As all good consultants know, If you want something to succeed, you need a solid plan. Yet when it comes to digital marketing, so many consultancies fall down because their plan for creating marketing content is either undercooked or completely non-existent.
The excuse is always the same – too many client projects to focus on and not enough time to dedicate to marketing. But at a time when your online presence is more important than ever, there really is no excuse. You just need a simple, solid plan that you can rely on to deliver results.
To do this, you first need to consider the nature of your content – its tone, its consistency, its frequency, its relevance. You need to decide who will be responsible for posting it. And then, most importantly, you need to stick to it.
So how can you make your firm’s marketing as effective as possible?
What content will you put out?
You should decide this based on who you’ve identified as your target client (and how they consume content). We wrote a blog on identifying your target client here.
So, if you’re targeting senior executives who you know spend time on LinkedIn, then planning regular posts to that platform makes sense. Alternatively, you might be targeting a client group who prefer something meatier than short social posts, so an eBook or webinar could work best.
How frequently will you put out content?
It really depends on what you’re saying. If your content’s massively valuable for your target clients, then you could post something every day. Or you might find that a bi-weekly piece of content gets the same total engagement as your daily posts. The key is to track your engagement – your likes, comments and shares – keep testing, and do more of what works.
Just remember that we’re talking about marketing here. If you go too hard on the ‘selling’, you’ll annoy people. You need to strike that balance between offering valuable, helpful content and weaving in the occasional sales messages to help steer prospective clients into your BD funnel.
If you’re unsure on how to strike this balance, start by focusing your content 100% on giving value and 0% on selling. If you produce high quality, value-giving content, your target clients will ultimately search you out on their own. They know their problems, and they know you have a solution. They don’t need you to point it out to them.
Who’ll post your content?
Will the content be posted from an individual or the business account? Will a message be best delivered from a senior leader, or one of your consultants?
There are no right and wrong answers here. Just make sure that wherever content is published from, the rest of the company all share it to increase the reach and get it in front of as many prospective clients as possible.
Not only does planning your content with these simple steps save you time, but it will help you dramatically increase your reach and engagement in the long run. So next time you’re sitting down to plan your consultancy’s marketing content, focus on these 3 thinking points and you’ll be on track to achieving your ultimate goal; tangible marketing ROI.
If you’d like some help with building your consultancy’s marketing plan, get in touch and we’d be happy to help!
