Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

Social Media and the Marketing Hourglass

Those of you familiar with Duct Tape Marketing are probably familiar with the marketing hourglass. Similar to the marketing funnel, the marketing hourglass shows not only how to attract our ideal customers, but also how to continue to focus on them in order to turn them into repeat customers and raving fans.

Note - Many of my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coaches have already done an excellent job of describing the hourglass - just Google "marketing hourglass" if you would like to learn more about this concept.

The diagram to the right shows the different phases of the marketing hourglass along with marketing tools that are appropriate for each phase of the process.

Given our (Duct Tape Marketing) love of social media, you may be surprised by the fact that social media tools don’t appear in this diagram. So where does social media fit in?

In my opinion, social media can (should?) play a part in each phase of the marketing hourglass. Social media can help create awareness and help us “get found” helping to build our Know, Like, and Trust. The same applies to the building interest and generating awareness to our Try phase. Social media also provides us with a great way to listen to the market place so we can create products and services that people want to Buy. Listening also helps us identify and correct any problems or complaints our customers are experiencing so that we can keep them as Repeat customers and provide the type of service that will lead to more Referrals.

In order to be effective with social media, it is important that we start with a crystal clear picture of who we are trying to reach (Ideal Customer) and how we will tell the world we are different from everyone else who claims to do what we do (Core Difference). This crystal clear strategy will help us answer important questions like “where should I hang out?”, “what should I say?”, “what type of content should I create?”, “what should I be listening for?”, “who should I connect with?”.

Having a clear strategy will help you use social media to strengthen your marketing hourglass and prevent you from burning valuable time on “that social media stuff”.

Still Time To Sign Up For Social Media Series

[ This is a live event in the Kansas City area ]

There is still time to sign up for our hands on social media series which starts this coming Wednesday.

This four part series will cover blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools. We believe this series is unique for two reasons.  First, these are hands on workshops where you will actually get things done. No more going home after a lecture and then getting stuck when you try to follow your notes.

Second, throughout the series, we will focus on how to use these tools to grow your business. We will discuss how social media fits into your overall marketing strategy and which tools make the most sense for your particular business.

Here is a quick overview of the sessions in the series:

• September 30 Small Business Blogging
• October 7 LinkedIn – From Profile to Profit
• October 14 Demystifying Facebook for Business
• October 21 Twitter and Putting It All Together

Registration is being handled by the K-State office, but feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions. For more information and to sign up, visit the K-State Research and Extension Website

ACT! Gets Social

I have been using the 2010 version of ACT! for a little over a week now, and so far, I really like what I see. The upgrade process worked flawlessly. I like the user interface changes and so far the program seems to be a little more responsive than the last version did on the same machine.

One of the new features of ACT! is the Web Info tab on in the Contacts and Companies sections.  Shown below, the Web Info tab gives you quick access to several social sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Plaxo. You can also view the local weather for your contact as well as perform a quick Google News search as you are dialing the phone.

I really like the LinkedIn feature for managing my “cold” prospects. Typically when I have a list of prospects that I build from a service like ReferenceUSA, I will do a quick search in LinkedIn to see if I have any second level connections to the person or their company. If I have a second level connection I will ask for an introduction. Otherwise, I will just add them to my cold calling list. Since I import these lists into ACT! anyway, this new feature saves me a little bit of time on each contact and just makes the workflow feel a lot smoother.

ACT! does provide the ability to add your own links to the Web Info tab.

What’s your favorite ACT! feature?

Social Media for Small Business - Our Four Part Series Is Back

Bethany Spilde and I will be joining with the K-State Research and Extension office to bring back our Growing Your Small Business - The Social Media Series to the Kansas City area. In this four session series, we will give you practical, hands on advice on how to use social media to grow your business.

This four part series will cover blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools. We believe this series is unique for two reasons.  First, these are hands on workshops where you will actually get things done. No more going home after a lecture and then getting stuck when you try to follow your notes.

Second, throughout the series, we will focus on how to use these tools to grow your business. We will discuss how social media fits into your overall marketing strategy and which tools make the most sense for your particular business.

Here is a quick overview of the sessions in the series:

• September 30 Small Business Blogging
• October 7 LinkedIn – From Profile to Profit
• October 14 Demystifying Facebook for Business
• October 21 Twitter and Putting It All Together

Registration is being handled by the K-State office, but feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions. For more information and to sign up, visit the K-State Research and Extension Website

Create Your Snapshot - Beginning With The End In Mind

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 way of saying “begin with the end in mind” as Steven Covey taught us.

