which service providers make their short list, they usually do further research, interview the finalists and ask for pricing before making a final choice. At this point in the B2B buying process, there are three possible outcomes:

1. You’re hired. Good for you!
2. Not now. Frustrating, but actually not such a bad place to be. The buyer has good feelings about you, but the timing is not right.
3. No way — you don’t make the cut. In this situation, you may not even know you were in the running. In fact, the buyer might have completed their research without ever contacting you.

Okay, now let’s consider what happens after you’ve been hired.

Stage 2. The Professional Services Client Experience

During a client’s initial engagement, they find out what it’s like to work with you and the value you provide. While one-and-done projects generate incremental revenue, repeat clients fuel long-term growth. So it pays to build enduring client relationships. To win repeat business, you need to meet or exceed your clients’ expectations. So as you map out your B2B buyer journey, ask yourself some questions: Are you living up to your promises? Are you easy to work with? Are you hitting deadlines and staying within budget? And during every engagement, you need to ask yourself how the project is going and what you can do to improve the client’s experience.

Eventually, your initial engagement will wind down. What happens next?

Stage 3: The Between Engagement Experience

After you’ve completed your first project — especially if you’ve made a positive impression — the client may decide they want to use your services again. They may not have an immediate need, but you will be the first firm they call when they are ready.  Consumer marketers might call this a loyal customer or regular user. In the B2B buying process this stage is pivotal.

Now, most buyer journey mapping models ignore the stage between engagements, but we believe it’s critical. That’s because it represents a significant opportunity, one that’s often missed.

Let’s consider an example. Suppose at the end of a successful engagement you determine there is a chance you could work again with the client in two to three years. That’s a long time for any company to remember you. If you don’t reach out in the interim, they are likely to slip away forever.

Here’s another example. Often, clients hire you to solve one kind of problem, and in their minds that one thing is the only thing you do. Just as any actor who has played James Bond becomes typecast, your firm runs the risk of being pigeonholed. You can easily lose out on a future job that should be yours simply because the client doesn’t associate your firm with other services you provide.

So as you map your journey, think about what it takes to avoid being typecast. It’s not enough to nurture leads — you need to nurture clients, too, educating them about everything you do. And you need to stay on their radar, even after your initial work is long over. The more they know about you, they more likely they will be to give you a call when the time is right.

Eventually, every client runs its course. But they still have value. Let’s find out how.

Stage 4: The Former Client

Clients leave for a variety of reasons. A contact can retire or take a new position, for example. While you can continue to nurture former clients, some situations are simply out of your control.

In one camp are clients that had a poor experience. Maybe you dropped a ball or two. Or maybe it was bad chemistry. Either way, they aren’t coming back and they probably aren’t going to recommend you to others. Say goodbye to these forever (or at least for a long, long time).

In the other camp are clients who had good experiences. They just don’t expect to need your expertise again. But that doesn’t mean you should forget about them. That would be a terrible mistake.

Why? Well, consider an investment banker who sells a business for a retiring owner. Is that the last opportunity with that client? Probably. Should that firm walk away from that client forever? No, they should stay in touch. You see, that former CEO is going to talk to her friends about the experience. And at some point, an impressed friend is going to consider that same firm to represent him when he sells his business.

Former clients can be powerful advocates for your firm. Just don’t let them forget you.

Why do most companies ignore this final phase? Probably because it doesn’t fit conventional buyer journey models. And it’s far easier — and more exciting — to look to future opportunities than to pay attention to the ones that have slipped into the past. But if you keep in front of your best former clients, you will find that they can be exceptionally loyal, and lucrative, friends.

Mapping Your Touch Points

Every phase in the B2B buyer’s journey is connected to others. So you need to be able to step back and see how it all works. That’s where the journey map comes in. Begin by identifying how and when your firm interacts with clients during each stage. Then note these touch points on your map.

What does an actual buyer journey map look like? It can take a range of forms — from a highly visual infographic to a spreadsheet to a basic Word document. The tool you choose matters less than the quality of the data that goes into it. The goal is to recognize the critical decision points (see illustration above) where buyers will either hire you or take another avenue. Only then can you see how you can meet their expectations and tip the scale in your favor.

At Hinge, we work with a wide range of data to map out a client’s entire buyer journey. To understand the pre-client phase we conduct interviews with prospects in the marketplace, as well as the “got-aways” who ended up selecting another firm. That way we learn what prospects want out of a service provider.

We also talk to current clients to understand the quality of their experience with their professional service provider, as well as to learn whether they understand the full breadth of our client’s services. Finally, we research former clients to understand where they stand on the map and what future prospects they offer: Are they between engagements, or are they gone for good? How likely are they to refer the client, and why? You can plot your own customer journey map with information you may already have — client satisfaction surveys and follow up with former clients. But without detailed research into prospects and “betweeners” — and without a clear understanding of how much clients at every stage know about your range of services — there will be significant areas of terra incognita on your map.

