Podcast Episode 7: How to start marketing your consultancy

Every consultant I know, whether they're a start up or million pound consultancy has got off the ground and grown through word of mouth and referrals. 

They're a great way to grow your consultancy. 

And very low maintenance from a marketing point of view. 

BUT, relying on word of mouth and referrals alone to grow your consultancy I think is really risky business. 

As business owners, our personal income and survival hinge on the success of our business. 

And when you rely on referrals, you're leaving your future earnings in the hands of the HR consulting gods. 

Sometimes they come through for you. 

Sometimes they don't. 

But most worringly,  it's completely out of your control and this isn't cool. 

Consultants who grow in this way are often trapped in a boom and bust business cycle too, which is terrible for cash flow, terrible for growth and terrible for your stress levels.  

That's why you need to stop relying on referrals, take back control and start actually marketing your consultancy. 

So in this podcast, I'm going to talk you through how to do this... 

So that you can grow your consultancy in a predictable, scalable and stress-free way.  

Are you ready? 

Okay awesome, let's go! 

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So the first thing I'd work on is increasing your brand visibility and awareness. 

This is a really easy place to start. 

And to do this, you simply need to put content out there on a regular basis. 

Think about your LinkedIn and other socials, sending out a monthly newsletter and weekly emails. 

Stuff like that... 

This type of content ticks along in the background to make sure you're consistently seen and heard. 

And although doing this alone won't get you new clients, you need to think that each piece of content you create is a touch point that will contribute towards a potential sale.

This is really how you should be thinking about each piece of marketing that you do. 

And of course, you're increasing your brand visibility and awareness by doing so. 

So how should you get started? 

Well, I'd start by creating a monthly content schedule.

Sit down at the start of the month and think about what you're going to post about and when, create the content and get organised. 

I know this is much easier said than done. 

Most business owners I know, including myself, really struggle to keep up with this sort of content output on a regular basis. 

I was sat there for 2 hours the other day creating one LinkedIn Newsletter and I'm a content writer by trade. 

Honestly, marketing does take up so much time. 

And that's why I created the HR Marketing Box to help you get content out there, increase your brand awareness and get new clients. 

The HR Marketing Box is an online library full of ready to use content and ideas.

It's a HUGE time saver, it's a thousand times cheaper than hiring a content writer and it saves you LOADS of hassle.

So if you're struggling for time, be sure to check out the HR Marketing Box and see if this is a quicker and cheaper way for you to get personalised content out there. 

The next thing to do is to turn this stuff into a system and to delegate this system to someone else... 

This is really important because you need to be thinking about bigger and better things which I'll come onto in just a second. 

Okay, so if you're a start up, you might not be able to do this. 

But if you've got a few clients, you definitely should think about paying someone to do this for you. 

Whether there's a family member, friend or virtual assistant that could help you out. 

Alternatively, we do offer a Marketing Virtual assistant service too and we have 3 packages which follows my best practice marketing advice. 

Okay so let's recap... 

First thing you need to do is increase your brand visibility and awarness 

You can do this by creating a monthly content schedule 

To help you do this, you can become a member of the HR Marketing Box 

And if you want, you can get one of our Marketing VA's to do it for you. 

Right, so I want you to box everything that I've just said and move it to one side because now you need to think about your goals. 

Creating crystal clear short, mind and long term goals are essential to marketing and growing your consultancy. 

Okay so there are two things I always say that are applicable here. 

The first is that marketing can only generate results when you know what results you want it to generate. 

And the second is that you cannot look at how you've grown your consultancy to date via referrals, as a reflection of how you can grow your consultancy in the future. 

Let me explain what I mean by this. 

Most consultants I know are flakey AF when it comes to how they're going to grow their consultancy. 

And we usually get as far as "I want to work with local SMEs who have 10 to 50 employees". 

That's a cool starting point. 

But for your marketing to work, we need to be WAY more focussed than that. 

If I was sat on a call with you right now, I'd ask you 4 questions. 

1. What does your life vision look like? 
2. How much money do you need to earn? 
3. Who are you targeting? 
4. How are you packaging up your services? 

The answers to these questions are essential to creating any sort of growth or marketing plan. 

I do understand that being this focussed is challenging. 

It can often feel like you're restricting yourself by asking yourself these questions. 

And then you're like, well this isn't how I've grown to date. 

But you must remember that you cannot look at how you've grown your consultancy to date via referrals, as a reflection of how you can grow your consultancy in the future. 

Direct marketing is a completely different ball game all together and you need to have a completely different mindset and approach to it. 

There are lots of ways I can help you with this and any resources like this can be found in the HR Growth Academy, so be sure to check that out and sign up to receive updates. 

So yeah, let's bring it back to creating short, mid and long term goals. 

An example of a short term goal could be to sell a new service to your existing clients for instance. 

An example of a mid term goal would be to run a campaign and sell HR software to as many local businesses as you can. 

And an example of a long term goal would be to target a specific industry and sell them your peace of mind subscription based service. 

So I'd like you to set a challenge for yourself right now. 

I'd like you to think about and be able to answer these 4 questions the next time we speak: 

1. What does your life vision look like? 
2. How much money do you need to earn? 
3. Who are you targeting? 
4. How are you packaging up your services? 

Once you know the answers to the questions, we can then move onto the next step and that's to break your marketing down into little campaigns. 

So imagine you've got the brand awareness stuff just ticking along nicely in the background... 

You've created some crystal clear short, mid and long term goals. 

And now we're going to look at the calendar and we're going to let's say dedicate the next two months to selling management training to your existing clients. 

To do this, we're going to have to create a new page on the website maybe, send some comms out about it, maybe do a webinar and follow up with our clients to see if they're interested. 

And we can give ourselves the time to focus on this particular goal. 

Cool. 

And then the next 3 months, we're going to target local businesses and sell them HR software. 

Again, we're going to need to spend time building a list of local businesses that we want to target. 

We might want to do a multi-touch point campaign, do a webinar and create some sort of funnel for this goal. 

And then, while all of this is happening, we've been gearing up to launch into a new industry and sell our peace of mind subscription based service.

So let's take a step back and just summarise how I see things. 

When it comes to my own marketing stuff, I kind of divide it into two bits. 

On the left, we have the brand awareness stuff that ticks nicely along in the background. 

On the right, we have the proactive stuff that I'm doing that's very goal oriented.

And in the middle, we have the strategy piece. 

This is the thinking bit that we really need to get right before we can do the proactive stuff. 

But this piece shouldn't stop us from doing the brand awareness stuff. 

That should be happening anyway.

Okay, so that's the visualisation that's going on in my head and hopefully I've communicated that well enough for you to understand and take something from. 

I do have a FREE Marketing Action Plan poster that guides you through your marketing journey at a top level

So please feel free to go to the HR Growth Academy to get your free copy posted to you. 

This week's thought of the week: