THE ULTIMATE CoNSULTANcY MARKETINg TOOLKIT: ESSENTlAL STRATEgIES FoR MAXIMISINg cONVERSIoNS

A customer submits an enquiry, learns more about your services, reviews a proposal and signs a contract. Ta-da! Consultancy marketing is straightforward, isn't it?!

If only.

In reality, only 2.5% of form leads captured by businesses in the professional service industry convert into "qualified leads". 

Depressing?

It is for some.

For the glass-half-full type of folks, this is excellent news! It means that there is a sea of opportunities for consultancies that are willing to throw their outdated marketing notions in a bin and adopt conversion-focused strategies that appeal to a modern customer.

Consultancy marketing usually fails for one of two reasons (or both):

1. Consultancies undervalue the significance of positioning and differentiation.
2. Businesses do not know how to set up, track and optimise customer journeys.

In this article, we’ll share consulting industry-specific best practices that will allow you to develop and execute a marketing strategy that not only maximises your conversion rate but also over time reduces the cost per acquisition.

Let's get on the same page: What is consultancy marketing?

“Instead of interrupting, work on attracting.” Credited to HubSpot's co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah, these are words to live by in marketing.

Marketing in the consulting industry is about designing and executing strategic, targeted campaigns that attract potential customers, take them on a gradual discovery journey and, ultimately, convert them into paying customers.

Consulting marketing is not...

• Occasional social media posts
• Flyers and brochures distributed as attachments
• A rare blog article
• An inconsistently distributed newsletter
• An ebook that exists in a vacuum, just for the fun of it

Consulting marketing is...

• A marketing plan that outlines campaigns for various channels and how they connect to each other
• Personalised customer journeys that nurture and engage leads
• Regular evaluations of metrics and targets
• Measurable brand awareness campaigns
• A marketing budget that prioritises tools, campaigns and channels that deliver the highest ROI while leaving room for experimentation
• A collaborative effort that involves senior leadership, consultants, operations and other team members
• A documented set of processes, systems and technologies
  
  

The core elements of the marketing toolkit

This guide covers four dimensions that will serve as a baseline for your marketing plan:

• Capturing and nurturing leads: Designing lead magnets that attract and convert the target audience
• Enhancing conversions with HubSpot: Using an all-in-one solution to create a unified lead management and nurture system
• Digital reporting: What to track, how to understand the data and how to use it for decision-making
• Designing competitive strategies: Combining inbound strategies with outbound tactics to stand out from competitors and facilitate sustainable growth

Differentiated positioning – the foundation of conversion-driven marketing

Before we dive into the marketing toolkit, one thing should be made crystal clear: marketing efforts, no matter how elaborate, will fail to deliver strong results without a clear and differentiated position at the foundation.

Positioning is how your potential and existing customers perceive you: your brand identity, services, capabilities, approach and culture.

Strong positioning will enable you to create and execute marketing strategies that have the same brand voice and convey a unified message. It will be reflected in everything from the visuals to the copy as well as go beyond marketing to encompass corporate culture, employee retention, sales, client onboarding and more.

The plague of "sameism"

Having clear positioning is not enough. It needs to be distinct. There is so much marketing noise: "We are the leaders", "Explore our cutting-edge services", "Next-generation solutions for agile businesses". Snooze.

Customers are tired of "sameism".

To stand out, you need to dig deeper. What makes your business unique? Why should prospects choose your service over others? What combination of strengths makes your offering undeniably superior?

Not easy questions to answer, sure, but worth answering if you want to take the “meh” out of your meh-ssaging.

Designing journeys that entice and navigate customers

Think of your customer's journey the way supermarkets do: Where should you place what to maximise the value of a customer's basket and enhance their experience, from entry point to check-out?

Differentiation at every stage of the customer journey

Generally, there are three crucial stages in your prospects' journey: awareness, consideration and decision.

The awareness stage

What is the first instance of a prospect coming across and interacting with your brand? Usually, it's your website. It can also be an exhibition stand at an event, a social media post, an ad in a trade journal or other digital and offline touchpoints.

This is the first impression your prospect has of your consultancy. Make it count. Craft a concise, compelling message that would resonate with your customers and make them want to learn more. Focus on the problem you are resolving for the target audience.

The consideration stage

Now that the prospect has a better idea of what your consultancy does and how it does it, it's time to nurture this initial relationship.

