Yet, selling to the high net worth market is difficult.  High net worth people don’t go around with a label on them stating the value of their portfolios. They may live relatively modest lives.  They may not associate with the wealthy.  This is a group that you cannot necessarily recognise easily and its members do not congregate in the same places.

What can a professional services firm do, if it wants to attract more high net worth clients?  Here are some suggestions to help you make a start.

#1 – Commit To Differentiate Your Professional Services Firm

When you meet a member of your target market, you’re able to differentiate yourself from other accountants or firms of solicitors.  You know what you do.  You are able to explain the value of your services when you meet prospective clients in the real world. Yet, when you come to build your presence in the online world, you don’t take the same amount of care.  If yours is like most professional practices’ websites, then it is just an online brochure that says who you are, where you are, what you do, how long you have been around and where to find you.

Your website does not have anything on it that informs the high net worth visitor to your site that you do anything that will be of specific interest to him or her.

You are not creating content that is differentiated in any way from what your competitors produce and which appeals to your chosen ideal client.

The obvious thing to do is  to commit to  create  a different sort of content for your website.  Make that commitment and you will immediately start to help your professional services firm to stand out from others in your niche.  Just making the commitment puts you ahead of a lot of your competitors.

#2 – Undertake Market Research

A professional services firm needs to undertake market research just like other businesses.  You need to know a lot about your target market. You need to go beyond demographics.

You are probably not looking to sell to any, and every, affluent person.  You are looking to sell to people with specific problems or aspirations who also happen to be relatively wealthy.  Specific problems and specific aspirations matter.  They must also be problems and aspirations that you can help your clients to address.

Let’s take an example.

Selling Accountancy Services To International Speakers

Let’s say that your accountancy practice specialises – or plans to specialise – in selling services to international speakers.  These are people who may earn fees in a number of currencies.  Their expenses are complex.  They may also sell products and services to leverage their speaking income.

In short, they have complex accountancy needs. International speakers need, or they believe they need, specialised accountancy services.

You will need to find out exactly what issues are uppermost in speakers’ minds.  That is the purpose of your market research.  When you know what these issues are, you can start to think about demonstrating to your target market that your accountancy practice is the one speakers should choose.

And the way you will do this ……………………….

#3 – Post Authority Content On Your Professional Services Firm’s Website

Once you know what keeps your target market awake at night, you will need to produce online articles or authority content that is written to demonstrate to these people that your professional services firm has expertise in this field and that yours is the professional services firm that international speakers should contact.

The articles you produce should be published on your website. 

Whatever your area of expertise, this is a tactic that will help you to greater success.  It will help you to build your credibility and your authority with your chosen market. It will differentiate you from the competition.  It will help to make your telephones ring more often.

In the first instance, you will promote your content to the speakers you already know and encourage them to share it with other speakers.  Don’t worry about doing this. Every one likes helping other people, so they will be glad to do so, provided your articles are relevant to the concerns of international speakers.

Is There More?

Of course, this is not the complete answer. You will not become a market leader in your chosen niche overnight.

Producing authority content  covering topics that your clients want to read is a good start.   There will be more articles coming shortly to help you to take the next steps.

If you would like to make progress quickly, don’t wait for the next article in the series, get in touch and let’s discuss how you can build your professional services firm’s authority online and as a result generate more leads and more profit for your business.

The post What Every Professional Services Firm Can Do To Attract More High Net Worth Clients appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

Here are four articles I think every professional interested in generating more leads online and making more use of the online world would benefit from reading.

LinkedIn has 200 million members

LinkedIn continues to grow.

It’s official and it’s published on LinkedIn.  With over 5000 shares on LinkedIn it’s important news.

As professionals we all need to build our professional community.  The fact that LinkedIn is growing helps us.

Why you should fire your SEO if they don’t do content marketing

Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion, has strong views about most things, but he has a lot of good advice to offer about SEO.

