Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

One Thought, One Post

Joe Dager, my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coach in Fort Wayne, IN, posted about a great presentation by Nancy Duarte on his blog recently. While watching Nancy's presentation I was reminded of an important rule to keep in mind when creating presentations - "One Thought, One Slide". This rule helps us stay away from cluttered slides that garble, rather than clarify the point we are trying to make.

I think this is also a great rule to keep in mind when creating blog posts. Rather than trying to write an article or whitepaper in every post, make one point and make it well. One Thought, One Post.

I know this rule will help me be a better blogger, so thanks to Joe and Nancy for reminding me of this important rule.

Adjusting Your Attitude About Business Planning

I recently posted about Tim Berry's new book - The Plan-As-You-Go Buinsess Plan. One of the reasons I like this book is Tim's approach to using the business plan to manage your business. Contrast this approach with the old thinking of creating a huge business plan once, because someone is making me do it, before doing any work on the business, and then never look at it again.

Tim recently posted a great video that explains the thoughts behind the second chapter, Attitude Adjustment, of his book. You can find the video here on the Plan-As-You-Go web site.

Wichita Professional Women's Business Expo

Next week I'll be heading to Wichita, KS to participate in the Kansas Woman Professional Women's Business Expo. I'll be there to talk about marketing your small business. I also get to participate in the one-on-one executive coaching sessions. In these short sessions, you get to work with a coach. If you have never worked with a coach before, this is a great way for you to find out what it's all about.

I'll have lots of info with me about Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing.

I will also be sharing my experience as an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach. If you have been considering becoming a marketing coach, make sure you stop by and visit me.

The expo takes place on Thursday, September 4th, at the Beech Activity Center. You must RSVP for the event and admission is only $5. For more information call 316.682.7827, or click here for the brochure.

If you own a business in Wichita or the surrounding area, come out to the expo and say hi.

CRM - Personalization vs. Customization

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 {Name},

{Company} will love our latest widgets...

And when the message is processed, this is what is sent:

Dear Bill,

Rebar will love our latest widgets....

This technique allows you to create a message once, while giving the appearance that is was created specifically for that person. Personalized messages are a nice touch and can help you connect with your prospects more quickly. Personalization is well suited for fairly generic messages that are sent out automatically, such as an auto-responder series that is sent out when after someone downloads a special report from your web site. Personalization works well at this point of the relationship, when you want to connect personally but you don't have a lot of information (basic contact info) about the message recipient.

Service based companies, who rely on building relationships to grow their revenues, need a different kind of personalization in their communications - I'll call it customization to distinguish the two. Customization is different from personalization. Personalization uses data about the recipient (name, company, location) to personalize your message. Customization uses information (industry news, knowledge of family, people they would like to meet) to personalize the message.

As you build a relationship with a customer or prospect, you learn more about them. They also learn about you. They also know what you have learned about them. Because of this, sending "canned" messages with minor degrees of personalization can actually damage the relationship. Have you ever received a letter or e-mail from a company of which you had been a customer for years that sounded like you had never met them before? How did that make you feel?

We need systems that behave differently based on the stage of the relationship. As the relationship progresses, we need to move from sending messages automatically to a system that prompts us when to communicate. We want tools that help us create messages quickly, but they need to change from complete pre-written messages to templates and snippets that we can arrange and edit as needed. As the relationship grows, different mediums of communication become more appropriate (letters vs. e-mail vs. phone call vs. text messages, etc.).

As our relationships grow, not only do we need tools to help create and manage relationships with our customers, we also need tools to help us manager the relationships we foster between our customers.

Do you have a favorite CRM tool? Leave a comment and let me know what it is and why you like it.

Marketing Plan Pro Powered by Duct Tape Marketing

Tim Berry, business plan guru and friend of the blog, announced the launch of Marketing Plan Pro 11, also known as Marketing Plan Pro Powered by Duct Tape Marketing.

I had the pleasure of working with early beta versions of the software and have found it to be a very flexible and easy to use tool. As Tim teaches in his book, The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, the key to planning is to constantly revise and update your plan as your business grows and circumstances change. This is where having a good software tool for managing your plan really helps. Marketing Plan Pro has several tools to help you stay organized, to review your performance against the plan, and to make adjustments to the plan as needed.

Staying true to the principles taught in Plan-As-You-Go, Marketing Plan Pro provides a 30 Minute Plan, a Basic Plan, and a Standard Plan. I think most small business owners will want to start with the 30 minute plan and then add to it as needed.

For more information, check out this quick video tour of Marketing Plan Pro.

