Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

5 Questions With Think Ink Marketing

This week's 5 question interview features Craig Dickhout of Think Ink Marketing. Think Ink Marketing helps you get your mail opened by providing 100% handwritten mail pieces. See some great samples on their website.

1.  What do you do for a living?

I own Think Ink Marketing, a direct mail company with a unique and effective niche.  We specialize in 100% real handwritten marketing.  Our standard mailing method is to use a #10 white envelope, with a live stamp and a blue handwritten name and address.  This guarantees at least a 95% open rate.   Our mail simply does not look like a solicitation so it gets opened and read.  It also works great for companies that are looking to strengthen their relationship with their customer or potential customer.  We can personalize mail with a simple hand signature on a letter or write full greeting card messages for our clients.  A handwritten envelope, note or message has and always will be a very personal and effective way to communicate with your target audience.

2.  What makes you different from others in your industry?

Think Ink Marketing is the original and largest hand personalized company in the nation.  We mail between $2 and $6 million hand personalized pieces per month and can handle marketing campaigns of any size.  We provide excellent quality in every piece we produce at the most reasonable prices in the industry.

3.  Who is your ideal customer?

Handwritten envelopes ensure that the direct mail pieces get opened.  So my ideal customer is really anyone who wants to ensure that their mail is getting opened and see an increase in their response rates.  We successfully handle marketing campaigns for a wide range of industries including mortgage, automotive, skin care, diet, real estate, debt and seminar.

4.  What has been your most effective marketing strategy to date?

We recently did a marketing campaign for Direct TV that was especially successful.  A card was sent to all prospects that had called inquiring about Direct TV's service but did not sign up.  The card offered the exact same offer that customers were offered initially.  The card was sent in a hand addressed envelope with a live $.44 stamp.  Direct TV had a response rate of over 10%.  This is virtually unheard of in the direct mail industry.  For us, it's not too rare!

5.  I would be more effective at marketing my business if...

This is a tough one.  I think I market my business pretty well simply because that is my business.  We send our personalized direct mail to our prospective clients often to ensure that we continue to grow as the largest hand personalized mailing house in the country. 

Inbound Marketing For Accountants, Lawyers, and other Professionals

I’m not a big fan of buzzwords, but I do like the term "inbound marketing". I think it is a perfect description of how professional service providers should approach marketing. I don’t know if they coined the phrase, but I first heard the term inbound marketing from the folks at Hubspot.

Inbound marketing is all about “getting found”. Because most people start their search for goods and services by searching the internet, it is important to make sure we can be found there. This is why tools like blogging and social media have been getting so much attention – they help you get found.

Outbound, or traditional marketing, is interruption based marketing. Telemarketing, tradeshows, radio, t.v., and print ads all rely on interrupting people. Most service professionals hate this type of marketing stuff because it feels rude and tends to be ineffective.

Outbound marketing is hunting. Inbound marketing is attracting.

Outbound marketing is shouting. Inbound marketing is a starting or joining a conversation.

Inbound marketing isn’t tied to technology. Referrals are an example of inbound marketing. Because we have previously created value, people hear about us. They are attracted to us and seek us out. This is the key to inbound marketing – create value and share it with others.

Although I didn’t call it inbound marketing, I recently wrote a short e-book about applying what works for referrals to the rest of your marketing.

FAQ Pages for Accountants and Lawyers

Michelle Golden has a great post about creating effective FAQ pages for accountant and lawyer websites. Here is my favorite quote from her post:

"For complex issues, some accountants and many lawyers have GREAT FAQ pages, and they are usually called blogs. "

As Michelle points out, professional service firms need to stop telling people how much they know and start showing them WHAT they know.

Read the rest of Michelle's post here.

How Is Drip Marketing Different From An Autoresponder?

I have been talking about this question quite a bit recently with small business owners. While they may seem very similar, the biggest difference (at least in my mind) is that drip marketing allows you to send information to customers and prospects based on actions they have taken. For instance, if you send out e-zine and someone clicks on a link for a particular offer, you can launch a drip marketing campaign to provide follow up information. You can also customize your responses based on the actions they take on your follow up messages.

Swiftpage is a great tool for implementing a drip marketing campaign. Swiftpage allows you to create multistep marketing plans, giving you tools to intelligently and automatically reach out to your leads, prospects and customers.

The other thing I really like about a tool like Swiftpage is it integrates with data you already have. For example, if you already use ACT!, Swiftpage will work with your existing ACT! data. Without this integration, you end up with several sets of data, each in a different location, and you end up spending inordinate amounts of time coordinating and reconciling data. I don't know about you, but the small business owners I meet don't a data management hat to wear along with everything else they have on their plate.

We have lots of great technology tools these days. The key is to make sure the ones we select actually help us be more effective and efficient, and don't just give us another job to do.

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 order to effectively generate leads.

In order to be strategic about PR, we need to focus on the needs of our audience. In the case of PR, writers want to provide useful information to their audience. Therefore, the important question is, how can we help them help their readers?