To understand where the gaps exist, you’ll need to analyze each client stage. What proportion of clients experience each outcome? For example, how many prospects become clients? How often do clients move into the “between engagements” stage? How many former clients are recommending you? And, of course, why? Most important, what could improve your clients’ experience — and create better outcomes? If you can’t answer all these questions, you may need to conduct research to see the full picture and make the most of all of your opportunities.

Free Research Report

Inside the Buyer’s Brain – Executive Summary

Download Now

The post The Buyer Journey: A Model for Professional Services appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

This is a tragedy. An effective marketing team can have a profound impact on a modern professional services firm. When well staffed and well functioning, a marketing department can drive growth, profitability and a premium valuation. In short, the role of your marketing department in your firm’s success cannot be understated.

What’s the best way to build such a valuable function? We believe it’s built upon a clear understanding of what to expect from your marketing department and what resources and support it will require. But first, we need distinguish marketing from the sales function.

Marketing vs. Sales in Professional Services

One of the first steps is to be clear about the language we use to describe a marketing department and how it differs from a sales function. The reason that this distinction is so tricky is that many firms do not use traditional language to talk about these concepts. Sometimes the term business development is used to refer to the sales function. In other firms, business development refers to both the marketing and sales function. In this article, we are going to use the traditional definitions.

Marketing is the process of understanding your marketplace and competitors, defining your firm’s market positioning, pricing and services, promoting the firm to your target audience and explaining how they might benefit by working with you. Put another way, marketing is about offering the right services with the right benefits to the right prospects.

Sales is the process of qualifying your prospects and convincing the right ones to buy your services. It’s about turning business opportunities into clients.

While this difference seems pretty simple on the surface, there are a few areas that can cause confusion. In some organizations, for instance, the sales function is also responsible for generating and nurturing leads until they become viable business opportunities. As you will see below, we have some strong opinions about this practice.

Marketing Department Functions

So what exactly should be the role of your marketing department? What should you expect from your marketing team?

Whether your team is in-house, entirely outsourced or a combination of the two, your marketing team has five core functions.

1. An understanding of your target market and competitors

Marketing should always start with the market. You should expect Marketing to be able to give you detailed and specific descriptions of your target markets and your key competitors in those markets.

But you already know all about your competitors and clients, right? Wrong. Unless you are already doing systematic, structured research, you are kidding yourself. Anecdotal experiences can lead you astray.

Our research shows that internal staff almost always inaccurately perceive their market and their clients’ true feelings and priorities. In fact, firms that do objective research on their markets and clients grow faster and are more profitable.

A professional marketing function can commission this research and allow you to make decisions based on marketplace reality, rather than hunches and wishful thinking.

2. A strategy to drive growth and profitability

Once you have a research-based understanding of your firm and its place in the market, your marketing department should be able to help craft a compelling strategy to drive growth and profitability. That strategy may require adjustments in your target market, service offerings (see the next point, below), and marketing plans.

Your strategy should clearly identify compelling competitive advantages (your differentiators) and a clear market positioning (are you the premium-priced leader or a value-driven alternative?). Think of these as tools to describe your brand. How do you want to be known in the marketplace? As you wrestle with your options, expect to be challenged with new thinking and bold choices.

You will also need a marketing plan. This plan will map out exactly how you are going to build the visibility of your brand and generate the new opportunities your business development (sales) team will convert into new clients.

Marketing Planning Guide - Third Edition

The Marketing Planning Guide for Professional Services Firms

Download Now

3. Which services to offer and how to price them

Historically, many firms have left the key decisions about what services to offer and how to price them to individual operating executives or the finance and accounting function.

Decisions about service lines and pricing are important elements of a growth plan. They should be informed by an overall research-based strategy, not individual client requests. Why? It is too easy to get over-extended trying to be everything to every client. You will soon lose focus and experience, increasing costs as you struggle to provide an ever-expanding array of services.

Innovation and client responsiveness can all too easily become undisciplined dabbling. A strong marketing department plays a leading role in maintaining that balance.

4. A steady flow of new leads and opportunities

More leads! Better opportunities! Who doesn’t want a steady flow of well-qualified new business prospects? Fortunately, that is exactly what you should expect from marketing. While some firms assign lead generation and nurturing to the sales (business development) function, we think that is a bad idea in most cases. The time horizon for lead generation and nurturing can be a long one. Nurturing leads can take months, even years. Sales are almost always placed on a much shorter operational cycle (“what can you close this month?”).

Your marketing team should turn your overall strategy into a formal plan to generate new leads and nurture your existing prospects until they become well-qualified opportunities. This plan should look ahead at least a year and be guided by clear, trackable metrics (more on this below).

Be careful that you do not continually add new “marketing ideas,” underfunding campaigns, or other unplanned initiatives that may derail the plan. If you fall into any of these traps, you cannot expect the plan to work, nor can you hold your marketing team accountable.

Also, be patient. Lead nurturing can take time — sometimes a very long time. Don’t focus only on immediate results. You will need new clients next year, and the year after as well.

5. The ability to monitor and optimize implementation

This is the piece that makes everything else possible. If you can’t measure your results, you are likely to lose sight of your progress during the marketing process. Building a strong brand and full pipeline takes time.

