Now through the end of December is one of my favorite times of the year. Not only because I like snow but because these months are when the planners are gearing up for the next year and preparing strategies for the next 12 months.It's a very exciting time for a goal-driver planner! 

If you’re a solopreneur, consultant, or service professional, having a marketing strategy and plan that you can leverage for lead generation and sales while keeping the personal time investment to a minimum is essential. The time that you put in now, at the end of the year, makes marketing for the entirety of next year an easy proposition.  If, on the other hand, you only market when you need to and sell when you have to ... Well, you already know how that feels if you’ve been in that position---and you don’t want to go anywhere near that if you never have.

You’ll find a long list of resources at the end of this post.  On my bookshelf, I have a section that I call my go-to-market books because they are the resources that I re-read (or at least reference heavily) each year when I plan out my marketing. These are the same resources that we lean on for other professional service firms when looking for ideas or third-party data to back up our recommendations. You can’t go wrong with any one of these resources.

There are myriad tools, ideas and tactics that you could apply to your unique situation. That said, taking on a few marketing tasks and executing them well and consistently will help you to gain traction in the marketplace and sustain your marketing effort as your business grows. We’ll start with your website itself.

A Simple Blog-enabled Website
For a bit of effort and about $20/year (domain name +hosting fee), you can have a professional-looking website to house your articles and other related content. In addition to posting articles on the website, you’ll need to develop a value proposition and a summary of the services you offer as well as put a contact form on the site. In Inbound Marketing, by Halligan & Shaw, they discuss the value of a blog and how to make the most of a blog-driven website for business development. They are certainly not the first the explain this concept, but they put the blog-driven "hub website" in perspective that is uniquely suited to the professional service firm. (If you’re looking to really make your blog sing, I recommend Darren Rouse’s 31 Days to Better Blogging.)

Article Marketing
Articles have a whole host of benefits for consultants and professionals. Let me put it this way: If you’re not writing articles regularly for posting on industry blogs and websites or to submit to local papers, industry journals or association publications, then you’re shortchanging your marketing and sales efforts. You will have a tough time really reaching the pinnacle of your field. Articles beget more articles, media attention, authority, and credibility; invitations to speak at industry conferences; and a dozen other benefits that consultants and professionals derive from publishing.In the Thought Leadership Marketing diagnostic test, a key to becoming a thought leader in your industry is to have an effective publishing strategy that you execute on regularly. Finally, in order to drive traffic to the site, posting articles on your new websites monthly will help to drive traffic from parties interested in your work.

Journal Articles
Make connections with journals and association publications in your industry, download their editorial calendars, and start working with the editors to see how you could add value and plug in your article to their publication.

Conference Speeches
Create a calendar of all industry events for the next 18 months, and start developing speech materials to present at upcoming conferences.  Submit proposals, network with organizers, and position yourself as an expert that they need to have at their next conference. Better yet, co-present with a client.

Social Media
The goal here is to increase the size and potency of your network. There is leverage that we can apply through LinkedIn, as well as the possibility of using other channels. This does not mean that everyone needs to be on Facebook, Twitter, and all other social media channels. If your tribe hangs out there, then so be it. Go for it. If not, don’t waste your time.  There are other reasons (learning, engaging, connecting with peers) that you might want to participate in social media, but remember, as the CEO of “You” or your firm, especially if you’re a solopreneur, your mission is not become a successful business owner, not just become famous on Twitter.

Target 25, 50 and 75 Account List & Outreach Strategy
Creating a targeted list of accounts that have a high likelihood to need your services and then pursuing those accounts with a proactive and aggressive marketing campaign could yield some significant early business wins. Always know who should know about you, and regularly ask the question: Do all of the members of my tribe know that I exist and understand what I do?



Press Releases
Using traditional means like pitching trade publications can bring in traffic and results while adding on submissions to sites like PitchEngine.com can also help to increase overall awareness within your tribe. You many not be in a very media-worthy business, but if you can actually help a reporter with a useful story that will add value to the readers of their publication (amazing how many people forget that bit about adding value and being useful and interesting), then a series of quarterly press releases might be in the cards.

