Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

Bob Burg On Referrals

I just finished listening to John Jantsch's podcast with Bog Burg. Bob is the author of Endless Referrals, Third Edition, Winning Without Intimidation and co-author of The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea. Bob gives some great advice about how to create your army of Personal Walking Ambassadors (love that!).

You can listen to the podcast here.

That's a lot of zeros

In We knew the web was big..., Google announced they hit a milestone when their systems that process links on the web found 1 trillion (that's 12 zeros!) unique URLs. I can't wait to look back at this post next year and see what the number is then.

Coaching Excellence Series - Stephen M.R. Covey

This month's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Coaching Excellence Series features Stephen M.R. Covey.

Stephen M. R. Covey is co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide. A sought-after and compelling keynote speaker and advisor on trust, leadership, ethics, and high performance, he speaks to audiences around the world. He is the author of The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

This teleconference will be held Monday, August 18th, at Noon CDT. This is a free event, but space is limited, so register here today

My Favorite KPI - Trusted Advisor Requests

On the Golden Practices blog, Michelle Golden posted an account of her best High Satisfaction Day (HSD). As Michelle explains, HSDs are great Key Predictive Indicators for professional service firms. KPIs are important because they help us know where we are headed, versus financial benchmarks which tell us where we have been.

As a marketing coach, my favorite KPI for my business is what I call my trusted advisor requests (TARs). TARs are requests I receive from customers and prospects who are looking for information and services that I DO NOT provide. I know that sounds like a strange thing to measure (and set goals for), but I believe that if customers and prospects are calling me when they have a need, whether I can personally solve that need or not, then I am doing a good job of staying Top Of Mind with them.

One of the tools I use to help connect people and manage TARs is my online Expert Directory. You can sign up to join my directory or create your own Expert Directory here.

What is your favorite KPI?

Tools for Listening

The Internet has given us lots of tools to talk - to get our message out. With all of that talking going on, we need some tools to help us listen. Digging through the saved post in my feed reader, I found the two posts pointing to some excellent tools for listening to the conversation in the cloud.

On the Duct Tape Marketing blog, John's post, Alltop is Great Listening Device, explains how this aggregates the top blog posts and puts them in one place to make listening easier.

Links for Listening is a post on John Bell's Digital Influence Mapping Project that provides an extensive list of listening resources. In this list you will find tools to listen to blogs, mulit-media, forums, message boards, and more.

Use these great tools to listen to the conversations going on so you can contribute in a more meaningful way.

Free Online SEO Tools

Last week I pointed out some quick SEO tips for small business owners without a lot of time or inclination to learn about SEO. If you do have time and interest to learn about SEO, check out this article by Ann Smarty where she lists more free online SEO tools than you can shake a stick at (do people still shake sticks?).

What's Your Customer's Version Of The Truth?

I just read Paul Simister's review of the Duct Tape Marketing book. As a Duct Tape Marketing Authorized coach, it was refreshingly different to hear an opinion from outside of my usual peer group. Paul's review reminded me of an important lesson - not about the book, but about how easy it is to judge the "truth" through our particular world view.

Paul made a couple of comments about the book not placing enough emphasis on the importance of doing business regularly with existing customers. I'm not arguing Paul's point, at the very least, the book failed to convey that message to him. I was initially surprised by these comments. I was surprised because I know from experience that John and my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coaches talk all the time about the importance of continuing to market to our existing customer base. This important truth wasn't apparent to someone outside outside our circle, which made me wonder what else I take for granted but don't communicate to my customers.

So the lesson I am reminded of tonight is to remain aware of my own world view and to remember to seek out other viewpoints, even when I think I know the "truth".

Are there things about your company that you "know to be true" that your customers don't know or believe?

Tools For Creating Press Releases

Public Relations (PR) can be a great lead generation tool for small business owners. PR is more credible than advertising. It is generally more cost effective than advertising as well. Stories about your company in the media also improves your image in the eyes of your existing customers as well as your employees. PR should be in every small business owners Lead Generation Trio mix.

A well crafted press release is a key tool in your PR toolbox. Here are a couple of free services that will help you to create effective press releases:

• Instant Press Release - from Duct Tape Marketing, this tool will help you create a perfectly formatted press release in a matter of minutes.
• PressRelease Grader - from the folks at HubSpot, this tool evaluates your press release to determine it's marketing effectiveness. It's like having an experienced press release writer edit your release before you send it out. Great tool!

Press releases are no longer for just the "big companies". Use these two tools to add PR to your marketing mix and attract more of your ideal customers.

Do You Block Facebook and YouTube?

A while back, I contributed an article to a local Kansas City business newspaper that asked "Should Employee Internet Use Be Restricted Or Encouraged?". I argued for encouragement, as I believe that more good comes from companies (through their people) participating in the conversations taking place on the Internet rather than trying to ignore or control them.

In his post Facebook and YouTube blocked by paranoid corporations at their own peril, David Meerman Scott echoes many of the same arguments and discusses how companies are putting themselves at a disadvantage by blocking their employees from these sites.

Through his informal polling, David believes that as many as 25% of companies block access to social networking sites. He explains how IBM has taken the correct approach by allowing access and providing a  set of guidelines for appropriate use for their employees.

Don't put your company at a disadvantage. If you are blocking your employees from accessing, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites, please go read David's post.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics For Business Owners

As a small business owner, you know it's important to make sure your web site can be found by potential customers but you don't have hours of spare time to figure out "SEO" and how to "optimize" your site. You also can't afford to hire a high price SEO expert. What can you do?

In this article, Google's Matt Cutts gives 5 basic tips that will help make sure your site gets found by potential customers. Here is the list in brief:

1. Spotlight your search term on the page.
2. Fill in your "tags". (Bill's note, if you  do nothing else, make sure you have unique, meaningful title tags on each page).
3. Get other sites to "link" back to you.
4. Create a blog and post often
5. Register for free tools

Click through to read the rest of this article. Start with these small, practical tips, and make sure your potential customers can find you when they are ready to buy.

If you sell mostly to your local area, you should also check out the Local Search Engine Profile