Hey, it's Samantha. This is an encore season of Profitable Joyful Consulting, including episodes curated especially for you. I chose this episode for two reasons. One, because it's the most popular video on my YouTube channel and the one that's gotten comments like insightful, valuable and extremely valuable. And two, fundamentals. No matter what level your business is, you'll hear something in the next 20 minutes that will help you get more clients. This is three marketing strategies for consultants. Welcome to Profitable, Joyful Consulting, where you'll discover how to multiply your revenues without exhaustion, working with perfect clients on transformational engagements. I'm your host, Samantha Hartley. If you're a woman consultant ready to increase your profits and enjoy your business more, you're in the right place today. Specifically, I wanted to talk about your three part client attraction system. Now, I define a system as a repeatable process. You do that gets predictable results. Rinse and repeat, right? So as often as you do it, it's going to generate results that are predictable that you can expect. And I find that most people don't have systems in their marketing that a lot of consultants have. Wing it or they market as needed and things like that. So those things make me nervous. And so I really want to impart to you the importance of putting in place a system. It can be super simple. It does not need to be complicated. So it's just three kinds of strategies that you can have in place, and I'm going to go through what those are today. The way that this originated was many years ago. I polled my audience and one of the questions I asked was, do you have at least one marketing technique that attracts clients to you? And way too many people answered no. No, they didn't have a single go to marketing technique that always worked for them. So it was a little too haphazard the way the results were. So if you needed, and I've asked this question before too, if you needed to get a client today or this week or this month, would you know what to do to generate a new client? That's the kind of thing that I want you to be able to have access to, is to generate clients when you want them, when you need them, and to feel like you have some control over your fate. I want you to have systems in place to where, you know, you know, sometimes the timing isn't always in our control, but, you know, when I do these things consistently, that's the, the repeatable process part. When I do this process consistently, I get predictable results, meaning I do generate clients. So I'm going to offer these three main categories of marketing strategies. And then with each one, just listen for where your gaps are or where you're like, oh, that's a thing that I could probably put in place and that would be fun and exciting. And then over the course of the season, I'm going to talk more about specific individual strategies. Of course, if you get in touch with me and let me know, I want to hear more about that one. I'll be sure to, to do a deeper dive on the ones that you, my listeners request. The three kinds of marketing strategies you need to have in your business, broadly speaking. The first one, obviously, is lead generation. We need to be generating leads, which means consistently attracting prospective clients to our business. This is the do you have a single marketing technique gets new clients for you? I like to have more than one here, so they can be different kinds of things. A clue as to what you need to include here is to look back at what brought your clients to you, because that shows you what's working in your marketing. So an assignment that I have all my clients do is to go through all of your clients, as many as you can remember. Honestly, you can go back to the beginning of your business. You can just do over the past year. How did each client find you? How did they come to be working with you? That shows you what's working in your marketing. A lot of times we'll have things that work, but we don't do them a lot. They're not part of our consistent process. So it's really critical that you look at what is working in your marketing and that you are incorporating those things, you know, that work into what you're doing ongoingly. Okay, I know that sounds wacky, but a crazy thing that happens with marketers a lot of the time and with consultants who I wouldn't necessarily say consider themselves to be marketers, consultants will sometimes get so busy with work that they stop their marketing or they learn about a new something that they can be doing in their marketing, and so they stop the things that had been working for them before. So keep an eye on winning strategies for you, winning techniques, things that when you do them, they tend to generate clients. And the way to do that, remember, is just to be tracking it every time. On all of my client tracking sheets, I always have how they found me. That's how I can keep up with what was the success for me. So certainly a strategy that you can have on there is going to be referrals or joint ventures, strategic alliances, something in that way, right so somebody refers clients to you. I've probably talked about this before because I harp on this all the time, but it's really important to me that if a lot of those clients who came to you, came to you through referrals, that you have a referral system and not something that you rely