You are your client list….this is a phrase I picked up from Ron Baker when we ran the Value Pricing series of Webinars back in 2008.
This phrase has stayed with me and I use it when consulting with professional service firms. My suggestion is that if a firm wants more and better clients then they should be prepared to do more and be better. So, in every case, marketing starts with personal development and I call this Inner Game.
99% of firm's miss it so I am delighted to say that Michael Breen has agreed to host a Masterclass on this topic. Michael is one of the top Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) trainers in the world, and is well known for his work with Paul McKenna and Dr Richard Bandler the co-developer of NLP.
The 90-minute telephone conference call starts at 10am on Wednesday 15th December and you can register below.
Value pricing is a change of business model. If you are thinking, billing or managing your practice on time your business model is 100 years old and it is just a matter of time before it doesn't work any more.
Just like we moved into the Industrial Revolution I believe we are moving into the Intellectual Revolution where clients value knowledge and the experience of its transfer.
Do you really value the thousands of hours I have invested learning how to market or the fact that I can explain how you can easily win perfect clients without a huge marketing investment while making you smile and laugh along the way?
We have just carried out some research on Accountants in Brighton.
We found 73 firms and 68% had a Website. Each Website was graded and we scored two categories "getting found" and "conversion". We decided to score the Website out of 1,000 and weighted the score heavily in favour of "getting found" on the basis that it doesn't matter what the site looks like if no one sees it.
The "getting found" score was driven by the firm's use of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) results. At the time of our review we only found 11 firms (15%) were using Google PPC.
Firms with good natural results do not seem to be active with their SEO. This means that if a firm was determined to win business, this could be achieved. This maybe of interest to a new start-up or an ambitious firm that values new business higher than established firms.
Our score for "conversion" was base on:
• Corporate Identity
• Website design
• Calls to action
• Content review
• Use of landing pages
• Testimonials
The highest "conversion" score was 60%, the average was just 27%. There is clearly a lot firms can do to improve conversions.
We also have a quick look at Social Media and produced a LinkedIn grade by looking at the practice owner's LinkedIn profile or picking one of the partners. This was scored out of 100 taking account of things like the individuals profile, the number of connections and testimonials. The average score was 28 so again, there is a lot more firms can do.
Interestingly, our review also found that 52% of the firms with Websites promoted bookkeeping and these maybe interested in our new report The Reluctant Bookkeeper.
All firms interested in marketing who would like to see the results of our research can email me at bob@portfoliomarketing.co.uk. And, firms interested in improving their score can register for the free video Websites that Sell.
This audio post was triggered by a question on a forum.
Here is a one minute audio post about creating your magnetic message.