With the appropriate tools and cooperation from the Business Development team, Marketing should be able to track lead generation, nurturing, opportunities, proposals, and closes. The entire pipeline can then be optimized over time.

If you are not tracking results, it is too easy to continue unproductive programs or unwittingly discontinue efforts that are working. Tracking keeps you honest and allows you to make the most of your limited resources.

What you need to provide

At this point, we have identified what benefits Marketing can provide to your firm. But what do they need to be able to deliver these results? The answer is straightforward. They need four basic things:

1. Talented people. Your marketing team must include people with the right skill sets and experience. If you don’t have these talents in-house, you may need to outsource parts of the process or do some hiring. We’ll discuss these options when we cover how to structure your marketing department, below. A word of caution here: marketing professional services is its own specialty. Don’t expect someone with general marketing expertise to understand the unique rules and dynamics of the professional services marketplace.
2. Adequate resources. Your team must have sufficient resources to do the job right. Underfund the effort and you will not get the results you deserve. The requirements are not excessive. Our research shows that high-growth firms spend no more than average on marketing — and yet they are still able to deliver outstanding results. But don’t expect superior results with stingy resources.
3. A seat at the decision-makers’ table. The kiss of death is investing in your marketing then ignoring your team’s advice. It happens more often than you would think, especially in flat organizations, such as partnerships, where decision-making is diffused among many people. If your decisions are broadly consensus-based, you may be better off delegating marketing decisions to a single partner or a small committee.
4. Patience and cooperation. Once the previous three considerations are in place, you will see impressive progress. But there is a catch. Just like any other functional area of your organization, Marketing needs cooperation and a bit of patience from the firm. Support your marketing team’s efforts over time and you will reap the rewards.

These four basic requirements lay the foundation for marketing success. But what does an effective marketing department look like?

Marketing Department Structure

Structuring a modern professional services marketing team is not easy. At many firms, marketing is a relatively new function — one, regrettably, that is not always highly regarded. In addition, many firms are working in a very competitive and rapidly evolving marketplace. When they lack marketing agility, firms put themselves at risk.

To keep things simple, let’s focus on the three aspects of departmental structure that are most relevant to professional services firms: the Role of marketing, selecting the right Resources, and Reporting Relationships. 

1. Role of Marketing

At different firms, marketing comes in different guises — from a low-level support function charged with basic implementation responsibilities to a comprehensive team of specialists who deliver the full spectrum of strategic and operational skills. In our experience, the more comprehensive its marketing function, the more success a firm enjoys. (Keep in mind that marketing expertise does not necessarily need to reside in-house. See Resource Requirements below for the details.)

At many firms, a key decision revolves around lead generation and nurturing. Do these functions belong to marketing or sales? We believe that marketing is their proper home.

Why? Many, many firms today employ the Seller-Doer Strategy, so their busy professionals lack the time and focus to carry out a long-term program. Better to leave these tasks to individuals whose attention is not divided between business development and project delivery. Make lead generation and lead nurturing a prime role of the marketing department.

2. Resource Requirements

Where will you find the people with the specialized skill sets and experience needed to pull off the comprehensive vision we believe is so important? Well, you have two choices: staff up your in-house team or outsource the skills you need.

The in-house approach is appealing from an accessibility perspective. And if a person is fully utilized there can be some cost savings. Of course, no single person is likely to possess the full range of skills you need to implement a modern marketing program. So you are faced with the challenge of filling in the gaps. But how?

One avenue is training. This is, or should be, a given. Technology is always evolving and new research findings continually challenge our long-held beliefs and assumptions — what worked five years ago may not be what is most effective today. That means ongoing education is a must.

But even if you scrupulously train your marketing team, you’ll still need outside help on occasion. In fact, our recent research has shown that high-growth firms tend to spend more on outsourced resources than their slow-growth peers.

How do you decide whether to outsource a marketing function? Ask yourself a series of five questions about each function that is a candidate for potential outsourcing (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Questions to determine whether you should outsource a marketing function.

A few firms outsource all of their marketing so that they can concentrate their internal resources on core functions only. However, most firms employ a mixed model in which some functions are handled internally and others are outsourced. Specialized services that are not used on a regular basis are often the best candidates for outsourcing. Examples include research, strategy development, analytics, or the development of a new website.

3. Reporting Relationships

Whom should the marketing department report to? Many firms struggle with this question. The answer may depend on the role and resources choices you make.

At firms with limited marketing personnel, it makes sense to have the department report to the head of Administration or Sales (Business Development). The latter situation works particularly well when Marketing’s primary role is to support Sales. In neither of these cases, however, is Marketing in a position to make a major contribution.

As the marketing role increases in sophistication, it should be allowed to influence major strategic decisions. This can be accomplished by having Marketing report to a senior partner who has responsibility for both Marketing and Sales. Having a single point of decision-making minimizes conflict and makes it easier to align goals and priorities. It also gives Marketing a seat at the table when major decisions are being made.