Here he’s pointing out how SEO specialists often don’t do that good a job.  He also sets out what to look for when commissioning SEO services.  I’ve talked about this post to some of our clients and they all think it could save them money.

Claim Google Authorship For Your WordPress Website In Three Easy Steps

This is a post about Google Author Rank.  We’ll all be hearing a lot more about this in the future.  It’s another means of demonstrating authority online.

Here’s the link to my Google+ account.  Take a look at the sites and journals to which I contribute to see how I’m building Google Author Rank

This is my link: https://plus.google.com/105659248003264782993/posts .

Finally, I’ve chosen a post from Blog Tyrant.

8 Things to Do Immediately After You Get a New Email Subscribe

All I’ll say about this is that if you’ve ever wondered why it’s so difficult to build engagement via your e-mail list or why you get unsubscribes, here’s the answer.

Marketing Professional Services

The world of marketing has changed.  These articles point us all in the right direction.  Do you have a favourite?  Would you nominate any other articles published in January that you think fellow professional should read?

The post Marketing Professional Services – Four Articles To Read – January 2013 appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

………..You don’t need quite so many updates!

You’ve probably noticed the update box on your LinkedIn profile or on your LinkedIn company page. Linked In updates are a useful, but often misunderstood, element of your LinkedIn profile.

• Most people don’t use LinkedIn updates at all.
• Some people update in a rather haphazard way once in a while.
• Quite a few people use them simply to broadcast information about themselves (and in doing so add to the noise on LinkedIn).
• An even smaller number of people use LinkedIn updates to build their standing and their reputation on LinkedIn and as a result gain more business.

Do you use LinkedIn updates?  If you don’t, or if you don’t use them often, learn how to use them well.  If you do update, then use the advice below check that you’re not a LinkedIn spammer.

#1 Use LinkedIn Updates To Inform

There’s a lot happening in the world and there’s a lot happening in the part of the world that’s of interest to you and to your network.

• Inform your network of interesting and relevant trends.
• Inform your network of news stories that will be of interest.

Inform your network of what you’re doing when you believe that they genuinely might be interested in what you have to say.

Above all offer relevant information.

#2 Use LinkedIn Updates To Educate

People love to read  How To …………. articles.  They like 7 Reasons Why………..  They like 5 Steps To Achieve ………..

Make a point of signposting your network to solutions to problems you know they are dealing with.  Help people to find additional information about these topics.  Promote information from a wide range of sources.

Include your own material, if it’s relevant, but don’t promote your own approach exclusively.

Above all offer useful information.

#3 Use LinkedIn Updates To Show The Way

LinkedIn has become more visual.  The web has become more visual. That means there’s an ever-growing need to use text and graphics and text and images in combination.

When you compose your LinkedIn updates make them visual.  Make your LinkedIn updates media rich.

• When you post a link, include an image.
• When you find an interesting infographic, share it.
• Whenever you can show the way.

Novelists have been encouraged to show and not to tell for years.  Do the same.

Above all remember the visual element when you update.

Update Your Own LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn now encourages users to post videos and presentations and other media in their profiles.

If you have a company page you can post banner images in your entry.  You can create a slideshow about your business. You can upload videos.

Take the time to do at least some of these things.

When you’re next thinking about your LinkedIn updates remember that words and images work well together.

How Do LinkedIn Updates Help You Succeed?

Most of our clients sell complex products and services.  None of us sells commodities.  We don’t sell the sort of products and services that people buy on a whim.  We need to build relationships with prospects before they decide to do business with us.

We need to build trust.

By posting useful, relevant, informative and educational updates on your LinkedIn profile two or three times a day, you will help to build that trust over time.

• People will notice.
• People will remember.
• People will begin to associate you with the provision of useful information.
• They will start to associate you with the solution to their problems.

That will help to keep you in your prospects’ minds.

LinkedIn updates are part of your content marketing mix.  Use them well.

Have I missed anything?

How do you use LinkedIn updates?

