Ryan Owen January 4, 2021 Consultants often live a life of feast and famine, especially when they’re starting out. Many consultants will tell you that they’re already worrying about how to get more business while they’re still completing jobs for current clients. So, how do you get more consulting clients while you’re working hard for the ones you already have?
What if you could use strategies like listings, paid advertising, and website design and optimization to help you get more consulting clients? When used correctly, these methods will attract new clients, take them through your marketing funnel, and effectively communicate your value proposition.
In this article, we’ll discuss how to:
- Make sure your website showcases your business
- Optimize your website for search engines and lead collection
- Create content-rich, up-to-date listings on sites
- Invest in your business with content marketing
- Use paid advertising in your marketing strategy
Let’s start with your website.
Make sure your website showcases your business
In consulting, like any business, your website has to showcase your company well. Your clients hire you as a consultant because you’re an expert at what you do. Your website has to convey that quickly and effectively to potential clients who don’t know you.
Potential clients searching for a solution won’t give you much time to make your case. The average user needs just 0.05 seconds to decide whether they like your website enough to stay, learn more, and ultimately do business with you.
A website’s success in showcasing your business comes down to its design. Potential clients don’t take the time to read and digest your copy in that fraction of a second when they’re forming their opinion of you; it’s your site’s appearance counts.
It’s no longer enough just to have a website. Today, consultants also need that site to attract and convert new clients while proving to them that you’re qualified and experienced in your field. That’s why it’s so critical to make sure your website has the right information, the right pages, and the right design.
Optimize your website for search engines and lead collection
Even the best website won’t get found without good search engine optimization (SEO). You can spend the money getting just the right content designed in just the right way. If you don’t also optimize your site for search engines (your non-human readers), it won’t rank well in SERPs, the search engine results pages that search engines like Google show your potential clients when they’re looking for your services.
Today’s SEO is more sophisticated than simply cramming keywords into your content. Search engines prioritize your content’s ability to answer the user’s question.
The top position on a SERP gets more than 28% of search engine traffic, according to Sistrix. Combined, the top three positions have an average click rate of over 55%.
Optimizing your SEO is important for consultants. Getting your content and your tech optimized for search engines will help you place above your competitors in SERPs and may earn you that call that brings new business.
Create content-rich, up-to-date listings
When you’re thinking about how to get more consulting clients, it’s important to remember the value of listing on sites like Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook. Each offers exposure to millions of potential clients.
With listings, you can engage with clients and potential clients, offer them a business profile that shows the unique advantages of your consulting service, and give them new ways to reach you. Many listing services also offer analytics and insights that show you how customers connect with you and how they valued your service.
Listings offer a great way for clients to get to know you, your business, and your experience so that they can feel confident and ready to reach out. Updated, content-rich listings can help you increase your ranking and land more clients.
Invest in your business with content marketing
Clients come to your website to learn more about you. They stay when you answer their questions. When you have an effective content marketing strategy, you produce content that attracts clients who will buy more of your services and be confident about investing their time and money into your business. They may also stay around longer and refer members of their network to you.
However, content marketing requires a bigger conversation. At a high level, your content marketing plan should answer the following questions:
- What are your goals?
- Who is your audience?
- What do you want to write about?
- How much content will you produce and how often?
- How will you promote your content?
Use paid advertising in your marketing strategy
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can help you get new consulting clients by displaying your ads to people who are already looking for what you offer. Paying for your ad to appear in your next client’s search on Google or in their Facebook feed can help you:
- Build an email list of new and qualified prospects
- Learn if the calls to action in your ads really work
- Target your ads to the people most likely to become clients
- Build awareness of your business and your brand
- Test out the effectiveness of ad visuals you’ve developed
Remember: A lead is not a customer
You’ve come here to find out how to get more consulting clients, not just leads. In truth, you can’t get clients without first finding leads. Strategies involving website design, SEO, listings, PPC advertising, and investing in your content marketing can help you do this.
Remember to nurture consulting leads through avenues like email marketing and social media, and always be ready to consider new approaches. To really succeed in marketing your consulting business, it’s essential that you be authentic to your own voice and deliver content that represents your business and what you offer in the best possible light.
For more information, check out our blog content designed specifically for consultants. Also, don’t forget to download and read our marketing guide for consultants, The Download.
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