A variation on this theme is to have the Marketing leader report directly to the CEO or Managing Partner. This gives them visibility into the firm’s strategy, which can only make marketing more effective. This reporting relationship is also well suited to our vision of Marketing as a key function that can drive the growth and profitability of the firm as a whole.

A Final Thought

In many consumer-facing industries, marketing is a core function that the rest of the organization is built around. These companies evolved in that direction because it gives them an advantage in financial performance. Perhaps there was a time when professional services firms did not need the perspective and discipline that marketing offers. No longer.

With the rise of digital communications, the collapse of geography, and the proliferation of new competitors and business models the pressure is on. The advantage will go to the firm with the greatest marketplace visibility and the best value proposition. And that is exactly the promise that marketing can deliver.

What role is your marketing department playing in your firm’s success?

Marketing Planning Guide - Third Edition

The Marketing Planning Guide for Professional Services Firms

Download Now

The post The Role of Your Marketing Department — And What You Should Expect From It appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

If you want to stop competing on price alone, it may be time to develop a stronger differentiation strategy.

Differentiation Strategy Defined

Your differentiation strategy is the way in which you make your firm stand out from otherwise similar competitors in the marketplace. Usually, it involves highlighting a meaningful difference between you and your competitors. And that difference must be valued by your potential clients. A strong differentiator will provide a competitive advantage for your firm.

Michael Porter, the famous strategist, maintains that there are only two ways to gain a sustainable advantage over your competition. One way is to compete on price, highlighting the similarities you share with your chief competition:

“We’re just as good as our competition, but we cost less.”

Unfortunately, unless you have a sustainable cost advantage, you can’t keep up this strategy for long. All it takes is someone willing to undercut your lowest price. The lowest-cost strategy also exposes you to commoditization and a much wider range of competitors, including do-it-yourself options, off-shoring and automation.

Porter’s other way — and a better way — is to stand apart. Be different. Separate yourself from competitors in a way that is both important and relevant to potential clients.

According to our definition above, this is a differentiation strategy.

Now, a point of differentiation may be broad-based and set you apart from the rest of the industry or more narrow, appealing to a niche market. This latter approach is often referred to as a focused or concentrated strategy.

Differentiation Strategy Examples

Here’s an example of a broad differentiator: adopt a very different business model. Let’s say that hourly billing is widespread in your industry. Offering a pay-for-results billing model, instead, would separate you from competitors.

Of course, developing a broad-based differentiation strategy, in which your firm is substantially different from your industry as a whole, is hard to achieve. And even if you were able to pull it off, what’s to keep a competitor from emulating your approach?

This is why many firms choose to compete with a focused strategy. In a focused strategy you narrow your appeal to a niche audience.

For example, an accounting firm that works exclusively with chain restaurants has a very compelling differentiator to that niche market segment. However, a different audience segment, such as automobile dealers, would find no value in working with the restaurant specialists.

Advantages of Differentiation

There are some big advantages to using a differentiation strategy. Here are some of the benefits.

1. You do not have to compete on price alone.

Since you have distinguished yourself from your competitors the prospective client cannot reduce their choice to the dimension of cost alone.

2. You have greater appeal to your target audience.

Since you are different, and presumably better, you make a more appealing choice. This makes it easier to generate interest and close sales.

3. There is no direct substitute.

This is a related point to the appeal of your difference. Lack of direct comparability forces the prospect to focus on the incremental value of your difference. This adds value that other options do not have.

4. You increase loyalty.

Greater value and a lack of comparable substitutes result in greater loyalty to your firm. There is no good reason to switch (if you are delivering on your promise) and no comparable alternative to switch to.

5. You can command greater fees.

Assuming that your differentiation is one that adds value and is not available elsewhere you are in a position to command higher fees. This is especially true if your differentiator is around specialized expertise.

Whether your strategy is broad or very focused it must always start by identifying your firm’s differentiators.

Differentiator Defined

A differentator is something that makes your business meaningfully different from your competitors and more valuable in the eyes of your target audience. Differentiators are the building blocks of a differentiation strategy.

But simply calling something a differentiator doesn’t make it so.

First it must pass three tests.

Three Tests for a Successful Differentiator

How do you know you have a good differentiator? We recommend you put each one to the test. If it can pass these three critical checks, it is worth developing into a broader differentiation strategy:

1) Is it true?

Differentiators can’t be fabricated. Apart from the moral hazard of making stuff up, it is simply too easy for people to see through exaggerated claims. Whatever you put forth s a differentiator, your firm has to live it each day. And remember, you’ll need to deliver on your promises.

For example, many firms say they have superior client service, but they do nothing special to make it a reality. No special policies. No special training. Nothing to ensure it actually happens. The bottom line is they are no different than a slew of competitors that make the same claims.

2) Is it relevant?

If your point of distinction doesn’t matter to your prospects, it won’t bring you more business. In the end, what is most important is what plays into your target prospects’ selection criteria and decision-making process. Any irrelevant differentiators are wasted effort.

