How To Get More Consulting Clients Using Online Marketing
July 16, 2021
Marketing your consulting business takes time and effort. Between growing your online presence, working with clients and building your brand awareness, there’s a lot to handle on a day-to-day basis. Instead of wasting time, money and effort on marketing tasks that aren’t sending you results, invest your energy into a marketing strategy that works.
A strong consulting marketing strategy doesn’t only focus on attracting new leads — it also focuses on nurturing those leads into paying customers.
Learn how to get more consulting clients using a combination of paid ads and lead-nurturing marketing techniques.
#1 Attract leads with search engine marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a great way to grow your client list through targeted paid ad campaigns. Ad networks, such as Google, Bing and LinkedIn, let you create and target ads to those who are interested in the consulting services you offer.
To get started, first perform keyword research to determine what keywords to target in your campaign. This involves brainstorming phrases and words you think your target audience is searching, and then figuring out how frequently searched and competitive those terms are.
You can find the average monthly search volume and competitiveness of your keywords using Google’s keyword planning tool, and also explore other search terms that you can use within your campaign.
From there, you’ll organize your keywords into ad groups, and create ad text and landing pages based on their common theme. Relevancy is important here, so take the time to craft your messaging and make your ad text and landing page content conversion-friendly.
For example, this ad that appeared for the Google search, “HR consulting,” uses the keyword in the headline, and clearly shows their different HR consulting services:
Last but not least, you’ll want to feature a strong value proposition and a clear call to action within your campaigns. For example, ask people to sign up for a free consultation, call you for more information or download a piece of content. From there, you can use their information to start them on an email journey that nurtures them into a client. This brings us to our second marketing strategy.
#2 Attract and nurture leads with content and email marketing
Content marketing is a valuable way to improve your website’s SEO and attract new clients. Not only that, but content marketing combined with email marketing nurtures leads and can turn them into paying customers. How? Email journeys.
An email journey is a set of automated emails that are meant to inform, educate and engage the recipient.
Sticking with our previous example, say you are a consultant that works with HR divisions at small to medium-sized businesses. Your email journey could walk subscribers through an exercise that helps them figure out what improvements are needed within their organization, and give them helpful next steps towards how to make their HR department stronger. This journey could consist of the following email content:
1.) Welcome email
Your first email should welcome subscribers and let them know what to expect. For example, you could let them know that they’ll only receive emails that contain useful information, and outline the email journey they’ll go on.
2.) Facts and news email
In this email, you could provide meaningful facts about the impact HR has on an organization and other recent news about the HR industry and businesses today. This helps improve your authority by showing you keep up with industry news and are knowledgeable in your subject area.
3.) Activity email
Then, give your email subscribers a task they can do to start measuring how their HR stands up against the competition. For example, you can send them a quiz about HR best practices or a questionnaire to fill out to reflect on how their department is performing. Their responses can trigger another email based on their replies that goes over their top concerns or weaknesses.
4.) Conversion email
Your last email in the journey can contain a personalized message based on their responses to the activity and a call to action to sign up for a consultation or quote for your services.
This kind of email marketing helps demonstrate your knowledge to potential clients while keeping you top-of-mind.
Start growing your consulting business today
A combination of paid ads to attract new customers and email marketing to nurture new leads can help you get more consulting clients and grow your consulting business.
Need help? Marketing 360® has the tools and talent you need, including content creation services, paid ads management services and more. Learn more about our plans and pricing.