David caught me smiling at this because I start most of my marketing presentations the same way – asking folks to picture what they want their life to look like. We then talk about a marketing plan, and our business, as a vehicle for helping us achieve those life goals.

From my experience, “begin with the end in mind” is one of those things that makes perfect intellectual sense, but is often short circuited in our efforts to get something done. It is often easier to dive in an work on the mechanics. We feel good when we can check something off of our to do list. But are we staying busy without really getting anywhere?

For many clients, the coaching is the greatest value they receive from the Duct Tape Marketing System. I think part of this is because it is so hard to work on this big picture stuff by yourself that it becomes easy to put off so it helps to have someone to hold you accountable.

Get out your calendar right now and make an appointment with yourself to work on your “snapshot”. Do you really have something more important to do for your business?

Ridiculous Customer Contact Policy

I don't know if this is just plain laughable, or if I have to laugh to keep from shaking my head so hard I'm afraid I'll sprain my neck.

It's saturday morning and I am catching up on my reading. I see an ad in a trade magazine, I have a quick, non-urgent question for the company who placed the ad, so I figure I will send them a quick e-mail. I go to their website, click on their "contact us online" link. I am immediately greeted by a five point, 521 word statement of terms and conditions that I had to accept before I am allowed the privilege of sending them a message.

Yep, you read that right. It took 521 words to explain the terms and conditions under which they are willing to hear from a potential customer or business partner.

Doing a quick scan through their website, this disclaimer page appears to rank second in terms of the amount of content on any given page. The only page with more content is the "About Us" page. Hmmm.

Of course, each condition was more ridiculous than the rest. Here is my favorite one:

"[company] may at any time revise these Terms and Conditions by updating this posting. You are bound by any such revisions and should therefore periodically visit this page to review the then current Terms and Conditions to which you are bound."

So now I have a new part time job. Awesome.

I often talk about marketing and online media in terms of having a conversation. This kind of thing certainly isn't a conversation but it speaks volumes about the company and what they stand for.

I don't know what to say, DON'T DO THIS. Hopefully, no one who reads this blog creates these types of barriers to customer dialog. If you made this mistake years ago and want to correct it, give me a call and we'll work together to fix it.

P.S. - Want to place a bet on when I will hear back from this company? I'm guessing never. Leave your guess as a comment, and if they ever contact me, I'll give the closest guess a prize.

In Pursuit Of More Effective Meetings

Michelle Golden, president of Goldern Practices Inc., and alliteration queen (read the article), has a nice article in this month's AccountingToday magazine - Death to death by meetings - amen!

My favorite part of Michelle's article is her description of using "Five-Finger-Consensus" to get higher quality decisions.

Only 20 Booths Left for the Entrepreneurial Expo

Lou Ann just let me know that booths for the 2009 Expo are going fast and there are only 20 left. For more information about the Expo, see my previous post.

Being Known Is Not Enough

In Duct Tape Marketing, we define marketing as getting someone, with a particular need, to Know, Like, and Trust us. I think the "Know" portion of this definition is often viewed as just "getting our name out there" and is often used to rationalize some of our activities. It allows us to check "do marketing" off of our to do list.

Being known is only a first step. In order to take your business or practice to the next level, you have to be known for something particular. Our business cannot be all things to all people.

Deciding to become known for something particular can be scary. We must define the types of prospects we don't serve. This feeling that we may be losing business (that we never had) can make us feel uneasy.

As you become more successful, you will attract more prospects to your business that do not meet your Ideal Client Profile. It is important that your marketing system includes a mechanism to deal with this situation. Have you identified strategic referral partner who may be able to help these folks better than you can? This can be a great way to create a win-win-win situation that allows the prospect to find someone who can serve their needs while continuing to build your reputation as a trusted advisor.

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 often turn to corporate-speak in the latter. Over the weekend, I was reading some David Maister's Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy . David is much smarter and a better writer than I am and he makes this point much better than I did. David tells us that in order to win a client's business, we must have a conversation and he outlines the following characteristics of a conversation:

• It's person to person; not role to role. People use normal language, not "corporate-speak"
• Both sides talk, and what one says is dependent upon what the other has just said.
• Both parties are engaged in joint problem solving; neither is trying to win or prevail
• It's designed to allow people with different views to learn from one another

Take a close look at the list above. When you go on a sales call or are speaking to generate leads, are you having a conversation? Or are you "telling"?