We once had a lobbying client that believed their strongest differentiator was their firm’s lack of conflicts of interest. Their competitors certainly could not make the same claim. But, when we dug a bit deeper, we discovered that their clients and prospects didn’t value impartiality much at all. So much for a strong brand differentiator.

In our research of professional services firms, we found another reason to reject client service as a differentiator — buyers don’t even consider it as a selection criterion. A lack of customer service may be a reason why you lose a client, but it rarely plays into the initial selection process. It’s just not relevant yet.

3) Is it provable?

This is the often the hardest test of a differentiator. You may have identified a true and relevant point of distinction, but it is useless without proof. Even if a differentiating statement is true, if you can’t substantiate it with evidence it buyers won’t believe it. They have become inured to — and learned to ignore — empty claims.

Here’s a popular differentiator candidate that many of our clients are fond of: “We have great people.” It is a trap! Why? Well, have you ever heard a firm claim they have average people?

Didn’t think so.

But there are exceptions. One of our clients provides specialized software development services — and they hire only PhD-level programmers. They actually can support a “great people” differentiator with evidence.

The Challenges of Maintaining a Competitive Advantage

You are well on your way to a solid differentiation strategy once you know what sets you apart from your competitors. Especially if you can explain — and prove — it in a way that is relevant to your target audience. But you are not done yet.

The marketplace doesn’t stand still. Shrewd competitors will look at your success and attempt to copy it. Over time, what was once a distinctive characteristic may be neutralized. Your competitive advantage will be lost.

To build a sustainable differentiation strategy you need to build your reputation around those distinctive characteristics and make your expertise exceptionally visible to your target audience. This “Visible Expertise” will become the foundation of your professional services brand.

Why Visible Expertise Matters to Professional Services Firms

This brings us to the topic of expertise and why it is so critical to professional services.

In the professional services, expertise is what you sell.

Clients aren’t buying your services because they like them. They are buying your services to solve a business problem or seize an opportunity. For example they may need help complying with a regulatory requirement or solving a critical strategic challenge.

Our research into professional services buyers describes what criteria companies use to select one service provider over another. One of the most common selection criterion is expertise, and it is the factor that most often tips the scale in favor of the contract-winning firm.

But what about the argument that professional services are “a relationship business”? Well, that assumption is partially true. Good business relationships are certainly helpful. As we outlined in our research report, Inside the Buyer’s Brain, both buyers and sellers of professional services understand the importance of an existing relationship, but sellers consistently underestimate the role their reputation plays in the final selection.

Also, a strong reputation for expertise is the one factor that can overcome an existing relationship. If a company does not believe their current provider can solve a problem, they will look for a firm that can.

Not long ago, a prospective client came to us for our marketing expertise. Previously, he had hired a life-long friend to help with his marketing. Despite their close relationship, he had fired his friend (and hired Hinge) because his friend could not solve his marketing challenge. Our strong reputation for solving the specific marketing challenges faced by professional services firms was more important than their personal relationship.

According to our most recent study of referral marketing, visible expertise plays the single most significant role in driving referrals. Relationships — both social and professional — are still important, but only when there is an awareness of your expertise.

Overcoming the Problem of Invisibility

Developing expertise as a differentiation strategy sounds like a great idea, but there is a catch. Clients are notoriously uninformed when it comes to judging actual expertise. Consequently, your firm’s expertise is often unseen by the marketplace.

And if your firm’s expertise is not visible, for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist.

Fortunately, it is possible to make intangible expertise visible and real.

We conducted extensive research on highly visible experts and the professional services buyers who hire them. As we outline in The Visible Expert, there are certain strategies and techniques that can elevate the visibility of your expertise in the marketplace.

Public speaking, writing blog posts and articles, and publishing books are all effective ways to demonstrate your expertise. And there are many others. The value of these different techniques, when put together as part of a differentiation strategy, has been proven time and again by clients that go through our Visible Firm® or Visible Expert® programs.

But the only proven way to make your expertise visible and turn it into a credible differentiator is to have a clear strategy.

Building Your Differentiation Strategy

Developing and implementing a differentiation strategy is a five-step process.

1. Start with an understanding of exactly what you want to be known for.

What are you expert in? Your area of expertise or other differentiator should be broad enough to be enduring and relevant to your clients. But that breadth must be balanced. The narrower and more specialized your expertise, the easier it is to make it visible and defend against potential competitors.

2. The next step is research.

Research will help you align your firm’s offerings with the desires and preferences of potential clients. It will also inform your selection of issues to write about to make your expertise more visible to your target audience. We have found that firms that research their target client group tend to grow faster. In fact, the fastest growing firms (those that grow at least 20% year over year) take it a step further and are more likely to use original research in their content marketing strategy.

3. Develop your differentiators and focus.

What sets you apart from competitors and delivers exceptional value to a segment of the market? Build a list of potential differentiators and put them to the three-step test. If you end up with three to five differentiators, that’s great. One strong one can even be plenty.

However many differentiators you have, you’ll need a focus. That focus, along with the supporting differentiators, will inform your positioning statement. Your positioning statement is a short statement that describes what your firm does, who it does it for and why a prospect should choose you. Think of it as the DNA of your differentiation strategy.

