Every business and every brand can benefit from marketing – because organic growth will in most cases only get your business so far. It’s one of the reasons why even the biggest and most visible brands in the world, such as Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Amazon, have such extravagant annual marketing budgets.
Indeed, professional service marketing is one of the most critical business activities for professional services small businesses such as yours. It is as essential for the long-term and sustained success of your professional services small business as having a business plan and business insurance such as professional service insurance for your business.
So, let’s dig into how to market your professional services business. Where do you start? With a plan, of course.
1. Create a professional marketing plan
It doesn’t matter if you call it a marketing plan or a marketing strategy; what matters for the growth of your professional services business is that you have a roadmap for how you will market and grow your business.
A marketing plan provides a strategic roadmap that your business can use to carefully formalise, organise, roll out, and track the effectiveness of its strategic marketing activities. Marketing plans may cover different marketing strategies for various marketing goals.
Creating a marketing plan with service marketing strategies for your professional services small business can help you plan ahead and will lend some structure to how you will market your business. Key features to include in your marketing plan include:
- An overview of the marketing and advertising goals for your business.
- A statement of your business’s current marketing position.
- A timeline for when each task in your marketing strategy will be completed.
- Key performance indicators you will use to track the effectiveness of your strategy.
- Who is the target market for your business, and what problems will your business help them solve.
- A description of how you will measure the performance of your marketing strategy.
There are many marketing plan templates available for free online, including from business.vic.gov.au and business.gov.au.
2. Review the effectiveness of your company website as a lead generator
It’s highly likely that your professional services small business already has a company website, which can be essential for growing any business in any industry. But merely having a company website isn’t enough in today’s competitive business environment. If your existing company website doesn’t provide a favourable user experience, as a marketing and lead generation lead tool it may actually be doing a disservice to your professional services small business.
A well-designed company website can be a marketing gamechanger for your professional services business. So if you think your company website is ineffective in terms of drawing new business enquiries to your professional services business, you may benefit from overhauling it.
Unless you have website design and development skills as well as an understanding of digital marketing, it may be worth engaging a professional web developer or digital designer if you decide to overhaul your existing company website. Such qualified individuals will be able to recommend what needs to be done to make your company website a more effective marketing tool and lead generation tool for your professional services business.
Key elements to optimise can include navigation, visual design, content, information hierarchy, branding, interaction, and conversion.
3. Review your branding for consistency
Branding is an essential feature of marketing your professional services small business. However, poor or inconsistent branding can make your business stick out like a sore thumb. Business branding done right requires clarity, conciseness, and consistency.
When those elements are all present in the branding for your professional services business, they can elevate your company’s reputation and help create a unified and professional look across all of your marketing activities.
While we’re on the subject of branding, it can be a good idea to not shy away from displaying your company name, logo, and slogan (if you have one) across your marketing collateral loudly and proudly. A visually striking company logo is instantly recognisable and memorable, so make sure you display it at every opportunity, from your business cards and corporate stationery to your website, signage, corporate brochures, and all advertising material.
4. Embrace search engine optimisation
As a business owner, you are likely aware of SEO and the role it plays in digital marketing and drawing the right audience to your company website via the use of carefully selected and carefully inserted keywords across your company website. But SEO is much more than that. It’s also about technical SEO, which improves the technical aspects of your company website, which in turn increases the ranking of its pages with search engines such as Google.
While you can do keyword research and actively use strategic keywords in your website copy, you may seek the help of an SEO specialist to improve the technical SEO of your company website. Such a specialist can review your website and make sure that it is structured and tagged appropriately in terms of technical SEO best practice.
While there is no one single best advertising method to include as part of your professional service marketing strategy, SEO can be very effective in terms of drawing potential customers to your company website.
It’s worth keeping in mind that SEO isn’t a one and done proposition; it is an ongoing and evolving activity – but one that can make a real difference to your professional services small business by attracting the right audience to your company website.
5. Chase speaking engagements
As the owner and face of your own professional services small business, it can be beneficial to your small business to build up your personal brand to the point where you are recognised as a thought leader in your industry. And one effective way to do just that is by actively seeking out speaking engagements.
Speaking engagements can be powerful lead generating and marketing activities for highly visible industry experts – and a great way to elevate your personal brand and reputation, as well as the reputation of your professional services small business.
6. Have your business circumstances changed recently?
Did you know that when the circumstances in your professional services small business change, your small business insurance may need to also change to maintain the same level of cover? At BizCover we make it easy for professional services small business owners to compare competitive business insurance quotes online and secure their business insurance in mere minutes.
We do all of this without the hassle or drama you may have endured in times past when shopping for your business insurance. Give us a try when you are looking to review your Professional Indemnity insurance, Public Liability insurance, Business Insurance, Cyber Liability insurance, or any other business insurance you are considering for your professional services small business.
BizCover helps professional services small business owners throughout Australia to reduce the risks to their business via professional service insurance made easy. BizCover customers enjoy our customer-focused approach, which simplifies comparing professional service insurance quotes and purchasing business insurance online in minutes, not hours.
Choose BizCover and get your professional service insurance online fast and get on with your day.
