Do you struggle to ask for referrals on a consistent basis? Many of the professional service providers that I meet feel uncomfortable asking for referrals on a regular basis. They may feel it is not “professional”. Some feel they will be perceived as a nuisance. If...
Does this ever happen to you? I receive 3 or 4 e-mail “offers” a week that make me think “why in the world are you sending this to me?”. These messages are what I call semi-personalized (they use my name and maybe my business name) but I don’t know who they are. It’s...
I see a lot of marketing advice about how to "make my small business look big". Before you go about making your small business look big, ask yourself if that is what you really want. Or, more importantly, is that what your customers really want. I would bet that in...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...