4. Build your story.

Next you’ll need to tell your story to your target audience. Most prospective clients check you out on your website, so that’s a great place to start. First impressions matter. Help visitors answer the question, is this firm for me?

But your website is only the beginning. You need to make that all-important expertise visible to the outside world. How? Publications, webinars, workshops, speaking engagements. How about video? The list goes on.

The point is you need a plan to turn the strategy into a reality. Then you need to build the tools to make that plan happen.

5. Tell the world.

Now it’s time to tell the world, or more specifically your target audiences, the story of your firm. Implement the plan. Track your efforts and their impact. Monitor the new business pipeline. Then test and adjust. The message gets better and the brand gets stronger each time you make results-driven adjustments.

Evaluating Your Differentiation Strategy

The research on evaluating a differentiation strategy is still evolving. However, we’ve learned some important things already. For example, we know that highly visible experts accelerate the growth of a firm by 1) attracting new leads and 2) making it easier to close them as clients. We also know the fastest growing, most profitable firms use strategies and marketing techniques that raise the visibility of their expertise.

A well-thought-out differentiation strategy and a commitment to implementing your plan will accelerate your firm’s visibility and perceived expertise. Figures 1, 2 and 3 show the average increase in visibility, perceived expertise and new business leads experienced by firms that went through Hinge’s Visible Firm program, which is based on the principles we’ve outlined in this article. These data will give you a feel for what is possible when a comprehensive differentiation strategy is fully implemented.

Figure 1. Increase in Visibility

Figure 2. Increase in Perceived Expertise

Figure 3. Growth in Online Leads

These are certainly impressive results and they speak to the pivotal role that a differentiation strategy can play in the growth of a professional services firm.

The post Differentiation Strategy for the Professional Services Firm appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

For a sign of the times, just look at the explosive growth of LinkedIn. To date, there are over 849 million LinkedIn members, compared to 467 million users in October of 2016. More and more of professional life is moving online – and the professional services world is no exception. Increasingly, the firms that succeed are the ones that learn to leverage online marketing effectively.

So what are ten of the top advantages of online marketing, and how can you bring those benefits to your firm?

Before we explore the strengths of online marketing, we have an important question to answer.

What is online marketing?

Online marketing is the use of a diverse and evolving set of Internet based digital techniques to reach targeted audiences. These techniques include (but are not limited to) content marketing, social media, websites, search engine optimization, online video, email marketing, paid search, and more.

Many of these tools work best together: for example, publishing educational content on your firm’s blog and then sharing it to start a conversation on social media. Perhaps your blog post uses a YouTube video to illustrate a key point. If it’s successful, this piece might help drive up your website’s ranking for Google searches on the topic.

As you can see, effective online marketing is really a complex ecosystem of techniques that can help your firm achieve greater visibility and credibility. But let’s get even more specific. What are some of the most important advantages of online marketing for professional services firms today?

Advantages of Online Marketing

1. Online marketing gives you many ways to demonstrate and build expertise.

For professional services buyers, the single most important factor in selecting a provider is expertise. Often, the challenge lies not in acquiring the requisite talent, but projecting that expertise to the marketplace.

The web is such a powerful platform because it allows you to use content to get your message across and demonstrate expertise in topics relevant to your target audience. You can accomplish this offline as well, but online tools make it much easier to reach a wide and relevant audience. Blogging, social media, and webinars all allow you to educate your audience on topics that matter to them, illustrating your expertise in the process.

2. You can use online marketing to establish and build relationships more effectively.

Online marketing allows you to create new relationships in a targeted way that simply wasn’t possible twenty years ago. Email marketing, keyword phrase targeting, and other strategies can help you target a tailored message with laser precision to, say, the CIOs of the hundred largest businesses in your industry.

Beyond targeting messages, you can use LinkedIn Groups to network and converse with other industry leaders in an ongoing way. Online tools allow you to both meet new clients, colleagues, and influencers and strengthen relationships with those you already know.

3. You can target specific verticals or niches using online marketing.

Just as you can build relationships in a targeted way, online marketing empowers you to target a highly specific vertical or niche, delivering your message to a wide audience that needs your services. You can do this relatively inexpensively by targeting keywords in educational blog posts, or participating in groups or industry hashtags on social media. Online marketing allows you to zero in on a niche easily and efficiently.

4. Online marketing isn’t tied to geography or time zone.

Online marketing techniques can be used in an asynchronous way, meaning your audience doesn’t have to be constrained by geography. To meet a potential client or contact in person, you have to be able to travel and synchronize your schedules, with all of the expenses that this can entail.

Speaking at industry events, for example, can be a powerful way to build your reputation, and is often worthwhile – but it’s also a major effort that can significantly disrupt an entire day (or multiple days). Giving a webinar to a similar or larger crowd, however, may take no more than an hour out of your day at the office.

Another advantage of this asynchronicity is that it empowers your audience to engage with your message on their own terms. They can learn about your expertise at their own pace through your blog or social media presence, and when they’re ready to explore your services, they know where to find you.

