For many service professionals, marketing is a necessary but totally mystifying task.
As good as these people are at helping clients, they are totally flummoxed at the prospect of attracting new clients.
In many respects, effective marketing is the preliminary stage of serving and satisfying clients. The same three components of looking after clients also apply to attracting clients.
1. Know-How
To provide our clients with the professional services they need and want, we must know how to provide the required service. We develop this know-how through our professional education and training.
Unfortunately, few of us develop any marketing know-how through our professional education and training. But that’s OK…today’s wired word is rich to the point of overwhelming with resources that can help anyone, anywhere in the world market their services, regardless of the nature of these services.
The problem is not availability; the problem is one of choice.
If you know you need to increase your marketing know-how but don’t know where to start, check out How To Market Professional Services. The table of contents will serve as a useful checklist of what you need to know in order to market your services. Prioritize what you need to know and, using the table of contents as a checklist, start to develop your know-how. Check out and use whatever resources, whether mine or some one else’s, that are best for you.
2. Attitude
When serving clients, appropriate attitudes influence the both the parameters and nature of our services.
Similarly, when trying to attract clients, appropriate attitudes influence our marketing and its effectiveness.
If you know some one who has what might be called a counterproductive attitude towards marketing, Chapter 5 of How To Market Professional Services might with some attitude modification.
3. Actions
Just like serving clients, the function of attracting clients depends upon the effectiveness of the actions that we take, don’t take…or take ineffectively.
At the risk of oversimplifying, in the realm of professional service marketing, it’s really not all that difficult to take the right actions.
The right actions will make a direct contribution to the achievement of your marketing goals. And the best actions are those things we do will make the highest contribution to our success.
In practice, this means when deciding what action to take, ask yourself: “How will this action contribute to achieving my marketing goals?”
Unless you can identify a specific contribution, don’t even consider the action as a marketing function.
And remember, the best actions make the highest contribution to your successful.
Unfortunately too many of us waste too much time and energy on actions that contribute, little if anything, to successful professional service marketing.
The key to successful professional service marketing is to take the right actions, supported by appropriate attitudes and sound marketing know-how.
