sofdt.info

From the outside, the line between copywriter and marketing consultant can look a little blurry. Copywriters are sometimes asked to give marketing advice to their clients, and part of a marketing consultant’s job is articulating a company’s position and message. And within both industries, some “value-added” professionals operate under both umbrellas.

But they are different. And especially if you’re hiring one or the other for the first time, you need to know what to expect with each-and what each expects from you.

You Need a Copywriter If:

You need a specific product. Copywriters sell concrete deliverables: copy for a brochure, a website, a series of articles, and so on. You need a copywriter if you need something specific written. You may not know exactly what you need, and some copywriters may be willing to discuss your goals with you and make suggestions. But at the end of the day, you need to have a specific project in mind.

You know yourself and your competitors. In preparation for your work, copywriters will ask questions about your company. These questions help them figure out how to best present you to your customers. Common questions include:

o What is your trademark as a company?

o What do you do better than your competitors?

o What is your current position in your market?

o How do you currently market yourself?

o What tone and image are you looking to convey?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, a copywriter will have difficulty figuring out the best angle to take when presenting you to your customers.

You know your customers. One of the first questions any copywriter will ask you when starting a new project is “who’s your audience?” To write a successful marketing piece, you need to know your customers inside and out: what tone appeals to them, what they’re looking for in a product or service like yours, and what their hot-button issues are. A copywriter will need to know the following about your audience:

o What is the demographic you’re trying to appeal to? Describe your “typical customer.”

o What factors are important to your audience when choosing a product like yours?

o What problems do your customers have, and how do you solve their problems?

o What do your prospects need to know about your product?

o What is your audience’s “hot button”?

o What emotions do you want your audience to feel when reading this piece?

o Do you serve more than one demographic? How are they different?

Call A Consultant If:

You don’t know yourself. A copywriter will need to get a sense of your business and market to write a good piece. If you don’t know why a customer would choose your product or service over a competitor’s, you need more help than a typical copywriter can provide. You need to talk to a professional marketing consultant who can help you discover your own strengths and weaknesses and help you position yourself in the market.

You don’t know your audience. A copywriter will expect you to know your customers inside and out. Without this information, she’s writing blind. If you don’t know your customers’ demographics, likes and dislikes, problems and how you solve them, and the tone and image that will appeal most, you need a marketing consultant. These consultants can help you by crafting surveys and doing market research that will help you get to know your customers.

You need information-not a deliverable. If you need to know how to do something-not have a specific job done or piece written-you need a consultant. Marketing consultants can help you figure out who you are, who your customers are, and how to present yourself to them. They usually don’t write press releases or craft website content.

Marketing consultants offer valuable insight into your business. Copywriters can help you take that knowledge and make it into compelling copy. To make the most of your associations with copywriters and consultants, you need to know what they both do best-and when you need each.

A business and marketing consultant can contribute to the strategic direction of the development of a professional practice.

That sounds nice but what exactly does it mean?

The role of your business and marketing consultant is not to tell you how to do your job. It is instead to work with you to identify a clear vision for the future of your professional practice or small to mid size business and leverage resources so as to achieve your declared vision.

A business and marketing consultant is essentially a facilitator that brings an objective point of view as well as business and marketing acumen to your practice development process. This role can mean the difference between shaping the growth of your practice or business so that it will meet your goals and organic growth, which may not meet your goals.
A business and marketing consultant’s perspective is necessarily holistic. It accounts for the big picture of the practice and it involves:

Translating your vision into specific, tailored business and marketing initiatives that are directly related to core strategies for every area of your professional practice or business including marketing, sales, operations and finance.
Prioritizing focus on the most relevant segments of your market. In order to shape your practice or business in a specific way, you will need to decide whom you are developing it for. Once your target audience is defined it will be that much easier and cheaper to reach them with a compelling and effective message about your business.
Identifying and building on the authentic point of difference of the business. The development of the point of difference of a professional practice or small to mid size business is a continuous process that requires nurturing, as it is vulnerable to becoming derailed without the appropriate focus and attention.
Developing and communicating a message that is based on your core competencies and is also aligned with the needs of your priority market segments.
Selecting the marketing vehicles expected to deliver the highest return on your investment. Where will you be able to generate the highest return on your promotional dollars: branding strategy, website, search engine optimization, advertising or other?
A business and marketing consultant can provide tremendous insight towards a greater vision for your professional practice or small to mid size business. This insight is most valuable when the consultant understands that it is your vision they are there to enlighten rather than their own. As with many other types of consulting arrangements, the ideal consultant will need to be aligned with your organization in terms of skill, knowledge and fit.

Bekhor Management is a full service business and marketing consulting firm in Toronto, Ontario focused on building better business for professional practices. Our services include marketing, branding, strategic planning and business planning. Sandra Bekhor speaks, teaches and writes about practice development for various professional associations. We invite you to visit the business development resources on our website or call us at 416-969-9600 for an initial consultation without fee or obligation.

Strategies to good online consulting has changed drastically now compared to the way things used to be, because competition has increased tremendously. In order to create a really great memorable online consulting business you have to work hard to get your name out there for the world to see. You need it to be practically labeled so that everyone knows what it means when it is mentioned, it has to be catchy and dependable and much different than anyone else’s.