on, that is like kind of haphazard. The reason why is because I want you to be able to generate clients when you want them. And if you are at the mercy of others about when they want to refer to you, then you are not in control of your marketing. So having a referral system where you have certain activities that you do consistently to prompt those referral partners to send referrals to you or you are contacting them, so it's reminding them that they can refer to you. You need to have something in place with those referral partners. Joint ventures, same way I know plenty of people who run their business. They've got like, you know, 20 referral partners, or jvs, and all they do the whole year long is they do these little partnerships, and that gets them all of the clients that they need. So that's a system to me. It's still too much reliant on other people's businesses. I like to control my own fate in a lot of ways. I like to have ways that I, and in this case, you, we should be able to generate clients without relying on anyone else's business, even if there's 25 of them. So consider building your brand and being consistent enough in your marketing that you attract your own leads. So ways that you can do that, the classic ways are basically speaking. So getting in front of other audiences that have your potential clients in them, you can speak. This is way a lot of joint ventures are set up. As you go speak in front of someone else's audience, you can have audiences of your own. You can speak for associations, you can speak for free or for pay, whatever works for you. When you get in front of an audience and present information so that your perfect clients say, hey, I need that. This is the intention behind speaking, to raise your profile so that your perfect clients can see you, it's the intention of speaking if you want to generate clients with it. What was interesting about the pandemic is that many speakers business went virtual, and that opened up a lot of speaking opportunities for even more people. So speaking is a really good one. Networking. Networking is the tried and true. And years ago, I found out that networking had brought me almost all, well, almost all my clients, the jobs that I had had before I had been self employed and my husband, so networking is a really good way to get in front of, again, those potential perfect clients. We do this nowadays virtually online. I'm seeing that online networking, especially in the kind of networking event setting, is still really new and kind of crunchy. I don't know if you've been attending any networking events, but they to me tends to be as awkward as the worst offline networking event. I think they just have not managed yet to kind of replicate the vibe of an offline networking event. But I see that as an area that's going to grow. So keep in mind that that can be a technique for you. And if you're interested in networking, I can certainly do a deep dive on that topic in a future show. Networking in person is amazing and powerful, and I'm hoping that networking online will be soon too. But in any case, the networking that you can do on Facebook and LinkedIn, where you're just meeting other people, is super powerful. So that's not like a structured event, it's just connecting meaningfully with others for mutual benefit. That's my definition of networking. And you can definitely do that in all the social media that are out there right now, primarily LinkedIn for consultants. So it's really good to connect with people and then to get to know them, get to know the ones who you think you'd have mutual benefit. So networking, the next one is publishing. Publishing used to mean write a book, put have a newspaper column, put something in a magazine, things like that. And then the Internet democratized publishing so that I can have a blog. I don't need to have a newspaper column, but I can be visible with my blog. And then with social media, we began to do what everybody referred to back then was micro blogging, taking this big article, and then just instead of having, you know, having to have a long form article, I could just put out little pieces of content. The intention of publishing online is to put out nuggets that attract your perfect clients to you. It's important, I think, for every business, no matter if this is generated clients for you in the past or not, I think it's critical for you as a consultant to be publishing anyway, because it's how you build your brand and get known as a thought leader. It's how I know what realm you're an expert in and you know, generally the topics that I can come to you with questions about. So publishing doesn't have to look like writing it. Also, for people who don't want to do video, it can look like video, but it doesn't have to. So keep in mind that there are many ways that you can create a piece of value and put that in front of your audience so that they can consume it and become interested in you. So, yes, to writing. It can be, you can do animated videos with your expertise. You can do videos of you with expertise. If you feel more comfortable in more of a conversational format, you can do interviews or panel discussions or just conversations between you and someone, as long as they are valuable for your audience and are communicating your brand. So I definitely want you to consider, if you're not doing it right now, consider doing publishing or maybe expanding the publishing