What successes have you had with using LinkedIn updates?

Do you use them in different ways from the ones I have outlined above? If so, let’s hear about your approach in the comments.

See also:

Try A Content Marketing Formula That Works

The post Three Ways To Use LinkedIn Updates To Build Your Success Online appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

You’ve read the books, so promote your authority.

When you suggest to your colleagues that content marketing is right for professional services firms such as yours, you’ll find you meet some resistance.

Content marketing for professional services is one option, but, you’ll be told, social media is another option to consider.

The argument for social media can be quite seductive.  You could find that quite a few of your colleagues would prefer to go down this path.

“We can decide what we want to tweet about and get someone in the office to upload lots of tweets in advance.”

“We don’t have time to do this ourselves.  We can outsource social media.  We’ll just specify what we want and forget about it.”

The problem is that you’re not thinking about “doing” content marketing or social media. You’re thinking about the best ways to use the online world to bring in more business. Just getting an office junior to upload a dozen tweets once a week won’t help.  Neither will outsourcing the whole social media project to another business and forgetting about it.

In short, when you come to think about the online world, your focus isn’t on engagement, it’s on getting more business.

The Role Of Social Media In Professional Services

Of course, social media matters.  When you produce excellent content for your website, it’s important to promote that content via social media.

Twitter is a good place to start.

You should also promote your content via your LinkedIn company page and via your LinkedIn profiles.

Then there’s Google+ which is a good place to promote your content, too.

And Facebook?  That all depends on your audience. In my experience most people who are buying professional services are not looking for suppliers on Facebook.  However, your market may be there so you must make the decision based on your knowledge of your clients.

However, remember that you’re on social media for a purpose.  The problem is that if you don’t have any authority content on your website to promote, you’ll struggle to link your social media efforts to your business goals.  Don’t join the thousands of people on social media who don’t know what they want to achieve. Use your social media accounts to drive traffic to the authority content on your website.

Professional Services And Authority Content

As experts in what you do, you already have authority in your marketplace. You’re qualified and experienced in your professional field. It makes a lot of sense for you to write authority content for your website.

Content marketing for professional services is all about taking the authority you have in the real world and demonstrating that same professional standing online.

You will do this most easily by writing and posting authority content on your website.

Here are two examples of how professional services and content marketing really go together.

Minimal Glass – the insurance effect

Unoccupied property – three questions to ask your insurance broker

Content Marketing For Professional Services – The Right Solution

The articles above work much harder and for much longer than tweets, retweets and mentions.

They educate the reader.

They also link the good advice that is being offered online with a supplier who can help someone looking for insurance for an unoccupied property or wanting to make use of minimal glass.

This is the right sort of online  marketing for professional practices.

How Should You Begin Your Content Marketing?

Once people in your practice agree that content marketing is a good idea for your professional practice, and that using social media isn’t an alternative strategy, then you will have taken a big step forward.

So, if you were thinking about your first piece of authority content to place on your website and then to promote via social media, what would it be?

See also:

Content Marketing For Professional Services Firms – A Beginner’s Guide

The post Content Marketing For Professional Services – Content Marketing V Social Media appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

Content marketing begins with a blank page.

You’ve probably heard about content marketing. If you haven’t you almost certainly will over the next few months.

It’s a topic that is starting to interest real world businesses, especially those selling complex products and services.

Content marketing is an ideal approach to add to the marketing mix for professional services firms.  It may be that your competitors are already looking into it.

So what is content marketing and how can professional services firms make a start on using this approach to marketing to attract more business and gain new clients?

What is content marketing?

When you become involved with content marketing you create and then share content online with your target market.  It’s important to make sure that the content you create, share and promote is interesting to the people you want to do business with.

That means your content must relate directly to the products and services you are looking to sell. 

There’s no point in writing about your industry in general terms or simply promoting news stories about what’s happening in the world of finance, or law, or accounting.

