Marketing Your Consulting Services.pdf - epiheirimatikotita.gr

Why assess your customers? You will want to assess your present as well as your
potential clients. Examine your present clients. Where are they now? Where do they
want to be? And how can you help them get there? What services do they use now
and what services do you offer that they have not utilized? Is there some opportunity
for cross-selling? For taking your services to another department? Look for
new clients. Who is in your geographic area that you have not contacted? Perhaps
you have been reluctant to call on the larger companies in your area. What can you
offer them? If you focus on a specific industry, have you marketed to all the companies
in the industry? How about related industries? An assessment will remind
you of the many marketing opportunities available to you.
After completing an internal and external assessment of your firm, your competition,
and your clients, you will want to assess the messages you are already sending
to clients and potential clients. The message is your image or what the client
sees and hears from you already. It is important that the image be clear and consistent.
Your assessment provides the input you will need to build a strong client base.
B: Build a Potential Client Base
Building a potential client base will require that you complete three key actions.
First, you will analyze the data you gathered in the Assessment Phase. Second, you
will develop a marketing plan. Third, you will target and identify specific clients
or groups of clients. This phase can be a lot of work. It can also be confusing. But
it is also exciting.
It is a lot of work because you will analyze what you learned in the Assessment
Phase to determine which clients you should target. You cannot pursue every potential
client in the universe, so you will need to make difficult decisions to narrow
the field. Put everything you learned in Phase A about you and your company,
about your competitors, and about your potential clients in the mix. Then begin
to look for the opportunities. The analysis will lead you to the answer.
This phase can also be confusing. Unless you are a marketing major, you may
have many questions about all the marketing tools available to you. What’s the difference
between advertising and publicity? What are promotional activities? What’s
the relationship between PR, publicity, and a press release? What’s a media blitz and
do you need one? Is there a marketing mix that’s best for consultants? Should you
buy a mailing list? What about a brochure? Business cards? Pricing? Direct mail?
Telemarketing? Trade shows? Or does any of it matter? There are many marketing
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