5. Online marketing is less expensive to use.

With online marketing, there are no travel costs, and you don’t have to pay for printing to distribute materials. Server costs, by contrast, are relatively low.

Some of your advertising costs can be replaced by online marketing tools, as well – and these online tools usually “pull more weight” by integrating with the rest of your online marketing program. Guest posts on industry blogs or publications, for example, can drive traffic to your site, build your reputation, and fuel conversation on social media.

6. The Internet is the most common way people check out your firm.

In fact, we conducted a survey of over 1,000 buyers of professional services for a more complete understanding of how purchasers check sellers out in today’s marketplace. We found that the second most common way professional services buyers check out firms is online.

7. Online marketing allows you to be everywhere your clients look.

Today, it’s important for you to be where your potential clients are looking. More and more, that means your firm needs a robust and diversified presence online. From our research, we found that purchasers are looking for experts online in a number of ways, including in search engines, by reading online reviews, on social media, through webinars, and more.

Maybe your clients tend to ask their peers about the strongest firms in your field – but once they’ve learned a bit about you, if they search for you online, you have to be easy to find. If you don’t have an online marketing component, potential clients will go looking for more information about you – and they won’t find you.

8. You can use online marketing to reach influencers and “invisible” prospects.

There are many people who influence the selection process, even if they might not be the final decision-makers. Some of these individuals may be professionals within your target firms, while others may be well-respected industry figures.

By the same token, you may have unrecognized or “invisible” prospects out there of whom you’re simply not aware. You likely know that certain firms would be good matches for your service, but there are usually others who are equally promising matches – they’re just geographically distant from you, or don’t participate in the same industry events, or you just haven’t crossed paths.

By using content marketing, they can find you, even if you don’t find them. Posting blog posts on a particular set of challenges or opportunities – and including the right keyword phrases so search engines pick up on them – allows you to “plant a flag” in the topic, helping the right audiences find your work and your firm.

9. Firms that generate leads online achieve greater profits.

Our in-depth studies of lead generation strategies for professional services firms has found that firms with online marketing programs are more profitable, on average, than those that do not.

Until about twenty percent of leads are generated online, profitability stays more or less the same. But after twenty percent, profitability begins to rise steadily along with the percentage of leads generated online.

10. Firms that generate leads online achieve faster growth.

Similarly, our research shows firms that generate leads online grow at a faster rate.

We found that firms’ growth rates rise along with the proportion of leads generated online, up until the point where forty percent or more of leads originate online. Firms that generated between forty and fifty-nine percent of leads online grew at four times the rate of those with no online leads.

Conclusion

Online marketing provides a suite of powerful tools to help grow your firm’s reach and reputation – and ultimately, your firm itself. By fully leveraging the advantages of online marketing through tools such as content marketing, social media, email marketing, online video, and more, you can create a powerful lead-generating machine that puts your firm on the path to greater profitability and success.

Free Resource

The Lead Generating Website Guide

Learn More

The post Top 10 Advantages of Online Marketing for Professional Services appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

There are essentially two kinds of growth—organic and inorganic. The former is built on a complex blend of expertise, experience, reputation, capability and visibility. The latter is a little more straightforward and based on cash, liabilities, and assets. For B2B and professional services firms organic growth is the “Holy Grail.” But strategies to drive that growth are often elusive and counter-intuitive. 

In this post, we will define what is meant by organic growth and reveal the top proven, research-based strategies that the fastest growing professional services firms implement to drive organic growth. Let’s start with a definition of organic growth.

What is Organic Growth?

Organic growth refers to the kind of growth of a business that is purely stimulated by the resources already available internally to a company. Organic growth is created by adding new clients or more business from existing clients. It’s essentially expanding your business from within using the resources you have, including skills, knowledge, experience, relationships and other tools. Organic growth is healthy for a firm and reflects a long-term, solid commitment to building a business.

An Example of Organic Growth

The examples of how organic growth occurs in the marketplace are countless. But let’s explore an example of how organic growth could come to pass for a professional services firm.

An example of organic growth would be in growth resulting from the strategic expansion of a particular service or product line. For example, leaders of an architecture, engineering, and construction firm identify more marketplace demand in their healthcare market segment. So they increase investment into marketing to this audience type. The result is that revenue increases by 40% year over year from this practice area. 

In this example, there was no external entity absorbed into the business to expand this practice area. Instead, the growth came as a result of strong business intelligence, marketing and sales.

Organic vs Inorganic Growth

While organic growth is achieved from existing resources, inorganic growth is growth generated externally through activities like mergers and acquisitions. Inorganic growth relies almost entirely on available resources and capital. Mergers, acquisitions, and their most extreme form, takeovers, can quickly increase a firm’s size and revenue but often present complex branding challenges that require a methodical approach to integration.

This is why organic growth should be at the center of b2b and professional services marketing plans. So which strategies can leaders and marketers at your business implement to drive organic growth? Let’s look at five proven strategies.