You want your readers to become clients, so the content you produce aims to help them to recognise that you can address their needs.  That means helping them to realise that:

• you are experts in your niche
• you understand your readers’ issues and problems
• you can help your readers to solve their problems, if they choose to work with you
• you’re the sort of organisation they would like to do business with
• you’re approachable and easy to do business with.

How do you start content marketing?

Most professional services firms will start their content marketing activities  by writing articles or blog posts on their website.

The most important thing to note here is that the content needs to be part of the practice’s website.  It’s no good creating a separate blog on one of the free platforms.

• Don’t think of trying to hide the fact that your blog is on another site.
• Don’t let your web designer do something fancy that makes it look as if your blog is part of your own website.

You must create a place on your principal website where your articles can be housed.  You should own the platform on which you’re publishing your content.  You also want the traffic that your content generates to help your website’s ranking not someone else’s.

It’s important, too, to  make sure that you can index your content and make it accessible to people searching the web for information. Each page must have its own URL that you can link to and encourage your clients and prospective clients to read.  It’s no good if every page of your website appears to have the same URL or each article disappears from view once you produce the next one.

These are important points, but in my experience there are plenty of professional services firms that still struggle to do these things. 

We have two or three clients who are still trying to get control of their websites and who are having problems in getting a blog page set up. They don’t have access to their websites. They have been advised to create a separate blog rather than change their current sites. They haven’t been able to get their sites set up so that people to find their posts and articles easily.

Deal with these issues immediately.  Failing to do this will set your content marketing efforts back.

What sort of content will you produce?

There’s a very easy answer to this question.

Your content should be what your target audience wants to read. 

Produce educational content.

Produce interesting content.

Produce useful content.

Produce content that will help your prospects to understand the scope of the issues they are grappling with.

Produce content that links the good advice you offer to what your practice does.

For example, if you’re a surveyor, write some articles about RICS Homebuyers’ Surveys. Explain what these surveys offer and what they don’t. Explain that home purchasers can choose their own surveyor.  They don’t have to use the surveyors recommended by their lenders and so on.  In short, educate your market to appreciate what you do.

However, you should also remember to let your readers know that you conduct different types of surveys and that you can supply the services that your website visitors are reading about on your site.

Don’t assume that people will automatically know you can help them.  Tell them.

Why does content matter?

When you produce useful and valuable content, you’ll start to build engagement with a group of people who are interested in learning more about what you do. That doesn’t mean you will automatically get their business when they’re ready to buy. What it does mean is that you stand a better chance of being remembered as a practice that could address their needs.

In the first instance that’s your goal with your content marketing. 

However, there is more that you can do, as you’ll see when you read the next article in this series:

Content Marketing For Professional Services Firms – Content Marketing V Social Media.

The post Content Marketing For Professional Services Firms – A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