Lead magnets are an effective way to do that.

A lead magnet is a resource that you offer to prospects in exchange for their contact information.

Examples of lead magnets:

• How-to ebooks, guides and cheat sheets
• Industry reports
• A self-diagnostic tool
• Checklists
• Ready-to-use templates
• White papers
• Webinars

Once you have the contact information, nurture these relationships. Show your customers – subtly, of course – why your consultancy is the expert in a particular field. The most direct and effective way is by designing an automated email campaign.

"Since you downloaded our guide on change management, we thought you'd find this case study on how Company X reduced its operational costs by 13% post-merger useful."

The decision stage

It's time to give your prospect the push they need to convert into a paying customer.

This may mean throwing your hat in the ring by responding to a tender or providing a pitch to the prospect directly.

Beat out rival consultancies by offering proof of your ability to deliver tangible results. This can be in the form of case studies, a breakdown of your methodology, or an executive summary of what you have achieved for past clients.

Creating seamless customer experience through personalisation and progressive profiling

Segmentation and personalisation – get familiar and comfortable with these two concepts.

Segmentation is the process of organising your leads based on shared characteristics or behaviour.

There are numerous ways to segment your audience: shared pain points (what lead magnet they accessed), participation degree (registered vs. actually attended a webinar), engagement level (clicked on a link in an email or not), etc.

Personalisation is the act of crafting journeys that best reflect the individual requirements of your audience members and segments.

71% of B2B customers expect personalised content when engaging or staying connected with the company, according to research by Forrester.

Personalisation goes beyond entering a {First_Name} merge field in your automated email. It's about tracking and responding to the unique behaviour and needs of your prospects.

Get to know your customers through progressive profiling

Progressive profiling is a strategy of gradually acquiring information about your prospects. Instead of ambushing a user with a 10-field form, you build up their profile in a more subtle manner.

One way to collect information more seamlessly is to break down the form into multiple steps. Upon filling out the first set of fields, a prospect is asked to submit additional information.

Some software providers offer an alternative solution: smart forms in which you determine what additional questions to ask based on what you already know about a prospect.

Progressive profiling can help boost engagement and conversion rates, so add it to your marketing toolkit.

The power of a lead magnet in consultancy marketing

A lead magnet is a bridge that connects the awareness and decision stages in your customer journey.

We already covered the definition of lead magnets in the earlier chapter. Now let's answer this question: What makes them so effective?

A checklist for creating an irresistible lead magnet that attracts and converts prospects

The lead magnet is based on thorough customer research that uncovers the segment's interests, needs and challenges.

The content of the lead magnet is of high value and closely aligned with the consultancy's area of expertise.

The lead magnet lives on a dedicated landing page that's cleverly designed to eliminate all distractions and has compelling copy and attention-grabbing visuals.

You drive traffic to the landing page through strategic distribution – e.g., placing a call to action (CTA) to the lead magnet on blog pages covering a similar topic.

Customers receive follow-up emails that nurture the relationship, engage them and gradually build up trust.

Here is an example of a lead magnet by HubSpot. What makes it effective? It's simple in design, for starters. The statistics it presents are highly persuasive. And it has a clear CTA. 

Here is another example – from a consultancy in the field of IT. We love it because the subject of the lead magnet is related to the subject of the blog post. That’s an excellent lead pre-qualification strategy. The fact that the lead magnet offer appears in a non-intrusive manner is just a cherry on top.

Nurture contacts through engaging, personalised communication

Acquiring the contact information of a prospect is a big deal. Don't underestimate the value of first-party data in today's age of privacy.

So instead of wasting the opportunity with willy-nilly follow-ups and aggressive sales tactics, craft a drip campaign that would progressively engage and entice your customers. Send relevant resources in the form of guides, articles, case studies, webinar invitations, etc. Share industry insights, predictions and reports. Offer interactive quizzes and self-diagnostic tools.

And through it all, remember: segmentation and personalisation are key in your efforts to nurture prospects.

Leveraging HubSpot for enhanced consultancy conversions

There is a wide range of marketing technology to help execute a marketing plan. Our personal favourite is HubSpot.

It has everything you need: a CRM, marketing tools like email and content management, lead capture tools, automation, a website builder, meeting scheduler and more.

