Do not fall into the trap of the rather pervasive belief that a firm’s logo constitutes its brand. While the logo and overall aesthetic image are parts of the brand, it’s the client experience and associations people draw from that experience that mold and shape a brand the most. These touch points are the foundation for good engagement marketing.
Professional services marketing is always involved in engagement marketing, mainly in the traditional sense. Marketing and business development activities are about nurturing relevant business relationships. Engagement marketing takes these activities to the next level--clients can shape a firm’s brand simply through conversation and setting the expectation based on their dialog.
Today, there is a shift in professional services marketing. Recognizing that clients now have the opportunity to have greater control over a firm’s brand, marketers have actively shifted their efforts. You will find the most influential brands in the market are built by conversation, both digitally and traditionally. When a client decides to award services to a firm, it is not influenced by repeated regurgitation of the same information. Client decisions are based on relevant content, increased learning, and community influence today.
Here’s how engagement marketing helps bring a positive experience to your clients and improve retention.
- Stay in touch with your clients with just the right frequency - Put extra effort into engagement marketing to determine how often to reach out to your clients for the best response possible. For example, sending out marketing emails every two weeks may be just right, while the sweet spot for direct mail could be closer to every three or four weeks.
- Track and increase the number of engaged clients - The most engaged clients subscribe to professional marketing services, follow your firm on social media, and actively get involved on Facebook and Twitter. To increase the percentage of highly engaged clients, boost the number of relevant offers you post on social media and include them in emails and direct mail.
- Engage employees - Engagement marketing isn’t just about the clients. It’s also about inspiring employees to be better assets for your professional services firm. Do this by facilitating helpful communication between management and employees, fostering a more productive organizational culture, developing a high-performing peer group, and clarifying job roles and responsibilities. The outcomes of your efforts include higher employee performance, better task commitment, a climate that increases client satisfaction, and a greater willingness for employees to stay on the job.
- Deliver enhanced value - Setting up a loyalty program is an effective engagement marketing technique, but only if used correctly. For instance, clients don’t care about rewards that aren’t relevant to them. Tips should surprise and delight loyalty members, which means generic rewards simply won’t do. Instead, offer tailored rewards to specific clients based on lifestyle, demographics, and geographic location to boost ROI, client engagement, and retention.
You have effectively entered into a new age of marketing professional services. Incorporating engagement marketing into your strategy will energize the activities familiar to you. Providing creative, visual content is more important than ever to generate engagement from your prospective clients. You must actively reach and participate among a rapidly growing set of channels and mediums. As a result, you will be able to learn about your audience and identify trends in their behavior, preferences, and dialogs. Then you can act on this data with sophistication by responding and shaping your brand to effectively deliver the kind of firm that your client wants to do business with.
For more information about mastering engagement marketing to improve client experience and retention, please contact Colosi Marketing today.
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