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 advertising suddenly get you a flood of new business? I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of online advertising. I just think this advice (and the typical supporting arguments that accompany it) focus on the wrong problem. Moving to a new medium won't suddenly make bad advertising practices effective.

Traditional advertising doesn't fail because it's old, or on paper, or because there are too many print ads already. Traditional advertising doesn't work for professional service firms because the traditional approach continues to make traditional mistakes.

Here are a few of the common mistakes professional service firms make when creating or purchasing ads:

They try to make the sale directly from the ad. People don't buy professional services just because they see an ad. Rather than try to sell, your ad should contain a strong call to action that will funnel prospects into your education based marketing system.

They fail to narrowly define their target market first and then look for the most appropriate way to reach that audience. This leads to the very expensive "shotgun" approach that tries to spread the message as far and wide as possible, hoping a prospect will happen across it at the time they are ready to buy.

They focus on features and benefits rather than the needs of the customer. Prospects don't care about your cool technology or your great equipment or the cumulative number of years of experience of your entire staff. They want to know that you understand their situation and you can solve their problem(s).

Unless your only goal is to  lower your cost per advertising mistake, before you change your advertising tactics, take the time to create your marketing strategy first - then make sure your advertising message and delivery vehicles are aligned with that strategy.

Who Trusts You?

I just finished listening to Stephen M.R. Covey's session on the The Coaching Excellence Series. Stephen shared some great insights about the real economic costs associated with trust and what he calls the "trust tax". He also mentioned a cool tool that you can use to measure your level of trust as seen by others.

If you missed the telecast, check the web site in a couple days for a recording of the session.

Coaching Excellence Series With Stephen M.R. Covey

Just a quick reminder that the Duct Tape Marketing Coaching Excellence series with Stephen M.R. Covey is today at noon CST.

Publicity Demystified

This month's SHBC meeting features Janet Smith of Expansion Communications. Janet will teach us that one of the most effective and low-cost ways to publicize your business is through media coverage. Have you wondered how competitors and other small business owners receive publicity in newspapers and magazines and on broadcast news programs and talk shows? That could be you—and you don’t need to hire a PR professional to make it happen. Janet will demystify the process by outlining a simple five-step publicity process that every business owner can easily put into action.

 

Here are the meeting particulars:

Monthly Meeting & Luncheon Time: Aug. 20th 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Place: Bacchanalia Private Dining Facility (located at 12450 Newton - appx. 124th & Blue Valley Pkwy)

RSVP REQUIRED for the event: Register online http://kcshbc.org

Meeting cost is $15 for members and $20 for non-members, IF YOU REGISTER ON-LINE. There is an ADDITIONAL $5 fee to pay at the door. Complimentary lunch included.

The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan

[Note: Tim sent me a copy of his book, but he didn't ask me to review or post about it]

Readers of this blog know that I am an advocate of written plans, particular marketing plans. In my current role as a Duct Tape Marketing coach and in my former role as a CPA, I see business owners who struggle because they don't have a plan. I also see folks who create a plan because they "have to", but then they never use it - it goes on a shelf and collects dust. I've always maintained that the value from having a written plan comes from 1) going through the process and 2) using it on a regular basis to evaluate how your business is going and making adjustments as needed.

In his new book The Plan-as-You-Go Business Plan, Tim Berry makes these points much more eloquently than I ever could. Tim argues that the planning process (along with regular reviews) is so important that business owners just need to get started somewhere, anywhere, and continue to build your plan as your needs change. This is 180 degrees different from the classical "big bang" approach to business planning where we work for months at a time developing a huge document before we ever get started working on the business.

Tim has organized his book to support his "plan as you go" approach. It is designed so you can jump around and use the section of the book that you need at any given time. The first section of the book "Attitude Adjustment" contains the background information you need to know and learn to adjust to this idea of business planning as a process in your business rather  than an event or milestone to be forgotten once completed.

In "The Heart of the Plan", you work on your business identity, target market, your offering(s) and your strategic focus. When I post about having a marketing plan on this blog, this is the stuff I'm talking about.

"Flesh and Bones" is the section that talks about creating action plans, budgets, milestones, and metrics.

I really like that "Dressing and Growing" is the second to the last chapter of the book because it re-emphasizes the idea that you should do the planning for yourself first, and then when others want to see the plan (your bank), you add the dressing that they need to what you have already done. Again, this is 180 degrees different from how most businesses use their business plans.

The last section talks about the process of planning. This includes reviewing, revising, and managing the plan. I think my favorite piece of Tim's advice from this book is his recommendation that the first thing you do when creating your plan is to schedule the review dates - before you even begin writing. I just think this sets exactly the right tone for part your plan should play in your business.

This book is a must have for anyone who owns a business or plans to start a business someday.