David A. Fields Consulting Group Effective marketing will increase awareness, engagement and credibility among your consulting firm’s target audience. However, your efforts to build visibility consume considerable time and money while producing questionable results.
A couple of proven, consulting firm marketing principles will boost your marketing success.
Flywheels
Flywheels are difficult to set into motion, and the weightier the wheel, the more effort is required to generate movement. As a result, you can expend all your energy on a massive wheel and it won’t budge at all.
Yep, sounds like marketing.
Creating engaged awareness of your small consulting firm beyond a small circle of fans who already know, like and trust you, can feel like an enormously heavy lift. Particularly if you haven’t gained any momentum.
The problem: your marketing flywheel may be too massive.
The scope of your consulting services—who you serve and what problem you solve—determines the mass of your marketing flywheel.
For instance, if your consulting firm was built to advise one person, say, Blynken, on lullaby choices, then you merely have to locate Blynken and initiate a conversation. Voila your marketing flywheel is spinning.
Conversely, if your consulting firm will serve any industry and provides advice on a vast array of challenges, creating visibility-building momentum will prove enormously difficult.
Fortunately, once your consulting firm’s marketing flywheel is spinning, maintaining its momentum requires modest energy compared to the starting effort.
Snowballs
Snowballs grow as you roll them.* The first turn of a snowball in a snowy field adds few crystals, whereas the fiftieth revolution accumulates quite a lot of extra powder.
By and large, your consulting firm’s visibility-building functions the same way. After you’ve found Blynken, it’s easier to attract the next two clients—Wynken and Nod, using the same principles that pulled Blynken to your shoe…er, consulting firm.
Consulting firm marketing is non-linear. Each “revolution” of your publicity efforts attracts increasing numbers of clients as your marketing feeds on itself. Clients and prospects who know about your consulting firm accelerate your awareness-building.
In addition, as your marketing picks up, you gain social proof. The growing pool of fans who rave about your consulting firm attracts those who follow the crowd.
The First Steps in Effective, Consulting Firm Marketing
Get Started!
Starting your consulting firm’s flywheel is the hardest part. Your early marketing efforts are the most difficult to produce and generally the least effective at creating long-term power.
So, don’t wait for the “right” idea or more experience or case studies. Complete those initial activities now. None of your efforts will be wasted. At a minimum, you will have practiced and improved your marketing skills.
Once you’re in motion you can easily change directions if necessary.
Focus
Pick a narrow subject that will anchor your consulting firm’s visibility-building messaging. In other words, quickly generate momentum on a small, light flywheel.
Your subject will encompass a multitude of topics that add value for your consulting firm’s clients. For example, narrow subject: New England residential landscaping. One topic: Deterring deer with chocolate spray.
Listen to your market and clients. They’ll point you to a rich, fruitful subject for your consulting firm’s marketing.
Evaluate
If, after six months, your consulting firm’s visibility-building isn’t gaining momentum, solicit expert help. (If self-diagnosis were easy, you would have rectified the issues already.)
Once You Have Momentum…
Next Steps in Consulting Firm Marketing
Stay Focused
Stick with your subject!
It’s easier, more efficient and more effective to continue hammering away at the same subject for a while—at least a couple of years—than to heave an entirely new flywheel into motion.
Resist the temptation to add a new subject. Instead, snowball your current, moving flywheel. (See the next step.)
Expand (Don’t Shift)
Once you’ve created momentum with a subject, layer on adjacent topics that will expand awareness and attract more prospects to your consulting firm.
Snowball your marketing momentum by addressing a related set of topics a large percentage of your current audience is also interested in. (Versus shifting to a subject that intrigues a mostly new group of prospects.)
Sustain Your Marketing
Your consulting firm’s flywheel will slow if you stop pedaling, and restoring your momentum requires much more energy than preserving it.
Therefore, sustain your visibility-building efforts. Correct your strategy or execution if your marketing isn’t producing results, but never stop the effort.
Have you experienced the flywheel or snowball effect at your consulting firm?
Text and images are © 2024 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