5 Proven Strategies for Driving Organic Growth

There are some firms who excel in driving organic growth. At Hinge, we refer to these businesses as High Growth Firms and in our annual High Growth Study we uncover the most impactful strategies and marketing techniques of firms growing at least 20% year over year. The following five strategies below are not picked at random. They come from nearly a decade of research on what works for these High Growth Firms.

1. Research your target clients

It’s surprising how many professional services firms don’t develop a clear picture of their ideal target client and what motivates their decision-making.

When we studied the relationship between growth and profitability, we found that professional services firms that conduct regular research on their target audience grow up to 70% faster and are almost 50% more profitable than firms that don’t.

Figure 1. Research Frequency

Ask a C-level executive in your average professional services firm who their target client is and he, or she, may only have a vague idea. Research reveals what you don’t know. It also enables you to better focus your marketing efforts based on your target clients’ actual needs and preferences. Insights from research help you better position your firm, reduce the risk of marketing missteps, and develop a competitive advantage.

Once you have established target client preferences through research, you’re able to develop high-value service packages and make a much stronger marketing plan. All because you’ve learned where they get their information, identified their key concerns, and revealed their hot buttons.

Research rocks!

2. Focus on a well-defined niche

With research results in hand, you’re in a position to focus on a specific niche. While some may say it seems counter-productive to narrow your focus (instead of widening it), there are some significant benefits to doing so.

Concentrating on a well-defined niche enables you to reduce marketing costs and competition while increasing market share, fees, and profits. There’s something to be said for being a big fish in a small pond.

In fact, our studies show that high-growth firms are 75 percent more likely to have a highly-focused niche.

Figure 2. Highly-Specialized Firms

Professional services firms offering everything to everybody typically end up offering little real value to anybody. Their services become generic commodities stuck in a price war with myriad competitors. A slow, painful death often ensues.

3. Develop strong, easy-to-understand differentiators

If your firm is highly specialized or positioned in a well-defined niche, congratulations. You’ve got a built-in differentiator.

What’s a differentiator? It’s a feature or benefit that sets you apart from the competition. Here’s an example: You are an accounting firm but, unlike your competitors, you focus your attention on the specific financial concerns of national chain restaurants. That’s your differentiator.

Firms with unique differentiators have a much easier job communicating their value to prospective clients, setting themselves apart (and above) the competition and winning more business. In fact, our 2022 High Growth Study revealed that differentiation was a top marketing priority of high-growth firms.

Three things make a high-value differentiator:

1. Truth
2. Relevancy
3. Provability

Is what you’re claiming true? Is it relevant to your prospect? Finally, is it provable?

The least effective differentiators are those that offer no direct benefit to the client. No one particularly cares how long you’ve been in business, how many charitable causes you’ve supported, or your claims of having “the best people.”

The best differentiators address the needs and concerns of the prospective client. These include provable claims about how your unique services or expertise can specifically benefit the client.

4. Balance traditional and digital marketing

One other key finding from our latest 2022 High Growth Study is that the fastest-growing firms have a more balanced approach to marketing, mixing digital with traditional.

It all starts by making sure marketing techniques fit the target audience (potential clients). Here’s where all that research comes in handy. Your data will tell you how your target prefers to receive information. This will go a long way in helping you focus your marketing dollars on the most effective channels.

Tracking your marketing is important, too. High-growth firms commit to tracking their marketing efforts, closely monitoring 33 percent more variables than their slow-growing peers.

Almost every firm tracks the basics such as new clients, revenue, and profitability. However, high-growth firms are also more likely to track variables related to the marketing process.

Figure 3. Metrics Most Often Tracked by High-Growth Firms

This additional tracking puts firms in a better position to know what works and what doesn’t. This means they are equipped to make course adjustments and fix problems as they arise.

5. Make your expertise visible

As a professional services firm, the only product you have to sell—and what potential clients need to be persuaded to buy—is your collective expertise. In our recent study on buyer behavior, we found that across professional services, expertise was the most common selection criteria next to talented staff.

While your expertise has the definite advantage of being unique to your company (there’s that differentiator), it has the drawback of being intangible. Potential clients can’t touch it, taste it, smell it, or see it. The challenge is to make your expertise visible.

This can be done through a carefully targeted and constructed campaign of blogging and article writing, speaking, social media conversations and search engine optimization.

As your firm and its expertise becomes visible in the digital landscape, the payoff becomes enormous.

As the appropriate personnel within your firm become Visible Experts, the firm as a whole gains value in the eyes of potential clients. This value, properly leveraged, leads directly to organic growth. The process is transformative, leading to more visibility which leads to more business.

Conclusion

There’s nothing mysterious about organic growth. There’s a scientific approach to it that requires some homework, discipline, and stick-to-it-ness. Research is key and the driver of a more powerful strategy and more efficient and effective marketing.

Marketing Planning Guide - Third Edition

The Marketing Planning Guide for Professional Services Firms

Download Now

The post How to Drive Organic Growth: 5 Proven Strategies for Professional Services Firms appeared first on Hinge Marketing.