101 Reasons To Stop Blogging Today

1. You didn’t want to start blogging in the first place.  People just kept telling you that you had to do it.
2. You don’t enjoy writing.
3. Sitting at a computer for long periods hurts your eyes.
4. Staring at a computer for long periods hurts your brain.
5. You don’t know what you’re trying to achieve with your blog.
6. You don’t know who you’re writing for.
7. You don’t have an ideal reader, or a target market, for your blog in mind.
8. You don’t have any new ideas.
9. Other people have been writing blogs about your subject for years, so why should you bother?
10. You never like what you’ve written once you’ve finished it.
11. Blogging is a chore, so you do it infrequently.
12. No one seems to have subscribed to your blog.
13. No one (expect internet trolls) seems to comment on your blog.
14. You’ve never tried to SEO your posts.
15. You don’t know how to SEO your posts.
16. You don’t read blogs yourself.
17. You don’t comment on blogs.
18. You don’t have time to publicise your blog posts.
19. You don’t know how to publicise your blog posts.
20. When you get comments on your blog (which is not very often) you don’t reply.
21. When someone shares your post on Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc you don’t know about it, because you never check up on these things.
22. You don’t make it easy for people to share your posts.  You don’t include share buttons etc.
23. You don’t spend time crafting your blog posts’ headlines.
24. You don’t make your headlines SEO-friendly.
25. You don’t make your headlines interesting and informative.
26. You don’t look at the sort of headlines that seem to get shared. (That’s because you don’t read blogs and you use social media applications as broadcast media.)
27. You don’t plan your blog posts before you write them.
28. You don’t draft our your blog posts in Word or elsewhere.  You just type them straight into your online editor.
29. You don’t proofread your work.
30. You don’t stick to a single theme in a blog post.
31. You don’t include internal links in your posts.
32. You don’t make use of H2 and H3 subheadings.  You just embolden text when you want it to stand out.
33. You’ve never got the hang of categories and tags so you don’t use them.
34. Your blog posts are dull.
35. Your blog posts add nothing new to a topic.
36. Your blog posts never include a personal perspective or personal opinion.
37. Your blog posts are never controversial or thought provoking.
38. Your blog posts are too short. You never cover anything in depth.
39. Your blog posts are too long. You ramble and repeat yourself.
40. Your old blog posts are badly indexed.
41. Your old blog posts are difficult to find.
42. You don’t encourage your readers to comment, to agree or to disagree with you.
43. You never leave anything unsaid so there isn’t really anything your readers can add to your posts.
44. You don’t include calls to action in your posts.
45. You blog about topics that are unrelated to what your business sells.
46. You blog about anything that takes your fancy.
47. You don’t make clear links between what your business does and what you are blogging about.
48. You haven’t bothered to complete the author bio box.
49. What you’ve said in the author bio box is dull.
50. Your blog is just one of many in your niche and you haven’t tried to differentiate it in any way.  (That’s because you don’t read blogs.)
51. It’s difficult for new visitors to your blog to work out who your blog is for.
52. Your blog’s strapline means something to you but not to your readers.
53. You haven’t completed a meta-description for your blog.
54. You don’t write an engaging introduction or engaging “slug” for your posts. (This is the text that comes up in Google search results.)
55. You never check your web analytics so you don’t know which of your blog posts perform well.
56. You never check your web analytics so you don’t know which of your key words are most successful.
57. Actually, you don’t have any key words.  You just write.
58. You’re always struggling to find things to write about.
59. You never take newsworthy issues and write about them on your blog.
60. You don’t use your sidebar widgets on your blog effectively.
61. You’re using a free WordPress theme on your blog and have seen lots of other people using the same theme.
62. You’re using a Premium WordPress theme but you haven’t learned how to modify and customise it.
63. You haven’t learned anything about html or css so you can’t make even minor changes to your theme.
64. You’ve never read the manual – whichever manual it is.
65. You haven’t identified any other blogs in your niche for which you could guest post.
66. You never include images in your blog posts.
67. You never include video or audio in your posts.
68. You don’t know the difference between posts and pages on your blog.
69. You never invite anyone to guest post of your blog.
70. You don’t have an editorial calendar for your blog.
71. You don’t think blogging is a good way to market your business.
72. You think blogging is just for introverted people who want to sit at a computer all day and write about themselves.
73. You never, ever, tell anyone that you write a blog.
74. You never promote your blog via your e-mail signature, your speaking engagements, your product literature etc,
75. You see your blog as a standalone creation, not as part of your marketing mix.
76. You’ve read somewhere that blogging is dead, so you’re waiting for the interest in blogs to die down.
77. You never like what you’ve written once it’s completed, so you don’t like publishing your work.
78. You’ve no evidence that your blog is bringing in any business, so you don’t invest in your blog.
79. You never repurpose any of your blog content and use it in online tutorials or e-guides.
80. You never retweet information about older blog posts.
81. You never use your blog to actively promote what you do.
82. You don’t have a sign up box on your website, so you’re not building an e-mail list.
83. You don’t have an interesting special report or “lead magnet” on your blog to encourage people to sign up or to start to build a relationship with you.
84. You don’t have an RSS feed on your site.
85. You don’t know what an RSS feed is.
86. You’ve never submitted your site to any blog directories.
87. You only get around to updating your blog when you’re embarrassed about how long it is since you last posted anything.
88. You’ve never asked anyone to critique your blog.
89. You’ve never asked anyone how easy it is to navigate your blog.
90. You don’t use your social media accounts to encourage people to visit your website and your blog.
91. You’ve never read a book or an e-book about blogging.
92. You know that writing for the web is different from writing for print journals or writing reports, but you’re not sure how different.
93. You know that people find it difficult to read text online, but you don’t modify your writing style to help to make things easier for them.
94. You’ve never checked to see if your blog is mobile-friendly.
95. You’ve heard of the terms content marketing and inbound marketing.  You’ve also heard of authority content, but you don’t know how they apply to blogging.
96. You don’t have any landing pages for specific groups of visitors to your site.
97. Contacting you via your blog is challenging.  It’s difficult to find either a telephone number or an e-mail address.
98. You reply to web queries slowly.  It takes you days to get around to replying.
99. You haven’t been onto Google+ and claimed your authorship rights.
100. You don’t have a gravatar so no one knows what you look like.
101. You’re ready to give up blogging just as soon as you stop feeling guilty about having such a thought.

