Marketing Your Consulting Services.pdf - epiheirimatikotita.gr

• What does your business do? What do you do well? What do you not do well?
• What do your customers want? How do you ensure excelling at meeting their
needs? How do you predict their future needs?
• Who is your competition? What do you do better than they do? How do you
stay ahead of your competition?
• How do you keep yourself in front of your customers?
• Where is your business heading? What is your vision? What do you need to do
to get there?
• What will you do differently once you get there?
The answers to these questions should be found in your business plan. It is a
working document that you keep in front of you and your staff. When done
thoughtfully, it becomes your roadmap to success. It is also the precursor for your
marketing plan. If you have not completed a business plan, you will want to back
up and complete one before moving forward. If you need a format to follow, use
one of my earlier books, either The Business of Consulting or The Consultant’s Quick
Start Guide. Both provide guidance for writing a business plan.
Alan Kay, author and consultant, has said that the best way to predict the future
is to invent it. Do you want to predict your success? This is the way to invent it.
The 4 Ps
Probably one of the things you remember from your marketing classes is the 4 Ps.
Product, price, placement, and promotion are the four elements of the marketing
mix. Manipulating them in the best way brings the greatest number of sales.
“Whoa!” you may say, “I don’t have a product to sell. How can marketing help me?”
The 4 Ps were first presented in an article titled “The Concept of the Marketing
Mix” in the Harvard Business Review. The author, Harvard professor Neil Borden,
coined the term “marketing mix” to describe the variety of different marketing elements
that must come together to produce an effective marketing plan. The 4 Ps
seem to work well for planning a marketing campaign for products such as toothpaste,
computers, and Halloween masks. In the consulting business you will need
to expand the definition a bit.
On the other hand, the fact that consulting is a service rather than a product is
not a reason to think marketing will not work. Just because your client doesn’t
Marketing: What’s It All About? 3