Typical topics include content strategy, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, inbound marketing, marketing automation, and of course email marketing.  Spending in all of these areas is up–often at the expense of conventional advertising and PR.

There are several trends driving this transition.  One is that prospects are moving online so the marketers that wish to reach them must also move online.  Another is that advances in marketing technology have made it relatively easy for non-professionals to produce content that attracts and engages their audiences.

A third is that many online marketing programs are direct marketing initiatives and therefore highly measurable–even more so now that respondents leave digital footprints in their wake.  A fourth is that in a down economy, companies are more concerned about short term revenue.  This causes them to focus more on demand generation and less on longer term strategies such as branding.

If content is king, will marketing organizations change to serve the new master?

In attending these conferences, one of the things that has struck me is that most of the marketing strategies under discussion require generating a lot of content–a task which many companies have historically outsourced to advertising and PR agencies or independent copywriters.  So, this has made me wonder whether organizations, particularly small organizations, are restructuring to make the most of their marketing resources.

That is, now that most of the marketing resources are going to content production and analytics–are companies retaining these functions in house?  And, if so, are these businesses outsourcing marketing strategy work–since it tends to be front-loaded and then intermittent–and requires far fewer resources on an ongoing basis in today’s digital world?

What are you seeing at your company and those companies that you serve?

Related posts:

1. Social media: Insights from an in-house specialist
2. Digital marketing: How B2B marketers can use it to pick the best marketing strategies
3. B2B marketing insights and tips compliments of MarketingProfs
4. Digital marketing: How B2B marketers can use it to improve their performance against goals

Here are some additional ideas that our accounting clients use to leverage the Internet when marketing their firms.

Using websites to market professional services

As a strategic marketing consultant, specializing in professional services, I advise my clients to first:

* Think about who they need to reach

* What they want these individuals to say or do as a result of visiting the site

* What web visitors need to see to on the site to motivate them to take the desired action

In short, it’s all about the web visitors, rather than the company featured on the website. Most people that visit professional service websites are there to validate that the firm is expert at solving problems like theirs.

At a minimum, therefore, effective websites describe the business and the staff’s credentials. Some prospective clients also seek assurances that it will be easy to do business with the firm. For this reason, professional service firms with busy, tech-savvy clientele often provide on-line access to client services–as a way of positively distinguishing their firms from the competition.

Success depends on attracting visitors to your website

Putting up a website is like erecting a giant sign behind your office, no one finds it unless you tell them it’s there. You can attract visitors via word of mouth and conventional marketing materials. Nevertheless, the best websites contain content that attracts visitors and compels them to act.

The most effective technique is getting other websites to link to yours. Search engines also give precedence to “keyword-rich” content. Success depends on publishing lots of web pages—each of which mentions words that describe one of your services (e.g. “tax preparation”) many times on the same page.

Then, to get visitors to act, make them an offer they can’t refuse. For example, you may promise to review a document and credit their account when they ultimately engage you for the larger project.

Use outbound internet marketing tools to stay top of mind

Don’t wait for visitors to drop in; invite them to stop by. It’s important to reach out regularly to each of your key audiences if you want to stay top of mind. That’s because while everyone checks their email, few people–outside your own firm–visit your website on a regular basis.

We use the following tools to help our clients reach their clients and prospective clients. We also recommend our clients use these tools to stay in touch with other accountants who can refer business to them, help them serve their clients, or even join their firms as an employee. Important Internet marketing tools include:

o Email marketing

o Publishing articles on others’ sites to generate coveted links back to their sites (authors need to include their URLs as well as their names and qualifications)

o “Linked” in and other online networking services to generate “word of mouth”

o Posts on others’ sites linking back to our clients’ sites

o Blogs (readers can receive new posts automatically as email)

“Repurpose” all your marketing communications on your website for maximum impact

Then, we encourage them to add copies to their website.The nice thing about using the Internet instead of paper is:

* Content permanently resides on your website and therefore continues to market for you long after you published it

* Content is less expensive to distribute, and to revise for that matter.

* Great, inexpensive, tools exist for others to find you–obviating the need for expensive advertising.

Here’s an example of how we add copies of our own marketing communications to our website for maximum impact.

Related posts:

1. Will marketing consultants and agencies switch places with in-house staff in a digital world?
2. Linked In: 5 tips for generating sales
3. B2B marketing insights and tips compliments of MarketingProfs

First impressions count, but don’t do the job

When it comes to others, we only form a general impression. At this point, despite the fact that you may have told them much more, prospective buyers are likely to remember only one thing about you at best. It may the first thing you said; it may be something they heard about from someone else; or it may be the thing that resonated most with their top concern the day they encountered your company. Whatever it is, they need to know a lot more before they buy.

The problem is that prospective buyers are still too busy to learn about your company and its services. In fact, one of the greatest obstacles to a sale is getting your marketing messages through to the intended audience. Hopefully, you’ve made enough of an impression, to elevate your company’s marketing communications above the clutter. If so, your next challenge is staying in touch so that you can help prospective buyers move through their buying process. Any missteps and they’re likely to buy from someone else.

Brand building one step at a time

Before they ultimately buy, decision makers will need to:
• Become aware of all the services you offer
• Associate their needs with these services
• Think of your business as the “obvious” choice
• Remember your company when it comes time to buy

The best way to move prospective buyers through these steps is sequentially: one message per communication. Again, they don’t have the capacity to take in more than one detail about your company at a time.

Email marketing may be the answer

One of the best vehicles for your “drip” campaign is a newsletter—conventional or email depending on your audience. Nevertheless, each communication must be directly relevant to their concerns; else it too will remain unopened.

So, in preparing the subject lines and headlines of your missives, return to the four marketing questions we discussed last week. To increase the relevance to readers, and memorability, consider adding a story that illustrates your point and resonates with what you’ve learned about their experiences. Examples of how your accounts have triumphed using your solutions is often the best way to advance your agenda.

A typical email newsletter might describe a service you offer, provide a case study of how one of your accounts benefited from its application, and appear under a headline mentioning both the company that deployed the solution and the impact it had on their business.

Assuming that the featured business is in the same industry—and has the same issues—as your reader, your readers will be anxious to read all about it so that they, too, can achieve success. The following newsletter will follow a similar format but for a different service. One communication at a time, you’ll ensure that prospective buyers:
• Become aware of all the services you offer
• Associate their needs with these services
• Think of your business as the “obvious” choice
• Remember your company when it comes time to buy
For an example of how to implement this strategy, see this article on clinician marketing. As a bonus, you may be able to apply some of the techniques I’ve described to help your physician clients market their practices.

A drip campaign can shorten the sales cycle

So how does a drip campaign shorten the sales cycle? Although your target audience may contain thousands of people, only a few of them are ready at any point in time to buy. Moreover, even if you had the staff, it would be very expensive to follow up with them individually on a regular basis. Done well, your newsletter is likely to reach a small percentage of your audience just as they are ready to buy. If these companies contact you, you’ve generated a qualified lead—and reached someone who is ready to buy right away–without investing in expensive one-to-one prospecting or in manually helping them through their buying process.

Using an email newsletter or conventional print newsletter serves a second purpose. It serves to brand your company as a helpful and authoritative resource. Even if these companies go out to bid, your organization will stand above the crowd. You may even be able to bypass the time-consuming due diligence that companies use to evaluate prospective providers—because they already feel confident in your ability to deliver.

Related posts:

1. Shorten the sales cycle next year: Year end marketing planning
2. Shortening the sales cycle starts with getting into buyers’ minds
3. How search and social media will shorten the B2B sales cycle.
4. Maximizing Sales Productivity Depends on Meeting Marketing Requirements