Over to you …

Remember you don’t have to blog.  You can give yourself permission not to blog if you wish.

Alternatively you could use the above as a checklist to help you to overcome the barriers to effective blogging.  Take action to address these points and your blog will improve.

Is that what you plan to do?  Let me know below.  It’s your turn to offer an opinion now……

The post 101 Reasons To Stop Blogging Today appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

Earlier articles dealt with finding your target clients and getting to understand them.  This post helps with the selling process.

It includes real examples of how to sell to high net worth individuals.

Follow the advice here to make more sales.

Sell what your high net worth prospects are already looking for

Start simply. Tailor your offer to fit what your particular market is keen to buy.  Preferably sell what your affluent clients are already looking for.  They have

money and they want to buy.  That’s a great situation for you to manage.  You don’t need to educate your prospects about why they should buy.  They’re out looking for suppliers.

Your challenge is to find ways of ensuring they buy from you and that they buy now, or in the very near future.

Help prospective high net worth clients to find you

You don’t know where your clients are.  You don’t have ready access to them.  You don’t rub shoulders with them in large numbers. You have to take steps to make sure they find you.

Use your website and the social web to help you.

Create authority content that accurately, directly and completely addresses your prospects’ current concerns.  Your authority content – or your articles and blog posts – must be focused on solving your prospective clients’ problems.

If someone is looking for a supplier of particular types of paint for sea-going vessels, then your website needs to have articles about choosing paint, applying paint, caring for paintwork, restoring paintwork and so on.  The volume of content, the type of content, the subject matter and the way it is presented will all help you to be the supplier who the prospective client finds and then contacts.

After that, it’s your job to convert interest into business.

Who uses this sort of approach to sell to the high net worth market?

Many of our clients approach us because we can help with selling to high net worth individuals.  We have produced authority content that is driving the right people to our clients’ websites day in, day out.

For example, an insurance broker for whom we write looks to sell particular types of insurance to high net worth clients. That calls for specialist articles addressing the issues that high net worth clients may have.  Insuring unoccupied property is one such issue.  An affluent family can afford to move out of the family home whilst it is renovated and so will need a different sort of insurance policy, one that covers property that is unoccupied for months at a time.  The homeowner searches online and finds articles that take him or her to our client’s website.

An architectural practice specialises in eco-friendly design.  We write about the types of materials used in the buildings this architect designs.  His prospective clients want to read about how these materials are being used.  It’s information about the materials that they’re searching for online. Therefore, his website has plenty of information and lots of pictures – taken when the houses he has designed are being built, of course.

