The following is a letter that I have sent recently to a client.
All the names have been changed, but the points and processes are valid for most small to medium sized businesses; especially those that sell services that require a lengthy sales cycle.
Dear Client,
I have really enjoyed working with your product development manager and learning about your company. As we talked about, I wanted to share with you a more complete view of your company and what I would do if I was your marketing manager.
Right now, your company is looking at marketing as an event as opposed to a process. And it needs to be a process that includes all aspects of the company. From when you reach a prospect the very first time until that client recommends you to his best friend, marketing should be involved in each step of the way.
Right now, you have had your product development manager focused on the front end of that process – lead generation. But his understanding of it, as it has been practiced by your company has been to continually find new clients to sell to. And this is a very expensive way to generate leads for a service that has a long sales cycle.
You have a relatively complete list of all the businesses in your major markets that fit your ideal client profile. Yes, there are a few new ones out there, but most are known to you. What you don’t have is accurate contact and role information. And that is where I would be focusing your marketing team on. Get to know the right people, roles and emails, and get permission to market to them through emails. You get that permission by having something of value to offer them – educational seminars/webinars on tax issues; subscriptions to your newsletter, Facebook competitions. You are working on some of these, but we can make them more value oriented and less service-focused.
Then, we market to names we know with offers that talk to the problems they have every day and want to solve. The key to doing this successfully is to do it consistently. Only 20%-25% of the people you email will ever open the email, so we need to write subject lines and headlines for the 75%-80% that don’t open it. And we need to reach them on a monthly basis – not with the same type of offer every month – but with varied offers: Newsletters, seminars, surveys, and more.
Over time, these attempts will develop prospects that will convert to ones that want to actively engage in the buying process. They will see you as source of valuable expertise and reach out when they have a problem that you have said you know how to solve. As experienced auditors, tax advisors and accountants you have so many things to offer to prospective clients in Cyprus and abroad. Trying all these different methods of marketing your services builds trust and credibility that is so important for our profession.
In order to be able to do this kind of marketing, your marketing staff needs to understand the problems you solve and the advantages your clients get from using your services. This means I would have them present when you meet up with clients, interviewing your managers and partners, and I would also have them going on visits with prospective clients so they see what the “real world” is like.
Once a prospect decides to proceed with the audit engagement, the marketing process should continue in a new way, alongside the sales process. Your manager in charge (or partner) needs to be setting the expectation that they will be asking for, and expecting, referrals to other companies that can use your services (since they are going to be so happy), and they should be setting the expectation that any customer, at any time, can be used as a reference. This is why you are going to make sure they are satisfied. Knowing the strict framework that our profession has to follow regarding advertising standards and methods, this is a very decent and discreet way of getting new leads without having to go out and seek clients using more expensive and time consuming methods.
Your marketing team should stay engaged, because at some point in the buying process, if the prospect decides they are not ready to buy yet (and by yet, I mean within a six month time-frame), that prospect should go back to marketing for ongoing support marketing and contact. You don’t want expensive sales people making calls that basically say “are you ready to engage an auditor yet?” when there are less expensive alternatives.
Once a prospect decides to become a client, there should be a process of welcoming them like a new customer kit of different goodies that welcomes them to your esteemed company. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it should have a welcome letter, contact information and a summary of the goals you are going to help them accomplish. Depending on the size of the client, you could even do something like put the overall project plan on a tablet pc and deliver it to them as part of the package.
And through the sales process and into the customer starting package, your team should be reinforcing the idea that you will ask them for referrals. At the beginning, it is a great idea to ask them to start thinking about who they can refer you to.
Once the project has hit completion, you should have a results review scheduled with them for six months later. That is a great time to restate their goals for them and measure how you are helping them to achieve them. And when you are doing a great job (as I know you do) then it is also a great time to get quotes to use on your web site and in your marketing materials. Due to the confidentiality ethical rule of professional conduct, we need to be careful when asking clients for testimonials especially overseas clients who came to the island to set up a company with nominee shareholders! You can, however ask local clients to give you testimonials as they will be more willing to do so.
With your current clients, I would have marketing taking an active role. We want to utilize those relationships for referrals, testimonials and additional sales. Your clients need to have regular contact in the form of both a client oriented newsletter – about their specific service, and about you – and some form of an in-person or web based monthly user group that helps to build a community. Those user groups are great opportunities to introduce additional services and get referrals.
Underlying all of this are three additional tactics – a broader content strategy, a web marketing strategy and an alliance referral strategy. The content strategy is how you talk about yourself on your website. Both formally in the “standard” content and informally through a blog and other social media tools. This is where being close to your clients and interviewing them and surveying them becomes so helpful because you want as much of that content as possible to be in the client’s vocabulary.
The web marketing strategy utilizes your content for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes – writing about what people are searching for and using PPC (pay per click) advertising that also attracts the same type of searching.
The alliance strategy is where your sales team and management contribute the most to marketing. The key is finding solid referral type partners where you both serve the same ideal customer segment with complementary services. If your team is spending their time identifying, nurturing and engaging those relationships, they will be developing a steady stream of self-generated leads that keep them busy long term. An example of such alliance strategy is a co-operation with lawyers that are the first source of reference in setting up companies in Cyprus. You need lawyers and they need accountants.
Finally, this needs to be supported by systems used by both sales and marketing – a well defined CRM (customer relationship management) system and process for rating prospect and a good email marketing and tracking system that tracks not only open rates, but ultimately, can tie together the history of what prospects have received, what they responded to and how they responded.
The one area I really would not spend time on right now is your branding. You already have a good name and a good graphical layout. There are some adjustments we can make to get more marketing results from some things, but overall, that is OK for the moment.
The final thing you may need to consider is to employ a Social Media Strategist that will help you deploy and use all available social media tools to create and sustain your brand in the industry. All large companies have a person responsible to run their social media campaigns and if you consider it impossible to hire somebody to work on this on a full time basis then consider outsourcing such a duty to a third party. These people know exactly what needs to be done to give you maximum exposure and help you increase your perceived value in your industry.
I hope you have found this helpful. It is a lot of work, and the first time you do many of these things, it will take time to get it right. And remember, you don’t have to do it all at once either.
Have an outstanding day!
Demetris