that you're doing. And the last lead generation. A strategy I want to talk about is direct outreach. Back in the day, you would just walk into somebody's office, knock on the door and walk in. We call that cold calling. Sometimes you'd call them on the phone for cold calling, but it was like, call on a person and walk in their office. I have had clients within the past few years who actually still did that. They would just walk in the offices. And if you have the right personality, you can pull off that strategy. And if you feel like, I'd rather die than do that, then there are wonderful ways to do direct outreach that can really work for you. When I talk to people who are not getting results on LinkedIn, very often it's because they're relying on publishing or they're relying on connecting and expecting someone else to reach out to them. When the opportunity is direct outreach, you contact that person, your new connection, or an existing connection, contact them and start a conversation. Direct outreach doesn't mean go sell something to them. It means reach out to someone who's a potential client and begin to give them value, begin to teach them why they need to know you. Are you going to get some rejections? Of course. Not everyone wants to be contacted. Not everyone wants to hear from you. But just because some people are doing this online in a way that looks gross and wouldn't work for you doesn't mean that you can't find a way that is in alignment with your values and the values of your audience. You can find a way to do direct outreach that will feel good to you. So if that's something that you want to hear more about, let me know, and we'll dedicate a future show to it. So that's lead generation. That's the major kind of marketing strategy that you need to have in your business. Of those different techniques that I talked about they fall under the category of lead gen. The second kind of thing that we need to have in our business is follow up. The reason we need to have follow up strategies are because sometimes someone hears about your services and says, not know, but not now. So for whatever reason, now is not the right time. They can't afford it. The problem isn't that bad. They have something else going on. Whatever is the reason why they're like, I don't want to do that right now. But like, don't go away. I don't want to forget about you. So then we want to follow up. And follow up in its worst version, looks like. How about now? How about now? How about now? We don't want to do that. My intention always with follow up is to provide value while following up. I always want, when I make contact with someone, for them to be glad that they got an email from me, be glad they got a snail mail from me. Phone. If I call them, I want to make sure that I've been able to kind of impart a little bit of wisdom or share a tip or introduce them to someone, give them a little piece of value so they're happy they took my call. Whatever is your way of doing this and make sure you do have a way. Just remember, we're going to need to have a way to follow up with people who don't buy immediately. And in Internet marketing and all that stuff, a lot of times this is done by automated email. I'm talking more about when you're selling high ticket services to a business owner from 500,000 to a billion. That's going to need a little bit of manual follow up. Having a system in place where basically I send this message and then I send this one and then I listen for this and then I do this. I like for you to have that kind of thing in mind. My good follow up story is that I worked with this wonderful business owner and she referred me to her father. And I thought, oh, well, that's interesting. Never had a daughter refer me to the father before. So I met with him and heard about his business. He had a really successful business. We had a great conversation and he was like, not now, but not now. And so I said, okay, perfect, great, no problem. And I sent like a thank you note after that meeting, and then from time to time I would just send him a note. He was not a big email guy, so I pretty much either left a message or sent like a handwritten card or something like that. One time I sent like a little newsletter, like a paper newsletter. And he responded a couple of weeks later, called me and wanted to actually start the work. A year and a half had passed since that first meeting. So a year and a half later, he's heard from me consistently, so he hadn't forgotten about me. It's time. And he wants to work on growing the business, and he calls me. Right. So that, to me, is what's possible. Now, I do know that plenty of my clients have had a similar thing happen where they check in with someone and that reactivates the work. What we don't want to happen is that we haven't kept in touch at all. That need is finally awakened. They're ready to do the work, and then we're not around, and they can't really remember who we were, and then they end up working with, like, whoever is at hand. Right. That's the thing you're trying to avoid. And it is easy when you have a process for doing this follow up. The last kind of strategy that you need to have is very similar to the second one, but it is keep in touch. It's all of the people who need to know about you for whatever reason, we just keep in touch with them. So you are keeping your brand top of mind. This is really great for referral partners, colleagues. It