An accountancy practice which specialises in EU VAT issues, and especially EU VAT property issues, needs content on the practice’s website and in its newsletter that goes out to clients about the specific issues that people with property in mainland Europe face when it comes to VAT.

The examples above show how authority content brings in business to these professional practices.

Getting high net worth individuals to take action

It would be foolish to suggest that all it takes to sell insurance or an eco-friendly new house or accountancy services focusing on EU VAT is an article on a website.  Of course, a lot more is needed.

Articles need to be followed up via newsletters, talks and radio interviews, client meetings etc.

When someone gets in touch, the query has to be handled well.

However, when a prospective client seeks you out, as they seek out our clients mentioned above, you have a head start over the competition.

Selling to the high net worth marketplace

Are you ready to make a start?  You may decide it’s time to start writing those articles.

Alternatively you might decide to take a look at our Business Blogging For Professionals service.  We can help you to make a start on your campaign to produce authority content that your segment of the high net worth market wants to read.

The post The smart way to sell to high net worth individuals appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

Six months ago when, at business networking events, I introduced myself as a content marketer, as often as not, the next thing I had to do was to explain what content marketing is.

Last week I attended an event where there were three other people introducing themselves as content marketers.

However, when I spoke to these people it turned out that one was a graphic designer.  One was an SEO person fallen on hard times and the third was an editor and PR person who had just been made redundant.

So there was still only one content marketer in the room and there was still a lot of confusion about what content marketing is.  I thought, therefore, it would be a good idea to offer an indication of how content marketing can work in practice.   Here’s our approach.

A Great Content Marketing Formula For Professionals

First, it’s important to state who we work with because that defines our approach to content marketing.

• Our clients run offline businesses.
• They have complex products and services to sell.
• They are looking for clients who will spend thousands of pounds with them.
• They take weeks or maybe months to convert interest into business.

We use content marketing to shorten the sales cycle so that our clients get business faster.

Our content marketing formula is geared towards building:

• interest
• engagement
• trust
• sales
• repeat business.

We focus on three elements of content marketing.  These are:

• Online biographies
• Authority content
• Special reports and books

These three elements of the content marketing mix work well for professionals.

Create great online biographies

When you’re a professional in business you accept that people will look you up on LinkedIn® and in your profession’s online directory.  We start by making sure our clients have great online biographies.

Create authority content that builds trust

You need to prove that you know what you’re talking about and that you have up-to-date experience of dealing with your clients’ issues and problems.

We produce articles and blog posts that address these issues.  You tell us about the issues.  We turn the issues into engaging content.  We also teach you how to promote your blog online and offline.

Produce valuable special reports and e-books

You need to supplement your articles with something more tangible.  A book, a special report or similar is really great.  You can have the reports printed.  You can send them out as pdfs. You can even upload them to Kindle.

The real skill in this part of the process is choosing the right subject to write about. Don’t worry we won’t let you write the wrong book. We’ll even write it for you, if you would prefer to work in this way.

Winning Content Marketing Tactics

These content marketing tactics work. Your prospects come to know, like and trust you faster if you employ them.  You get business faster. There’s a bonus, too.  Your articles and blogs and your special reports and e-books can be pressed into service again and again. They will help you win more new business faster for more than just a few weeks.

…….. No wonder there are lots of people starting to call themselves content marketers.  Content marketing works.

Our Approach To Content Marketing

Take a look at our content marketing page and then get in touch to discuss how we can help you to conquer the online world.

See also:

How to get more visitors to your offline business’s website

7 Reasons why you should ditch your 5 page website

The post Try a content marketing formula that works appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

LinkedIn can help you to acquire more of these!

Over the last month I’ve been creating a new resource on one of our other websites.

This is The Adams Consultancy Ltd’s website.

The list of posts that form this resource is below.

LinkedIn and Marketing

One of the most popular articles is:

Improve your LinkedIn profile – use endorsements.

