Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend David Crandall’s seminar about estate planning. During his presentation, David talked about the importance of beginning with a snapshot, a view of what you want to happen when you pass away or become disabled. This is another...
Professional Services Marketing
Marketing Is A Conversation
In my e-book, Saying the Wrong Thing Louder Doesn't Make It Right, I talked about how one of the reasons referrals and face-to-face meetings work for marketing professional services when other forms of marketing fail is because we are conversational in the former but...
Referral Marketing – Managing Your Activities
Fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coach Joe Dager recently had a nice post about using the marketing hourglass to determine your marketing constraint. In his post, Joe discusses the importance of knowing your conversion rates and what they tell you about the effectiveness of...
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Deciding not to do anything is a decision, and like all of our other decisions, comes with consequences. Most of us have big dreams when we start our business. We want to solve a big problem. Have more free time. Live a certain lifestyle. After a while, it is easy to...
Inbound Marketing Cookbook
Inbound marketing activities are those activites that help you "get found" by people looking for your products or services. Like any marketing tactic, inbound marketing activities are most effective when they are done consistently and systematically. Using a...
Referral Partners – Do You Struggle to Reciprocate?
Creating alliances with strategic referral partners is a great tactic, particularly for professional service providers, to grow your business or practice. Some professionals struggle with building referral partnerships because, for a variety of reasons, they are not...
PR for Professional Service Firms
Public relations is an important and power lead generation tactic for professional service firms. The press release is still a powerful tool for reaching out to the media. Just like any other marketing tactic, we need to be strategic about how we use press releases in...
Networking – Getting Your Turn To Talk
During a recent presentation about referrals and networking, the subject came up about what to do when someone you meet doesn’t let you talk. We were discussing a technique in which we begin by asking someone what they do for a living. The expectation being...
7 Tips For More Productive Networking
Recently, I've been talking to several business owners and independent professionals who are frustrated with the results they get from attending networking events. Networking came become a huge drain on our time - particularly if we are not consistently generating...
Why Referrals Work and the Other Stuff Doesn’t
Referrals and face-to-face meetings are the preferred tactics for marketing professional services. Most professionals will tell me that the "other marketing stuff" doesn't work, but if they can get in front of the right person, the usually close the...