- How to Develop a Successful Facebook Page by Mark Ivey
Facebook Pages are good for building your brand and creating conversations, allowing users to get more deeply connected with your business. Recent changes have improved their functionality. Check out the following strategies for leveraging some of the key features.
- Selling Professional Services? It's All About Leverage by Barbara Bix
Attracting—and ultimately closing—deals with new clients can take professional service providers anywhere between several months and several years. Since most firms rely on their partners and principals to bring in new work, client acquisition ends up consuming a lot of ...
- The Problem of Defining Professional Services Marketing Expertise by Suzanne Lowe
It appears that these differing expectations, and the evolution of the role of professional services marketer, have begun to fall into two distinct camps, both of which are grounded in expertise: the efficiency specialist, and the analytical specialist/market creator.
- Marketing Challenge: Getting Product Salespeople to Sell Services by Hank Stroll
This week, how do you train product salespeople to sell services? Here are three steps.
- Marketing When YOU Are the Product by Abhay Padgaonkar
Marketing professionals widely use the 4 Ps for marketing a product.
But how do you market yourself when YOU are the product? How do you make your own accomplishments believable?
- The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing Professional Services Online by Doug Stern
Selling intangibles is hard work. Putting together a successful Web site that peddles intangibles is even harder.
Here's a look at the top sins that many professional services sites—maybe most—commit... along with some suggestions on what can be done about them.
- Five Goals of Effective Chief Marketing Officers by Suzanne Lowe
The role of the Chief Marketing Officer, a title almost unheard of 10 years ago, will continue to expand in the next decade. Marketing is evolving from an art into a science—and it's about time.
As CMOs begin to embrace their ...
- Generating Leads, Brand, Relationships, and Trust at the Same Time by Mike Schultz
Relationships. Trust. Delivery of superb value. These are core ingredients of a successful service firm. Talk to 100 service firm marketers and leaders, and they'll all tell you (and most of them believe it) that their firm is at the ...
- Marketing Challenge: How to Sell Services by Hank Stroll
How would you sell computer repair services? Fast, friendly, and reliable? That kind of language speaks to the company's opinion of itself, not necessarily what it can do for its customers.
Here's how to position yourself with your clients and customers ...
- Four Factors That Distinguish Services Marketing by Cynthia Coldren
It's been called "selling the invisible"—delivering intangible services as a core "product" offering.
But invisibility, or intangibility, is just one factor that distinguishes services marketing from product marketing. Along with inseparability, variability, and perishability, these four characteristics affect the way clients ...
- Account Management as a Marketing Investment: A Lesson From the Airlines by Mike McLaughlin
From the time you book an airline flight until that plane lands, your pecking order in the airline's customer hierarchy determines your travel experience. To the airlines, all customers are not equal—they are segmented and managed according to profitability, loyalty, ...
- The Four Myths of Professional Services Marketing by Mike McLaughlin
For decades, professional service providers—including consultants, accountants, lawyers and others—were reluctant marketers. They thrived in a cozy world where networks of personal relationships and word-of-mouth brought them enough new clients to grow a profitable business.
Those days aren't gone, but ...
- Marketing Challenge: Bundling Services by Hank Stroll
This week: It's rare to find a fast-food restaurant that doesn't offer a combo that's a better deal than each item purchased separately.
Does it make sense for service businesses to offer their customers the same "deal"?
- Why Not Guarantee Professional Services? by Mike McLaughlin
Professional services marketing literature is full of claims about the quality of offerings and dedication to client results. Without a guarantee to back up those words, though, clients just perceive them as empty promises.
If you're serious about service excellence ...
- Get Ready for Retail Theater by Lisa Johnson
Two years ago, Maytag created an innovative experiential marketing strategy, whereby prospective customers would take their new, top-of-the-line appliances for an interactive "test-drive."
Successful retail spaces create a full sensory experience. Consumers want to see, feel, touch, taste and interact with ...
- Services Marketing Is Moving Online—Are You? by Mike Schultz
Services marketing efforts are moving online not because a few marketing consultants and strategists say they are—but because your clients and prospects are online, and their online experiences are influencing all buying decisions.
Here are four arguments you can use ...
- Six Strategies to Get Paid What You're Worth by Mike McLaughlin
Clients and consultants alike usually dread fee discussions.
Here are six strategies to help you preserve your profit margins and your client relationships as you work through pricing discussions.
- The Four Marketing Practices of Winners by Laura Patterson
For marketers in the services industry, it's important to understand the key factors that enable us to profitably acquire and keep customers.
Here are four factors that represent best practices for marketers.
- Seven Strategies for the New Year by Rob Engelman
As we enter the early stages of the New Year, it is natural to think about and plan our marketing and business development activities for 2005.
Whether you are a independent consultant, corporate executive or entrepreneur, consistent application of the ...
- How to Write a Killer Proposal by Mike McLaughlin
The consulting proposal is a necessary evil. A great proposal can be decisive in winning a project; a poor one can cause you to lose a project, even if everything else in the sales process has gone flawlessly.
Use these ...