There is so much competition out there today that you really do need to try and stand out among everyone else in order to be known and remembered. Labeling your online consulting business to get the attention of everyone around is a must if you want to have a successful business. The very first thing to think about is your clients. Consultants are there to serve every need of their possible clients. Consultants have to be believable enough to gain clients, gaining trust is absolutely necessary in this type of business. The consultant must prove to their client that they are there for their purposes and are reliable and strong enough to handle any kinds of hard work and are dedicated 100%.

Let your clients help you help them. Be straight up with them, ask them exactly what they think about your work for them. Allow the clients the capabilities of critiquing you so that you can perfect in any areas necessary to please them. They want to feel completely confident in knowing that you have just what it takes to give them what they need in this business.

Getting in the public eye as quickly as possible is huge for your online consulting business firm. Publicity is very important for your business and reputation. Finding out what the public thinks of you and what you can do is vital in knowing what improvements might need to be made or gaining confidence in the strengths they are talking about with others. This is the best free advertisements that you can possibly receive and you know that what is being said is very reliable and your online consulting business firm will grow because of this.

A consultant wants their clients to know that they can rely on the business firm to ensure the accomplishments in their works. It is very important for consultants to know everything that there is to know about the clients businesses. Your credentials are absolutely necessary in this business, in order to succeed. The consultants need to gain a relationship with their clients so that they are capable of working well with one another and for a long period of time. Decide what it is you all will be working towards marketing and go after it in every aspect so that you can get it out there and take care of yourself and your clients businesses and in the mean time, putting your label out there for the world to become familiar with, that will lead you closer to success.

In professional services, if there’s one thing that stops people investing in online marketing, it’s the idea that you can’t sell consulting services over the web. There’s some truth in this, but also a whole lot wrong with it. So read on if you want to look at this differently and transform your approach to sales pipeline building.

Of course it’s true that people won’t get their credit cards out to buy high priced intangible products that normally have long sales gestation periods and require expert conversations before a deal takes place. However don’t let this fool you into ignoring the stages of the sales and marketing process where the web can make massive contributions, it can shrink sales cycles and automate lead generation by taking people out of the process. What it can do for you is bring more prospects to the table, win their trust and get them deeper into your sales funnel without expensive people ever having met them!

Once you’ve moved to this way of thinking, you’ll have prospects knocking on your door rather than you on theirs, your sales pipeline will be a lot healthier, your expensive people will be better utilized and your cost of client acquisition will be much lower than it is today.

If you are going to move to this mindset you need to work on three key things:

1. Talk in the ‘needs’ language of your target audience.

2. Provide useful information that educates them and earns their trust.

3. Make your website the hub for all marketing campaigns.

Here’s how:

1. Talk in the ‘needs’ language of your target audience.

The buying language of consulting consumers is often very different to the selling language used by consultants on their websites. This results in a misalignment between the buyer and the seller. We all know that consultants like to talk about themselves more than they do about their clients! When your clients go online to do their research, you want to be the one that sings their song and presses their buttons. So if you do your homework and identify with their needs, wants and issues, rather than your products, services and company, then you’ll be the one to grab their attention and bring them one step closer.

2. Provide useful information that educates them and earns their trust.

Most of the time consumers of professional services do a lot of online research to develop their issue or thinking before they decide on their provider. Would you like to help them do their research? You bet! People will lean in your direction if you help them out with valuable information that moves their issue ahead. Consulting is a relationship business, so when they’re ready to buy, you’ll be right up there in their mind as someone they trust to provide the expertise they need. So if you make it easy for them by providing valuable and useful information in the form of white papers, advisory articles, presentations, research reports, podcasts etc. then you’ll be the one they trust and they won’t be reserved in picking up the phone to you.

3. Make your website the hub for all marketing campaigns.

Most consulting firms who have a marketing plan treat their website like a separate strand of activity, along with direct mail, telemarketing, event speaking, sponsorship, advertising etc. Most marketers also struggle with measuring the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. If you make your website the central hub for all marketing activities, then you can measure the return on investment from all of your campaigns. Make sure you’ve got a good visitor tracking tool installed (e.g. Opentracker), build special landing pages for each campaign, automate the delivery of your information products and capture contact information for use in on-going marketing communications. If you do these things you’ll be well on your way to ‘lights out lead generation’!

So is it stupid to think you can sell professional services and consulting over the web?

Well it’s doable for advisory products at a sub $1000 price point, but generally speaking you cannot close a complex deal online. But you can use the web to get your first meeting with a prospect, and if you use this as your main objective then you’ll soon be pushing leads into your sales pipeline with much less effort and cost.

Employment costs are probably the biggest overhead that any organization has to cover. Taking on specialist employees such as Quality Manager, Environmental Manager, Information Security Manager or Internal Auditor are not only hard to find but attract a premium in salary and total package. Something not always available to every business.

A number of companies are taking the view that it is better to use the services of a specialist consultancy instead. This is where a consultant is used for a specific task or period of time.

There are a number of advantages in adapting this type of arrangement; consultants are paid only for the work or time involved on a project, consultants are not ‘employed’ so do not have paid holidays, sickness, time off for domestic or social reasons. They also do not require pension or other such benefits. Also as they are not employed, no disciplinary processes and/or extended periods of notice are required to terminate a contract. There is also no risk of the dreaded Employment Tribunal.

The consultant is usually an ‘expert’ in the chosen field and will often have a greater depth of experience than the equivalent employee.

Used on a short term basis, a consultant represents good value for money as there are no overheads to take into consideration.

But be sure that the consultant you select is covered by the rules of a governing body such as the Institute of Business Consulting (IBC) and is covered by appropriate Business Indemnity Insurance.