 This requires us to spend some time learning about writers and their audience. Luckily, the internet makes this relatively easy. Do you target writers have blogs? Do you read their articles on-line? Using tools like Google Alerts can help you find and keep up journalists who write about your subject matter expertise.

Take the time to learn about them, what they write about. Figure out how you can become a valued source for them. Work at becoming the person they turn to when they have a question about your area of expertise rather than being the guy who sends them a release once a year about the company picnic.

To get better results from you PR efforts, focus on the needs of reporter(s) you are pitching.

Get Your Booth For the 2009 SHBC Entrepreneurial Expo

Planning is well under way for the 2009 SHBC Entrepreneurial Expo. This is a great opportunity to showcase your business, sell your services or products and let people know about what you have to offer.  They are expecting over 1,000 people to come through SHBC's Entrepreneurial Expo.

This is the premier event for Kauffman Foundation's Global Entrepreneurship Week in KC!

Here are the even particulars:

SHBC Entrepreneurial Expo
Thursday, November 19, 2009 10am to 6pm
Johnson County Administration building (Clock Tower building)
111 S. Cherry Street
Olathe, KS

For more information about the expo, visit www.KCSHBCEXPO.org

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 that after answer, they will return the favor and inquire about what we do. The question came up about what to do when that person doesn’t make that inquiry.

I'm not sure I did a good job of answering this question at the time, but I think you have two main choices, 1) force the issue or 2) cut bait and move on.

I say force the issue, but of course you need to have a professional way to go about it. In my experience, when someone doesn’t return the “what do you do” question, they usually are not comfortable with networking. So our first job is to make them more comfortable.

Start by asking permission to ask a question - “would it be ok if I ask you a question?”. Then give a short explanation of what you do, followed by your usual question(s) that you use to determine if this person is someone who may do business with you.

Every once in a while, you will run into someone who just isn’t interested in having a conversation. They may be interested in doing a lot of telling, but that isn’t a conversation. In these cases, you may just have to politely excuse yourself and move on. Excusing yourself may sound something like “I’m sure you came here to make contacts, so I won’t monopolize your time”.

Remember, the goal of networking isn’t to make a sale right then and there. Rather, you goal should be to identify people who look like the types of folks who may do business with you or are able and willing to introduce you to others who will.

The Sandler Rules - 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How To Apply Them

If there is anything that professionals service providers hate worse than marketing, it is probably selling.

I'm a big fan of the Sandler Sales system, and I've posted about it several times on this blog. I wish they had taught this stuff in college (but would I have been smart enough to take that class?).

The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them.  Adapted by David Mattson, outlines 49 "Sandler Rules". These timeless selling principles will be more successful by showing you how to be "180 degrees different from the traditional salesperson".

The principles are divided into three main parts. Part One outlines six rules, or core concepts, that will transform your selling process (or help you get one).

Part Two contains rules that focus on execution. The 27 rules in this section outline many of the tactics that you will use "where the rubber meets the road" during your sales calls.

The rules in the last section help us remember the proper attitudes that we need to have in order to be successful in sales.

Follow the rules in this book and your sales will definitely improve.

Marketing for Accountants, CPAs, and Professional Service Firms - New E-Book

Marketing for Accountants, CPAs, and Professional Service Firms - New E-Book

Free e-book outlines what works and what doesn't when it comes to marketing professional services.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 05, 2009 – Professional service firms have traditionally relied on referrals to grow their practices. However, for many firms, referrals may not bring in enough new business to meet the firm's financial goals.

According Kansas City area Duct Tape Marketing Coach Bill Brelsford, "Many professional service providers believe marketing (other than referrals) won't work for their type of firm. It's not unusual for them spend a lot of money on a campaign that produces little or no results, causing them to sour on marketing."

In his new e-book, "Saying the Wrong Thing Louder Doesn't Make It Right", Brelsford outlines why referral marketing works and how most frustrations related to professional services marketing are caused by failing to stick with what works for referrals when engaging in other marketing tactics.

The e-book starts by telling the story of a typical accountant who starts his own practice and then challenges he faces while building his business. A discussion of why referrals work, why the "other marketing stuff" doesn't. The e-book outlines the elements of a successful referrals and concludes with a discussion of how to apply the principles of successful referral marketing to a firm's other marketing activities.

The free e-book “Saying The Wrong Thing Louder Doesn't Make It Right” can be found and downloaded at http://www.rebarbusinessbuilders.com/freeEbook.aspx

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About Rebar Business Builders

As an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing coach, Rebar works with professional service providers to install marketing systems that allow them to spend less time chasing business and more time working with profitable clients.

Free e-Book - Marketing Professional Services

I just posted my first e-Book on my website. In it, I discuss marketing for service professionals – specifically, why referrals work, how to get better referrals consistently, and how to apply what works for referrals to the rest of your marketing activities

This e-Book is totally free. No registration required.  You can download it here.