MARKETING FOR A CONSULTANT
When developing any marketing strategy, you need to first be very clear on what you want to actually achieve. Your strategy helps you to clarify your vision and your goals, and the steps required to attain those goals. A strategy often focuses on the long term vision for the business and so may reflect how you want the business to go over a number of years.
A goal of “getting consultancy work” is not going to be specific enough. You need to be more specific. “Gain consultancy work in the field of endangered species throughout the world”. This is more specific and can help you to set your actions to achieve this goal more clearly. You will know that your actions will need to be directed to a global audience.
Your marketing strategy will influence how you run your consultancy. If you are setting up a joint business venture then you will need to involve the others when establishing a strategy. Your marketing strategy can be used to:
- Outline your services
- Discuss the role of those services in the market
- Describe your clients and competitors
- Identify strategies to use
- Develop a marketing plan and assess how well it is working
A well considered strategy will help you to identify the clients who are most likely to require your services and to therefore target them. This in turn will enable you to build a good reputation for your services.
There are a number of key factors which can help you to develop an effective marketing strategy as follows:
- Identify business goals - these can be things like; raise awareness of my services, break into another market sector, etc.
- Develop marketing goals and strategies to implement them - these are based on your business goals e.g. if you want to increase awareness of your services you might look at other avenues of advertising.
- Conduct research - you need to find out as much as you can about your potential market. You can do this by consulting government statistics e.g. census statistics including socioeconomic and demographic data, local council information, websites developed by associations you are a member of, and so forth.
- Client profiles - you need to keep up to date with what your clients need and change your services to meet changing trends.
- Competitor profiles - again, you also need to keep abreast of what your competition is doing, what they are charging, and so forth so that you can compete with them.
- Test out your ideas - test out your marketing ideas to see what works. Ask clients for feedback so you can fine tune or drop a particular approach.
The Consultants Marketing Plan
With any marketing strategy it is important to be specific, precise and detailed. This is where the marketing plan comes into force. The marketing plan covers the specific actions needed to fulfil the marketing strategy, whereas the strategy outlines the overall direction. The marketing plan often covers a finite period e.g. the next 6 months or year. In the plan, you can set yourself smaller goals that can be easily achieved that help move towards your overall goal.
Breaking goals down into smaller goals can mean you are more productive and clearly focussed than trying to achieve a large overall goal straight away. You are likely to experience many small successes which spur you on. Each goal should be clear and preferably measurable i.e. you will know when it has been completed.
For example, your small goals might be something like these:
- Research three different forms of social media and establish a profile on each
- Aim to put posts on each social media website at least three times a week
- Buy new clothes for interviews
- Design and order new business cards
Each of these small goals can be simple and easy to achieve, AND you can tick them off your list as you complete them. The more smaller goals you achieve, the closer you are towards achieving your larger goal - and you will not feel like you are striving for something almost impossible to reach, which can be the case when you aim straight for something too big.
You may have several different marketing plans. Your marketing plans are something which are continuously evolving and so will need to be reviewed and refined on an ongoing basis.
When you write a marketing plan you should include a section which summarises your goals and objectives, your market, and your marketing tactics. Your tactics are what you plan to do to achieve your goals. You should also include a second section which details what you are going to do to implement each tactic.
When devising tactics these should address market factors which are often referred to as the five Ps:
- Product - all the benefits and advantages your service offers to your clients.
- Price - you should gear this towards how much your clients will be willing to pay, and allow for a profit margin and overheads.
- Promotion - the promotional activities you will use to raise client awareness of your services.
- Place - the location for your services; will you visit them or vice versa. If they visit you, you will need to carefully consider the image of the location.
- People - yourself and any employees; you need to build a good reputation through positive client relations.
You can then draw up an action plan including the steps needed to carry out each tactic and a time frame for completion. You also need to work out how you are going to evaluate the effectiveness of your tactics e.g. asking clients how they heard of you to see if your newsletter is having an impact.
Your plans are more likely to be a success if you have the resources in place to implement them. If you have employees they should be involved in the development of the plans and be fully aware of the marketing strategy and plans. Always monitor your plans to check whether you are still on track and make any necessary amendments. It also pays to have contingency plans to fall back on, in case things don’t work out as you had anticipated.
