What makes you stand out in your field? When potential clients begin their search for a professional advisor, what would make them stop and say, “I want them” instead of your competitors?
How do you reach your potential clients and share your story and expertise? You could be the most qualified and highly intelligent person in your field, but without properly marketing your business and yourself, you will fail to reach your fullest potential.
Understanding Your Target Market
Your business is only as valuable as your ability to share your brand story and purpose to the correct audience. How do you ensure that your message is being delivered to the right target market? Do you even know who that “right” target market is and what their pain points include? Your service is not for everyone so your marketing techniques should not try to reach everyone either. Create buyer persona guidelines to ensure all content created will be valuable to your target audience.
Research your current client’s demographics as well as their psychographics or interests to get a complete understanding of their needs. The Harvard Business Review writes, “thoughtful use of psychographics will help you develop not only the messages and campaigns but also the products and services that specific customers want and need.” For example, is your current client base interested in vacations and is nearing retirement? Use this combination of demographics and psychographics to create a marketing campaign highlighting planning for their retirement, including a list of vacation getaways and tours for retirees.
Building Your Brand
Your brand should be easily recognizable within any content you publish and through all marketing efforts. Forbes shares, “a disorganized brand story leaves customers confused and uninterested.” Ensure your branding is consistent across all marketing channels. This is where a brand book comes into play.
A brand book should include, at minimum, the following components:
- Logo – Include all acceptable treatments to the logo and where each can be used.
- Brand Colors – What colors does your brand utilize and how? For example, EPI utilizes two shades of blue as feature colors, green for supplemental imagery, and orange as a CTA color. Include all HEX, CMYK, and Pantone codes for the brand colors.
- Sample Imagery – What style photos does your brand use in marketing? Do you incorporate lifestyle imagery or more corporate-looking photos?
- Typography – What fonts do you utilize for Headings, Subheadings, and Body Copy in your marketing materials? Include standards for font size to be used for digital and print media.
In addition to the visuals incorporated into your marketing, your brand voice should be easily recognized in your marketing. There should not be a jarring difference between messaging on your website compared to how you speak on LinkedIn or in print. While each platform offers you a chance to reach your audience in a different way, the message should remain consistent.
Utilizing Content
Business owners are looking for information on how to improve their business, minimize expenses, and increase their profits. But how do you create content that fills that need without getting lost in the shuffle of thousands of other professional advisors that can offer similar insights?
The key to creating successful content that resonates with potential business owner clients is to share the story of your business and the ways your business can help owners with theirs. This story will inform any potential clients about your brand, products, and ultimately fosters a genuine connection between customers and your company.
Always keep your audience and your strengths in mind. If you’re a terrible writer, maybe blogging isn’t for you. If you’re meant to be a radio host, maybe it’s podcasting. Play to your strengths, but also keep in mind which types of content your audience prefers to consume.
HubSpot shares that “blogging is a great way to generate organic traffic, particularly for those prospects who have not reached a purchasing decision yet. In addition, it can establish credibility in your space and position you as a thought leader.”
Reuse Popular Content
Do you have a piece of content that has performed extremely well? Use it again! Just because an article has been published on a certain topic, it does not mean you wash your hands of that topic and move on.
There is a fine line between reworking successful content in new ways and beating your audience over the head with the same information over and over. Small Business Chron shared, “Repetition can build brand familiarity, but it can also lead to consumer fatigue, where consumers become so tired that they tune out or actively avoid the product. Therefore, to be effective, repetition must occur in the right proportion, as too much repetition may be counterproductive as an advertising strategy.”