• HubSpot's integrated CRM and marketing tools help consultancies streamline efforts.
• The CRM and automation features are integral when nurturing leads with personalised campaigns.
• Lead scoring helps quantify prospects' interest, prioritise leads and set up re-engagement campaigns for those who experience score decay.
• Finally, HubSpot's powerful reporting feature allows you to aggregate data, derive insights, and fine-tune campaigns. You can set up custom dashboards and segmentation-based reporting to get to the nitty-gritty of what tactics and messaging resonate best with a specific audience.
  
  

Outsmarting competitors with a distinct, targeted marketing strategy

We browse through consultancies' sites religiously. We come across a ton of lazy, ineffective funnels – if any are set up at all. Marketing budget was wasted!

But every now and then, we find customer journeys that tickle our fancy.

Let's look at some examples of the latter.

1. Compelling, distinct positioning and messaging

Don't be afraid to develop a unique voice for your consultancy. Strive to make an impactful first impression.

✅ "We are the world's only flow of work accelerators delivering a 30% reduction in the cost of delay in 100 days" – Ding Ding Ding! It instantly makes clear what problem the consultancy can solve and how exceptional it is at resolving that problem. This is an actual example from Project4 Learning Lab's website.

Now compare it to:

🚫 "Unlock your potential with unparalleled digital transformation services." - NO! This messaging is as generic as it gets. What does it even mean?

2. Lead magnets that target a relevant, niche audience

Robot Mascot is a consultancy that helps start-ups create materials for investors. Its lead magnet is perfectly aligned with the service portfolio: a quick and easy self-assessment quiz to determine a start-up's investment readiness.

Here is our diagnostic tool:

The final report provides our prospects with valuable insights while giving us an opportunity to acquire qualified leads.

3. Seamless experience and personalisation

Remember HubSpot's ROI report that we used as an example of an effective lead magnet?

Here is how it uses progressive profiling to collect prospects' data:

By the time you are at the last step, you think "I might as well! I've gotten this far!" And at no point do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you're expected to provide.

And while you can access the report instantly, HubSpot makes sure to nurture its contacts with a follow-up email:

Notice the offer of a free trial? No commitment, no credit card required?

4. Inbound + outbound = "allbound" marketing

The most successful marketing strategies are built on two pillars: inbound tactics and outbound efforts. 

Your inbound strategies – lead magnets, organic traffic, and so on – should entice and guide customers.

Outbound efforts, on the other hand, are used to inform and enhance your inbound efforts – reaching out to prospects for feedback, offering interactive quizzes and sending links to relevant articles.

Making data-informed consultancy marketing decisions

To maximise the ROI of your marketing budget, get diligent about reporting and analytics.

Data transparency across your team will help create alignment around goals, priorities and targets. Make a habit of distributing reports on marketing performance – both to marketing stakeholders and senior leadership to ensure continuous buy-in.

Metrics to track

There are more marketing metrics than anyone can possibly keep up with. Start small and build up from there. Focus on the metrics that will give you a full view of the effectiveness of your marketing plan.

These include:

• Tolerable cost per acquisition (TCPA)
• Conversion rates
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Open and click-through rates
• Average time on page, session duration and number of visits
• New versus returning visitor sessions
• Exit pages and bounce rates
• Traffic source and referrals

Keeping track of these metrics will allow you to refine your strategies, adjust messaging and demonstrate tangible outcomes.

Once you master them, you can add event tracking, goal completions, marketing qualified lead (MQL) to a sales qualified lead (SQL) ratio, net promoter score, keyword performance, multi-touch attribution and others.

Deriving useful insights from data using the LAPS framework

To get a comprehensive view of how well your marketing strategies and tactics are performing, take advantage of this LAPS dashboard template. It's a straightforward Google Sheet that allows you to track and improve conversion rates. 

Use these insights to inform your marketing budget decision, keep all stakeholders updated and refine customer journeys.

Crafting your ultimate consultancy marketing toolkit

In this guide, we presented the tools and frameworks you need to create high-impact consultancy marketing strategies. On the foundation of a well-defined, differentiating market position, you can use the toolkit to build a marketing machine that will let you escape the ordinary.

Strategically use lead magnets, HubSpot and data-driven reporting to design customer-centric campaigns that delight, engage and nurture your prospects.

And if you want to learn how you can command higher fees for your services with less price resistance from buyers, join our on-demand training: How consultancies are doubling their revenue.