Bad reviews are inevitable, and it’s no use dreading them. Negative thoughts can lead to positive experiences for you and your professional services firm. Much like in your personal life, no one will agree with everything you say, but you can’t let it keep you silent, interfere with your marketing or send you over the edge. What do you do if one of your visitors has a negative experience and posts a comment for the entire world to see?  You start by personalizing a well-thought response; boilerplate responses will not work here. It does not take too long to demonstrate goodwill and respond professionally.

Strong client relationships can be summed up in one word: loyalty. Whether you’re fundraising, trying to develop business, providing better services, or gaining more significant market share, inbound marketing is the method you should use to build strong client relationships and reach your goals. After all, if you spend all your time on outbound marketing and none on inbound, you’re like a doctor who uses bloodletting to cure a headache. The technique may date back further, but it’s much less effective than modern-day solutions.

Images can bring businesses and professionals closer to their social media fans, followers, clients, and prospects. Photographs, especially photos, have always had an arresting quality: now they’re more accessible than ever to create and highly sharable. Images, infographics, and video serve as excellent shorthand to say a lot quicker and as perfect shortcuts to bringing people closer faster. 

In today’s wired world, electronic communications are rarely extraordinary. Daily is filled with emails, text messages, tweets, likes, and follows that typically fulfill some useful purpose. These messages are quick, take minutes to draft, and rarely involve thoughtfully written prose.  One could easily say, “This is simply the natural evolution of communication.”  While that may be the case, I am not convinced. 

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.