can be people who have, like, not really inquired completely about your services, but are kind of, you know, hovering around you in your orbit. The easiest way to keep in touch is with an email newsletter. So definitely try to get someone to sign up for your email newsletter if that's a way that you can do it. You can have a Facebook or a LinkedIn group so that they are kind of being nurtured by you. Snail mail is always a good way to do this. If you have that, you know, there's always those who are not gonna sign up for your email newsletter. They're not gonna be in your group. You know, you have a big client who you really definitely just have to keep in touch with or potential client. And again, this is like before. They've inquired specifically about your services, but, you know, you wanna stay on their radar screen phone and in person are great ways to keep in touch. What about something like a podcast? The thing about a podcast is that it's. It's very general. It's a way to nurture a general audience, but not that specific person. So intention wise, if you really want Debbie in the, you know, who's the VP at the company you want to work with, and you have been introduced, but she hasn't really had a, you haven't really had like a sales meeting or anything like that. She's just like, she knows about you and she's kind of keeping tabs on you and you want to stay on her radar screen. That's what keep in touch is doing. So a podcast is a little too general. You could send her a specific podcast, but would you send her every single weekly podcast? That'd be kind of annoying. So you want to find ways to just like, you know, just keep in touch. Sometimes a card, hey, maybe a book at Christmas. Hey, we're thinking of you for this kind of thing. So that is keep in touch. Now, what's wonderful about this one is this one I've also seen with my clients who do email marketing. They feel like I do email marketing, but it never turns into anything. And I send a lot of emails and then nothing really happens. Well, how many times do you need to generate, like a 50k client through this? So I've had clients who say, we just got a response from somebody to that email. We said, and we either they reactivated a past client that they were keeping in touch with or someone who's kind of been in their orbit, they got a response to their email newsletter, and that person got in touch with them, and that has turned into work. I've also seen this happen with, with LinkedIn, where, you know, those silly, like, birthday and work anniversaries and things like that. I know someone who sent one of those over and it activated that person who was like, hey, actually, I need to get in touch with you. So a lot of times serendipity can happen. When we are prompting serendipity, you know, when you're on the ball with a process and a system that is like, it allows a place for serendipity to come and do its work. So it's important for you to have at least one strategy which generates clients. I prefer that strategy to be in your control. So it's something that you can do, not relying on referral partners. If you're going to rely on referral partners or jvs, please have systems and processes behind those. And then remember that the thing that you're doing, it's more important to think about the intention behind why you're doing it rather than the specific thing that you're doing. So if I'm in LinkedIn for the purposes of getting clients, if I'm putting out articles and posts all the time, that's a publishing strategy. If I never publish a thing and I'm contacting people and connecting with them, then that's a networking strategy. And if I never publish anything but I'm contacting people through the inbox, that's a direct outreach strategy. It may seem like kind of an academic distinction, but actually you'll see that the combination of those three things is actually what can make LinkedIn work for you. And when I see people are super successful at LinkedIn, that's what they're doing. They're doing that little trifecta. So think about when you're doing something, what's my intention for this? And can I use this same technique in order to achieve other of my intentions? So I hope that's clear to you. I would love to hear from you about what you'd like to hear more about which of these strategies you want me to unpack for you, perhaps myself or with some guests. What marketing strategies are appealing to you, and which of the ones have you never been able to make work for you? That would be super fun. If you could get back to me about that. Leave a comment on any of this social places where you see this podcast and I so appreciate you listening. If you have a moment, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Podcasts grow by other people reading those reviews and knowing that this is content that they need to listen to. So if you're enjoying the content, I would love it if you would leave a review right there in your podcast app. So with that, I am wishing you a very successful new year of marketing and a profitable and joyful consulting business. Thanks for listening. As a thank you for being part of my community, I'm sharing free, exclusive resources to help expand your consulting business. Head to samanthahartley.com super to access bonus content and tools from the show. For a complete transcript of this episode and all profitable, joyful consulting episodes, visit samanthahartley.com.