When it comes to marketing for consultancies, most people start with blogs.

It makes sense, you write day in day out for your clients, surely that’s the best way to create your marketing content too?

But as many find, the fact you write day to day for your clients doesn’t always translate in to engaging marketing content.

It’s very easy to let how you communicate within your firm – all the shorthand terms and jargon that inevitably builds up – seep into how you communicate with those outside it. This often results in blogs that are inward looking and rarely much fun to read.

If you don’t believe us, ask someone from outside of your firm – be it a friend or family member – to read your blog. If their eyes glaze over or they have to keep asking you to explain what things mean, it’s unlikely to resonate with a client.

To help you solve this challenge and create content that your clients will love to read, here’s our top five simple tips that will help your consultancy’s marketing copy hit the spot.

1. Focus on solving challenges

All of your prospective clients have issues they need to solve and opportunities they want to take advantage of. If you can show them you understand their challenges and that your consultancy has some compelling answers, they’re likely to take notice.

Don’t be side tracked by your own expertise or showing how many awards you’ve won. Give the answers your target clients want and need.

Think about those times you’ve been stuck with someone at a party who only talks about themselves. At best it gets boring very quickly, at worst it leads to an impromptu bladder filling as you look for an excuse to get away.

The same is true of marketing content. It’s not what you know that counts, it’s how you can apply what you know to your clients’ problems.  

2. Remember, you’re speaking to people

Every email you write is sent to a person. Every website is read by people. Every social media post appears in someone’s feed. You get the picture.

Consultants often forget this when it comes to marketing. They think that because they’re talking to executives they have to talk in an overly formal or academic tone.

Remember, the CxOs you work with are people, just like you. This doesn’t change because of their title. They want to read content that speaks to them and engages them.

To do this use ‘you’ and ‘your’ rather than impersonal terms such as ‘firms’ to create the sense you are building a one-to-one relationship.     

We may be in the digital age, but people still warm to the human touch.   

3. Keep the energy up

There’s so much to read online, you don’t want to lose the attention of a reader once you’ve got it. But they’ll quickly switch off if your copy becomes laboured.

Writing with an active voice will help you keep your message short, sharp and energised. For example, here’s a passive sentence:

The digital transformation will be supported by our team of expert consultants.

And here’s the active version:

Our team of expert consultants will support your digital transformation.  

Alongside an active voice, vary sentence lengths to prevent your copy becoming flat and bland. But avoid very long sentences, if one is becoming unwieldy and difficult to follow break it into two. The same goes for paragraphs – bite-sized is best.  

4. Simple isn’t dumbing down

The best way to get your message across is usually with the simplest language. So much consultancy marketing is jargon-filled and overly complicated, but rather than making you sound clever it obscures your message.

Why say optimal when you can say best? Why touch base with someone when you can talk to them?

Don’t write like David Brent speaks. Aim for Booker Prize winning simplicity instead – Hilary Mantel’s opening to Wolf Hall is a great example of powerful writing using language we can all understand.    

Of course, there may be technical phrases you can’t avoid. But explain them the first time you use them, rather than assuming everyone understands their meaning.   

For more tips on how to keep things simple, flick to page nine of our eBook that dissects the marketing strategy that leading consultancy Elixirr use, where we explain this in much more detail. It’s a skill that’s helped them grow 424% in just three years.

5. Go easy on the superlatives

Your AMAZING, INDUSTRY-LEADING service, voted NUMBER ONE in the world by Best Consulting Magazine three years in a row, may well TURBOBOOST TURNOVER and that’s A CAST IRON PROMISE …

Nobody likes being shouted at. And the more you try the hard sell, the less people are likely to believe it. This ties back in with tip one, rather than telling people how good you are, show them what you can do for their business.   

We hope you’ve found these tips useful. By putting them into practise you’ll write copy that connects with people and encourages people to connect with you. Readers will be more likely to share your content with their fellow consultants and, the ultimate goal, press on that link to get in touch.

It’s what we do day in and day out for our clients. Take a look at how we’ve turned a range of subjects into snappy marketing content for consultancies such as Albany Beck, PEN Partnership and Numertias. And talking of getting in touch … if you’d like to find out how we can help you write copy that really grabs peoples attention, get in touch here.