Create and Execute a Campaign
This is something that can yield significant benefits and can eat up one quarter’s worth of marketing time if you do it right. Not that you want to eat up time, but there’s nothing like a well-executed campaign to pull in leads an opportunities. In order pull off a successful campaign, it’s often best to use your top account list from above and put together a targeted program that includes things like a series of articles, direct mail to decision makers, regular blog posts of interest to the target, LinkedIn connections to all of the decision makers, follow-up or cold calls, and a speech, seminar or conference presentation.

Sales Strategy & Process
What? I’m a small firm? Why do I need a sales strategy? Because, you need to have a process for how you handle yourself when you get in front of people. Calling a meeting with a prospect is a mutual waste of time if you can’t offer them value in your visit. You MUST be thinking about “how you can be useful to them”, almost to the point of “your sales call being worth paying for” in order to be consistently successful in your in-person prospect meetings.  I recommend using things like your own set of intelligent open-ended questions and coming to the meeting armed with a resource such as an article, e-book, or whitepaper that you’ve written or even a deck from a recent industry conference that you spoke at.

12-Month Marketing Plan
Pursuing a host of marketing and sales tactics will certainly help to grow your business, but to see consistent, long-term results, you’ll need to start working from at least a six-month marketing plan (12 is better) to ensure that you’re spending your time and money wisely.  Get it on paper, even if just a couple of pages broken out by month, and you’ll be further ahead than everyone else.,

OK, so what if you don’t have a year? Well, here’s a 90-day plan that will get you through spring.

90-Day Jumpstart Plan
Consider completing these activities in the next 90 days as a way of jumpstarting your business development efforts:

• Put up a complete website with a blog. Now.



• Let everyone in your email database and all of your past contacts know that your new website is up, what you’re doing new in 2011, and that you’re available for projects.



• Work on getting booked as a speaker at an upcoming industry conference.



• Write an article to be published in an industry journal.



• Adapt an article for multiple publications.



• Attend a professional conference in your field in the next 12 months.



• Use one of your best articles from the past or your best new article as a direct mail item to send to your most likely prospective customers.



• Connect with potential decision-makers from your top account list on LinkedIn. (Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to 100%.)



• Use your learning’s from a recent client engagement as the basis for an article, series of articles or conference speaking proposal.

This, of course, is not meant to be an exhaustive list of things that you should be doing. Rather, it’s meant as a table stakes sort of article. You should be doing at least all of these.  Look daunting at first? It can, but that’s why we put it into a plan and work on it throughout the year.  All of these things are doable in the span of a year’s time.

For Your Reading Pleasure

As I mentioned earlier, there are a wide range of books that you can read on building your consulting or professional service business.  The other thing about these books is that each one of them has produced results by employing at least one idea from the text.  These are the go-to resources on my bookshelf as I head in to 2011:

Get Slightly Famous by Steven Van Yoder---This is one of my favorite books of all time. It forms the blueprint for any personal branding plans that we put together. It’s a must read and a resource that gets reused every single year.

Get Clients Now! by C.J. Hayden---I like C.J.’s book because it works in "checklist" form to make sure that we’re looking at as many options as possible. If you really need a step-by-step plan, following her 28 day marketing program is a good start.

Rain Making by Ford Harding---This is an indispensible resource, especially the part on sales process and how to handle sales meetings and lead follow-up. While these are not always sexy topics, the advice contained in Rain Making is solid and worth a thorough read.

Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss---Alan’s book is almost a bible for developing business for consultants. I enjoy it as much for the ideas that he puts forth as for the "mindset shift" that Alan advocates for consultants to adopt in order to reach the next level in their practice.

Book Yourself Solid byMichael Port---Another great resource with some solid ideas and a workbook to go along with it. If you take even an idea or two from the book and execute, you’re further ahead than most.

Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants by Jay Conrad Levinson & Michael McLaughlin---This is another must-read resource that is full of great tips and ideas that you can apply immediately.

How to Drive Your Competition Crazy by Guy Kawasaki---This book was one that I’ve always been hesitant to recommend because it’s got some many great ideas that I was afraid someone might use them against me. Get it. Read it. Use it.

Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field by Bob Bly---I love everything Bob writes, and this book is not exemption. If thought leadership is in your planning, they you need this resource. Do whatever Bob tells you to do …

The Whitepaper Marketing Handbook by Bob Bly---Again, another resource from Bly. If whitepapers are in your plan, you need this resource to make them effective.

What else would you do?  How are you planning to market your firm in 2011? Are there any books that you’d recommend?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Happy Marketing in 2011!