Social proof is so important these days.  The good news is that on the social web it’s relatively easy to generate.  Take the advice in this post and you will help to ensure that when people look at your profile, they get the right impression.

I took things a little further when people began asking me for more advice and I wrote more about endorsements.

How to use LinkedIn endorsements to build your business

This post offers more step-by-step guidance on the basics of LinkedIn marketing.

I stepped into a slightly different role with a post specifically for recruitment consultants – except it was a post for every one using LinkedIn to try to find, and then to get appointed to, that important next job.

Check the post and see if you’re making the mistakes in your profile that I talk about here.

Recruitment professionals – what do candidates’ LinkedIn profiles reveal about them?

I then wrote the article that people really want to read.

What does a good LinkedIn profile look like?

That is a popular post.  Again, it’s a good practice post.

Using LinkedIn

I’m really pleased with how our LinkedIn profile writing service is taking off.  I’m writing individual profiles and company profiles.  You can find out about the service on the page entitled:

Using LinkedIn

I’ve also added one-to-one LinkedIn training and LinkedIn training for companies to the offer.  Get in touch to learn more.

Make a point of updating your LinkedIn profile.  For professional people LinkedIn really matters.

The post LinkedIn Marketing For Professional Services Firms appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.

Is your professional headline a rusty link?

Have you looked at your LinkedIn® profile recently?

In particular, have you taken a long hard look at your LinkedIn® profile’s professional headline?

If you’d like to pause and visit LinkedIn® before reading on, that’s fine.  I’ll wait.

……… So what’s the verdict?

Is your LinkedIn® professional headline boring?

Without looking again at your LinkedIn® professional headline can you remember what you’ve said about yourself?  You have a limited number of characters to make an impression.  Have you used them well?

• Is your headline difficult to decipher?
• Is your headline full of jargon?
• Does your headline contain your job title or something that says what you do – and not much else?
• Would someone reading the headline get a good idea of what you do?

Here’s a more important question:

Would someone reading your professional headline be interested enough to read more about you?

The purpose of the LinkedIn® professional headline is ….

Your LinkedIn® professional headline sums you up.  It’s what strangers see when they first view your profile.

When you write your professional headline you’re aiming to attract the types of people you would like to have in your professional network.  (That’s the same whether you’re an employee or a business owner.)

Don’t forget the search engines. You’re aiming to help the search engines to index your entry in a helpful way.  (You want to use words that people with whom  you would like to form some type of business relationship might type into a search engine.)  “Corporate social media strategist” might be a term you would like to be indexed for.  Use that term, or something very similar, in your headline.

Then there’s LinkedIn® search. You’re also looking to help LinkedIn® to categorise you, so that your profile will come up in the right searches on LinkedIn®.  “Conference speaker, serving the automotive industry” would pinpoint your expertise, and if a conference organiser for your industry finds you via LinkedIn® search, he or she will know exactly what you do.

In short, the purpose of your professional headline is to help people who view your profile to be clear about:

• what you do
• the industry in which you work
• how you add value in your job or in your company.

If you’re looking to improve your LinkedIn® profile, these are the issues to consider.

Does your LinkedIn® professional headline look interesting?

Most people leave their profiles when they have finished working on the words.  However, you might like to use symbols to break up your statements and to make your headline easier to read quickly.

I’m talking about arrows and stars etc.

You can add these to your headline. Take a look at my profile to see what I mean.

Margaret Adams on LinkedIn

So does your LinkedIn® professional headline serve you well?

Does your professional headline serve you well?

What are you going to change about your LinkedIn® professional headline as a result of reading this article?

Let me know in the comments………… Oh yes, you might like to share this article on LinkedIn®, too.

See also:

Is your LinkedIn profile letting you down?

The simplest way ever to find out if your LinkedIn profile is working hard for you.

The post Does your LinkedIn professional headline serve you well? appeared first on Margaret Adams's website: Marketing Professional Services - content marketing strategies that work hard for professional practices.