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Content marketing for professional services is the right approach for practitioners interested in building their clientele, regardless of profession.
Content marketing for professional services is the right approach for practitioners interested in building their clientele, regardless of profession.Whether you are a cardiologist, chiropractor or CPA, your practice needs to engage in content marketing for professional services you offer.
It’s not enough though, to just broadcast a list of your services.
You need to let people know why they should come to YOU instead of someone else for those services.
Old School Marketing
Most of us are old enough to remember when professionals services were marketed with a business card and a brochure.
That was nice for people who were sitting in your waiting room, so they might pick them up and share them with friends and family.
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More aggressive marketing included things like speaking at events or conferences, hosting roundtables talks at the local library or writing articles for the local newspaper.
What made these strategies effective was that at the end of your presentation, you got to hand out your business card and a brochure.
Then there was, and always has been and always will be – paid advertising.
Remember the Yellow Pages?
How about space ads in your local news paper, or radio spots on the local talk shows?
These strategies all worked in their day.
Today, things are different… but they’re still the same.
Internet Marketing
Internet marketing changed everything.
Or did it?
Letting people know who you are and what you do is still the best way to build your practice and promote your professional services.
The internet did not change that.
It just changed the way you go about marketing.
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Inbound Marketing
To take advantage of internet marketing, professionals need to establish a content “hub.”
That’s where you post your articles, videos, podcasts or other content you want to share with your audience… your prospects.
The most effect content hub for most professionals is their blog.
Alternatives to a blog could be a Youtube channel, Facebook page or LinkedIn profile or group.
In other words, any online property where you post the content you want to share.
Once your content is posted, you need to use “inbound marketing” strategies designed to get people to visit your hub site.
Content Marketing Strategy
One of the best inbound strategies is content marketing.
Your content should be designed to attract the specific audience that is most likely to be interested in your services.
Because you market by promoting your content, you are simultaneously building your authority or expert brand in the eyes of your audience.
If you are a malpractice attorney, for instance, writing articles about how you’ve been able to get large settlements for your clients, you will be perceived as a leader in the profession.
If your content is marketed to people who have suffered medical injuries, some of them will be likely to contact you for advice.
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Know Your Market
It does not help you to develop content for the wrong market.
In the example above, you don’t want to work hard to get your articles in front of people who have no apparent need for a medical malpractice attorney.
We’ve all seen television commercials offering legal advice and free consultation to victims of a specific drug or treatment procedure.
The attorneys running those ads are clearly talking to only a specific group of people, and they make that clear.
They know exactly the market they want to reach, and they make no effort to appeal to anyone else.
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Create Content
The key to content marketing for professional service is, of course, having great content to market.
That does not mean you have to stop seeing patients or clients in order to start writing great blog posts.
If you don’t have the time to write a blog, you need to delegate that task to someone.
It could be someone on your staff.
If you have a sizable practice, you might be able to get several people involved in content creation.
In the majority of cases, though, you are not going to get the best content in the world from your legal secretary or patient accounts rep.
You will probably need to outsource writing assignments to professional writers or content services who can provide top notch content.
If you want to do this part of the business in-house, or even do it yourself, you will need to create a stringent production schedule.
It never works to just say, “I’ll have to put up a new blog post soon.”
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Without a steady flow of fresh content, you won’t be able to develop much of a content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing and Distribution
Once you have good content, let’s say 2 or 3 new articles published to your blog each week, you will have something to market.
The best content in the world means very little unless you have a powerful content marketing and distribution system in place.
Again, this may be beyond your capabilities to handle in-house.
You can do it yourself, but if you don’t get it right, you probably won’t get a lot of response to your content marketing efforts.
Consider a professional service, a virtual assistant, or even hiring an internet marketing specialist.
Your content must be getting seen on social media sites, and it must be getting seen by your target audience.
You can also buy ads, like Facebook ads for instance, but again, you need to know what you’re doing, or you need to hire a person or service who does.
Building Relationships
Once you are executing a rigorous content production schedule, coupled with a strong content marketing strategy, you should be getting some feedback from prospects.
This is the time that you, or a qualified appointee, will have to step forward and start building relationships with them.
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Suppose, for instance, your articles, videos or podcasts are being properly marketed to victims of medical malpractice.
Some of your new prospects will comment on your blog posts or Facebook posts, retweeting, sharing your content on Google+ or other sites.
Some prospects will call your office.
Others will subscribe to your email list to get your newsletter.
In each case, you need to start having conversations with these people.
All the content in the world seldom converts people into new clients or patients until you’ve reached out to them and engaged them in some meaningful way.
That’s when they really build a trust bond with you and are ready consider using your services.
Hand Out Your Brochure And Business Card
At this point, you’re ready to give people your virtual brochure and business card.
It may be in the form of a link to your “Contact Me” page, your “My Services” page or even a sales page of some sort.
You final goal is for the conversation to result in your prospect becoming a client.
Content Marketing For Professional Services
You can see that content marketing for professional services is the same today as it every was.
Instead of making a presentation in a library, you can present your content in the form of a blog post, video or webinar.
Instead of handing out brochures and business cards, you get people on your mailing list or Facebook page where you continue to interact with them until they become clients.
Instead of your prospects handing your business card around, they share your tweets and Facebook posts to their social media crowd.
Each social share leads people back to your blog where they see who you are and how you can help them.
Content marketing for professional services is not a new concept, but it must be updated to keep up with the current way that people interact with professionals.
If you need help putting together a good content marketing program that will interest targeted prospects in your professional services, contact me here.
You might also be interested in our coaching program that can be tailored to your specific needs…
Do you currently employ some form of content marketing for professional services for yourself or for others?
I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
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