What’s your most powerful marketing tool? It’s not social media. It’s not your website. It’s not even email marketing – none of these things. Your most powerful marketing tool is brand consistency across everything you do, and everywhere your clients see you. That means the vibe you give off on your social media channels should reflect what clients see when they visit your website or read marketing emails.

The average open rate for marketing emails is an abysmal 21 percent. That means four out of five clients ignore your attempts to contact them. Why is this happening? And more importantly, how can you boost your email marketing messages? Insert the following three qualities into your marketing emails and increase open rates.

Video is a powerful medium that's not just for cute kitten videos. Video marketing for professional services firms earns click-throughs, while the still photo makes a nice image for those who can’t take the time to watch. Clients often research professional services firms in depth before engaging in services, and your firm realizes many benefits, even if the audience never watches the video to completion. 

Your firm uses social media marketing and is mobile-friendly, right? If not, you may need some fantastic facts and statistical reasons to rev up your presence in these popular and growing spheres. We scoured some of the latest social media articles to inform you of the latest statistics that will help guide your marketing efforts.  Whether you plan to use this information for your firm’s marketing campaigns, convince leadership to ramp up social media marketing efforts, or justify current activities, you will love these marketing stats. Allow these golden nuggets to fuel your next social media strategy brainstorming session.

It’s Oscar season, and excitement is in the air. When you reflect on all the great films you've seen over the past year, you are suddenly struck with an idea to add a video to your firm’s marketing repertoire. If you haven’t taken the video plunge, it is time to get off the sidelines and into the game.

It's always a good idea to integrate your marketing efforts, presenting a unified presence to your clients and prospects. When interacting with your audience via social media and email marketing, take the opportunity to refer to your other channels, establishing as many forms of contact with your audience as possible. You'll then have a variety of ways to keep in touch and disseminate your messages. In addition, clients are likely to find available their preferred method of interacting with your brand. This increases the likelihood that they'll welcome your updates and keep in touch, one way or another. 

What’s the best way to predict the future? Some say it’s to create it. From a business standpoint, that means using analytical information regarding client engagement to help shape the future. That’s how we amassed this list of nine branding trends, which you should incorporate into your 2014 marketing game plan.

To grow your business without becoming mired in a time sink, a clear strategy must guide your content marketing effort. It’s easy to get caught up in the daily rush to create new content and maintain a presence on all social media. Instead, be purposeful. Think focused rather than frantic. Ensure each content is effective, leading to your conversion goals rather than going for quantity and achieving little. Feed your prospects the right, high-quality content at critical points in the sales cycle, and you can lead them through to the services agreement. Create content answering objections that each client persona typically has at specific decision points in the sales-nurturing process. Your content should:

If your business grows slower than you would like, your firm may need a marketing makeover. See if you recognize any of the signs that indicate that it's time to rethink your marketing strategy and get back on the path to success: