Many smaller firms have built their client bases through word-of-mouth, but when referrals start to run dry, they struggle to see how and where to find new clients.
Fortunately, there is a wide range of free or cost-effective marketing tools at your disposal. But before you dive in and start using them, it’s important to take time to understand your goals in growing your firm and what your ideal client looks like. Importantly, the two must align.
Whatever your objective is in growing your business, translating it into a marketing goal will help guide your use of marketing tactics.
If you want to attract new clients, where will you market your services?
If you are adding new services, how will you let existing and potential clients know about them?
If you are looking to grow revenue by charging more for your services, how will you communicate your increased prices in terms of value to your existing clients?
In establishing your growth and marketing goals, it’s important to define the end result. Be specific when developing them and include quantitative metrics such as the number of new clients you wish to sign or a percentage increase in new revenue.
Finally, establish short and long-term objectives and benchmarks. These will help you to assess progress against your goals throughout the year.
Identifying your ideal client will help you understand their motivators and behaviours, helping you create a more compelling marketing message. Importantly, it will help you allocate your marketing budget and target your efforts in the channels where those clients can be found.
Often, the best place to start is with your existing client base. Which clients align with your overall business goals? Do they share common characteristics like industry type, company size, or services used?
Speak with these clients about how they first found you, what they appreciate about your services and their motivations. This can yield invaluable insights to help craft your marketing strategy.
As you build out your marketing plan and choose the channels you want to use, answer the following five questions:
Armed with an understanding of your marketing goals, your ideal customer, and your unique value proposition, you’re ready to begin fleshing out your marketing plan, and to start looking at the tools and tactics you’ll use to market your firm.
You can find more guidance on building your marketing plan in this post, which covers turning marketing goals into objectives, conducting market research, segmenting your target audience, and creating customer personas. You’ll also find links to further help getting started with email marketing, SEO, social media and advertising on Google.
We also go into more detail about establishing your growth goals, identifying your ideal clients, and building a marketing plan to attract more of them in our latest eBook, ‘Marketing to attract your ideal clients’.
It provides our top tips to build a website, optimise your presence on Google, and get the most out of marketing by email marketing and on social media. Download the eBook now.
For a deeper dive into tools and tactics to grow your business, visit our Growth Hub.
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