CRM and other business automation tools typically allow you to personalize the messages you send to your prospects and customers. This is usually done using some sort of field code and mail merge process. You create a template that looks something like this: Dear...
Marketing
Advertising For Professional Service Firms
Traditional advertising doesn't work for professional service firms. I must read that 3 or 4 times a week. Lately, the advice that follows is "Drop your print advertising and replace it with online, pay per click (PPC) advertising". Will changing to PPC...
Managing Marketing In A Professional Service Firm
Over on Law.com, Bruce Marcus has an interesting article titled The Difference Between Doing and Managing Marketing (link no longer available). In this article, Mr. Marcus describes some of the progression of the marketing function in law firms and some of the common...
I Need To Stop Being An ASSumer
This post is mostly a reminder to myself but may benefit others as well. Not everyone wants to grow their business. Of course I know this intellectually, but, it is easy to assume that everyone does. These assumptions creep into our language and we may not even be...
How To Get Your Tax Consultancy Noticed
In this post, a sales and marketing manager for a small tax consultant office asks, "How can I get our tax consultancy noticed?". This post reminded me of a small, but important, mental shift that will improve the effectiveness of marketing your professional...
Survey Shows Marketing for Professional Firms is out of sync
The May issue of Practical Accountant features an article outlining the struggles professional service firms encounter with their marketing function. The article is based on a survey conducted by the marketing and research firm The Bloom Group. Here are some of the...
Referral Marketing for Massage Therapists
I recently had the opportunity to speak at a conference for massage therapists. As is true for most professionals, word-of-mouth, or referrals, was cited as the most important marketing strategy in building their massage practices. It was also the general consensus...
The Power of the Press Release
This recent article in Website magazine lists their top 5 reasons to write a Press Release as: a way to generate organic traffic link building reputation management attracting bloggers and web 2.0 audience draw traffic from traditional media Granted this is a magazine...
Customers or Clients
This is a copy of a post I made a year ago, but since I seem to be having this discussion with a lot of folks recently, I thought I would repost it today. Incidentally, the folks at Versage do a much better job of making this argument than I do, so I encourage you to...
Marketing with Video on the Internet
Jessica Kizorek's Show Me: Marketing with Video on the Internet provides a thoughtful discussion of the ever growing use of video on the Internet along with practical advice for addressing the many issues involved with incorporating Internet video into a marketing...