Marketing professional services constantly require content generation.  We are always responding to requests for qualifications and requests for proposals.  Once we are done, these responses are filed away and referenced for yet another response.  Why not take a fresh approach to your writing skills?  Try repurposing proposal content to create eBooks highlighting your firm’s market expertise. If you can write great proposals, you can write an eBook that generates leads.

In my recent post, Deep Six Boilerplate with Content Marketing for Professional Services, I discussed transforming the tired old boilerplate library into a high-performance blog that rates your text by the popularity of your post.  One of the suggestions was to incorporate presentation slide decks into your content marketing practices.

Marketing professional services is not a casual client encounter. Unlike businesses that sell products with a short sales cycle, a firm offering professional services tend to take a relationship marketing approach. Relationship marketing acknowledges the value of long-term client relationships by providing valuable, rich content that goes deeper than the typical sales promotion.  

Are you starting to generate blog content for your firm? While you're drafting material, optimizing each post to attract the attention of desired audiences is important. A blog post is an effective communication tool for providing information to enhance and stimulate business development efforts. As you increase the number of posts, you will see an increase in blog traffic and the probability of converting a site visitor into a prospective client.

Did the 10 Benefits of Blogging for Professional Services Marketing convince you to launch your firm’s blog?  Hopefully, the answer is “yes” because this post offers ideas for generating blog content. 

Marketing automation focuses on nurturing leads from the top of the inbound marketing funnel to becoming prospective clients at the bottom of the funnel. Prospects typically get a score based on their activity level when provided with regular campaign messages via email. These periodic campaign messages nurture the prospective client from initial interest to services award.  Marketing automation combines email marketing with a structured business development lifecycle.

Are you interested in getting an instant return on your website investment?  If the answer is "yes!" you should consider adding landing pages and content that delivers value to your website.  These website elements will help you “pump up the volume” of prospective clients.

Let's imagine a prospective client is looking at your firm's statement of qualifications. We'll assume you presented an incredible body of work. Your prospect skims through the content, browses the impressive case study images, and admires the incredible layout. After reviewing the material, the prospective client concludes that you are a qualified resource for professional services. 

Over the past five years, the marketing playbook for professional services has changed. Professional services marketers are working feverishly and at breakneck speed. High stress and tight deadlines are always factors in the industry's traditional marketing methods. Traditional methods tend to be print collateral, including brochures, statements of qualification, postcards, and any other media marketers gratuitously provide to prospective clients. These methods often suffer from a mismanaged message due to intensive labor, cost constraints, and focus on collateral production.

Inbound marketing methods offer new opportunities and a more practical approach to being flexible and adaptive in meeting market requirements for quality content. These methods use technology to create, deliver and measure content effectively. The idea is to provide content to capture the interest of a firm's prospective clients – these methods are proving to be a revolutionary shift in the marketing paradigm. As an added benefit, inbound marketing methods significantly reduce the time and cost associated with traditional methods.

Traditional marketing and business development methods for professional services need to be fixed. You no longer need large marketing and business development budgets to make a difference.