Marketing yourself effectively as a Consultant

Being self-employed can be rewarding, but without the right planning and promotion no one will know about your offering and services. As a consultant you must be proactive in marketing yourself, your services and reaching out to your target audience.

Here are some different ways to market yourself successfully to strengthen your brand.

Researching and setting goals

Before you begin to market yourself, set goals on what you want to achieve. Doing so will let you measure how you are doing and where you are going. For instance, who will want your service? Where are they currently looking for your service? What is the current market demand?  These types of questions are a great place to start.

The more effort you put into your research, the more you will get out of it. You can research your industry through publications and company research databases such as Alert Data to highlight trends for your field and pinpoint market demand. Look at other consultants with a similar offering, how do you compare?  Why do you like them? How do they market themselves? Is their website easy to follow? What is their unique selling point (USP)?

It is important for you to know who your target audience is and look at ways to reach out to them.

Branding

It is important to remain consistent in your image and how you present yourself to your existing and potential contacts. Websites such as http://searchengineland.com/and http://www.searchengineguide.com/ have various articles that may help get you started. Before you start to develop your brand it can be useful to consider your USP – what makes you different from everyone else? It’s this message you need to convey when promoting yourself through your business.

Website

A website allows you to be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At any one point in time there are millions of people, from all over the world online. Many of them are looking to source products or services. A well designed and informative website is more likely to attract new customers and give existing customers a reason to return.

When creating your website think about the following areas:

• Keep it professional and well designed – first impressions count and last.
• Ensure the content is clear, concise and simple. Does your audience know what you offer?
• Can you easily navigate through the site?
• Ensure your contact details are accessible and you are clear on how you want to be contacted.

A professional website shows people that you are forward thinking and customer focussed, which is an important factor in making a decision to work with someone.

Email

Use a signature block in your emails. Make sure you include your name, LinkedIn URL, website address and tag lines or a one liner with your areas of expertise.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

This is key if you want to be noticed and for people to take notice of you. If you were to Google yourself where would you rank on the list of results? You obviously want to be as close to the top as possible so you are exposing yourself to prospective clients.

Tips to consider;

• Content is key - so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
• Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevance to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
• If your site content doesn’t change often, you need to write articles or blog to keep you in the public eye and raise your visibility with your target audience.

Networking

Networking is essential as a Consultant. Get advice and share ideas with others; they could be able to introduce you to relevant people. Whilst networking online is becoming more popular than ever, it is essential to meet as many people as possible. People are more likely to remember you if they have met you and will remember you for future opportunities.

Social media

There are social media sites to suit everyone. LinkedIn allows you to expand your current network and connect with your target audience. As you are still representing your online brand make sure you keep your social networking professional.

Tips on using LinkedIn effectively

• Connect to your current contacts — these people know you and your credibility.
• Establish your professional profile — Highlight experience and accomplishments that are relevant to what you are promoting yourself as.
• Find experts, ideas, and opportunities – Connect with members who have similar interests or could put you in contact with potential clients.
• Recommendations - Get as many recommendations as possible, the more credible you appear the more opportunities could follow.
• Discussion forums – Find forums in your areas of expertise or potential customer area and get involved. Asking and answering questions is another way to showcase your expertise and trigger interest in you and what you do.

Additionally Twitter may be a useful forum for you to consider;

• Participate in industry conversations – Your target audience or potential prospects are on Twitter – this will allow you to engage with your industry.
• Have a major announcement? Use Twitter to promote your press releases and to communicate company news.
• Website awareness – Use Twitter to drive traffic to your website. Tweet the URL to a particular part of your website.
• Monitor your competitors – Monitor their tweets to see what they are working on. It’s also a great way to see how they are using Twitter effectively too.

E-marketing campaigns

E-Marketing allows you to reach a wide range of customers and to offer a diverse range of services. Using campaigns via email is a fast and effective way of targeting your specific audience at the click of a button. When targeting potential customers via email it is important to get it right from the start. Here are some points to consider;

• Who are your audience – make sure you have the correct name and email address – ask yourself, is this decision maker?
• What is your service and how clear are you on what you are offering?
• Ensure your e-marketing is relevant to your audience – if you offer different services you may want to have different group lists.
• How do you want them to respond? Click a reply through an enquiry form? To call you?
• When are you going to send your campaign? – when is your decision maker likely to read your email?
• The subject header is really important and is what makes your reader want to look at your email.
• What is in the preview email? – The first part of the body of the email needs to grab their attention and is the next thing they look at before deciding to open your email.
• Follow up – how are you going to follow up your emails and how are you recording this? Recording on a spread sheet or using a database?
• How often are you going to target? - too often could become annoying, too little could make you forgettable.

Once you have given this some thought and looked at your current contacts, you may want to consider the following when marketing yourself to a wider audience.

• Buying leads – if you run out of companies to contact there are lots of companies out there you can buy business leads from - although you can’t guarantee this information is 100% up to date. Look at different providers as some give 30 day free trials.
• LinkedIn – you can buy adverts that are relevant to your services; for example, a company recently advertised student loans to anyone who said they were currently a student in their profile.

 Renovo is one of the UK’s leading providers of outplacement and career transition support. We work with both organisations and individuals to support all their career transition requirements. If you would like to understand how Renovo can help you please call 0800 612 2011 or email info@renovo.co.uk