In today’s internet age, a website is a crucial tool for consultants to win new business and retain clients, but how capable is your website and does it follow the best, or the worst of practices? Following up on the first article in this series “How Important is Online Marketing for Professional Services?”, this article digs deeper into why content rich websites make the difference between winning and losing online. It highlights why ‘Content is King’ and it shows you where to start in your content building campaign. In the next article in the series I will discuss the methods for getting more traffic to your website and more leads for your business. First, you need the right tools for the job, this is what this article is about, getting the right kind of website and building the content that prospects and clients need.
Why interactive content portals work
There are two extremes in the world of professional services websites, static online brochures that do not win business online and interactive content portals that do. Why is this?
Brochure websites repel visitors, content portals attract it.
Portal websites are helpful to prospects and clients, brochure websites are not.
Brochure websites do not attract much traffic because the search engines cannot find them, they do not contain enough keywords and phrases used by their searching public. Other site owners do not want to link to them and send their traffic on, and once someone has been there once, there is no point in returning. No traffic means that new contacts cannot be acquired, leads cannot be generated and prospects are unable to perform any due diligence under their own steam. They provide very little value to search engines and prospects, and no value at all to existing clients.
Interactive, content rich, portal websites do the reverse. In addition they are helpful to people, they engage with people at the different points in their decision cycle. At one end they recognise that the internet is an important research tool for people with knowledge needs, at the other they provide prospects with many of the answers they need to select the firm as a candidate. Future clients keep coming back, because they are being fed with valuable information and knowledge. Existing clients keep coming back because they have their own private area with information only for them.
Brochure websites say: “Only visit us to view our professional services, here is what we sell, and here is how to contact us”
Portal websites say “You can see for yourself that we are experts in our field and you will find many resources that will help you to be better informed. Tell us what you need and we will make sure you are kept up to date. If ever you feel you may need our services, then there is plenty of information here that will help you to decide on choosing us rather than any of our competitors. Feel free to share our knowledge with your friends and please do contact us to discuss your requirements”
Before you can move to the content building stage you need to have a website capable of delivering this message, otherwise it is going to be difficult to create the content you need and hard to win business online. Throw away your online brochure, portal website services are available and affordable, even for single person consultancy practices. More information is available at the bottom of the article.
Content Building
Go for this in three stages. The first supports the decision making process for prospects and referrals, it is aimed at converting visitors into leads right now. The second attracts more visitors, aimed at converting them into contacts for business later. The third introduces special project areas for existing clients, delivering retention, growth and greater bid success.
Stage one. Start by providing the categories of information that exhibits why you are the firm with the expertise a prospect is looking for:
Industry experience
Project experience
Consultant experience
Most prospective clients will be looking for non-superficial information that helps them in their selection process and compels them to take the next step. “Will this firm understand our business, have they dealt with a matter like ours before, what is their track record, do they look like they have the people expertise to handle our requirements? If they find this information at your site, but not at your competitor’s, who will they contact first?
My recommended start point is to create really deep information for each consultant on separate web pages covering the three content categories, then break the information out and link to it through the rest of the site. If you are a small firm, use your network of associates, this will be good for them and help you to build inbound links from other websites, which will improve your search engine ranking. By sharing this out across each consultant, or associate, quality content can be built quickly.
Stage two. Introduce knowledge sharing features to generate deeper content, attract more visitors and collect contacts:
White papers and articles
Industry news
Regular newsletters
Having demonstrated your expertise, now is the time to validate it by showing that you know what you are talking about. By producing information of value to your audience, you will be able to attract ongoing traffic to your website.
The most important thing to do now is to introduce online registration to a newsletter. This will be your vehicle for converting visitors into contacts, to maintain constant contact with them and to gather their interests. It will also be a vital method of community building and lead generating campaigns later.
All of these content categories are common sense, but they have been seen to work for people searching for legal expertise, which translates very well into the general world of professional services. There is a USA law firm called Faegre and Benson renowned as an exemplar portal website. This is a good case example.
Stage three. Create special password protected project areas for new and existing clients. Upload project documentation, progress charts, data, presentations and other information to help improve their productivity through information access 24 hours a day.
Customise these areas with the profiles and details of the consultants or associates dedicated to them or their project. Give them fast track access and contact information for the people they need to speak to. If it is important to them, provide regular billing information. Introduce additional information features that demonstrate you have a finger on the pulse of what is important to them as business.
By doing these things you will be able to better serve your clients, make communications more efficient, introduce up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, and use this service as a differentiator in other client bids.
Summary
Content is King. Without it, there is little chance of exploiting the internet and getting access to the people who use it as a channel to satisfy their information and communication needs. In today’s internet world, simple brochure websites will not provide the facilities necessary to reach a wide audience of prospective clients on the web, nor will they enable professional services firms to attract and retain new clients. Portal websites provide the capabilities to win business and better serve clients, they are a better investment for any professional services organisation and they can be within the price reach of single consultant businesses.
Tony Rice would like to offer Top Consultant members the opportunity to capitalise on the kind of portal website technology discussed in this article. Members that complete this short two minute survey and apply for the offer, will be contacted by Tony to discuss individual requirements. On a first come, first served basis, five members will save £1000 and be able to start building their consultancy portal.
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For further information, please contact the author, Tony Rice on +44 (0)7802 162443, or tony.rice@ecustomergeneration.co.uk.
Tony Rice is Director of eCustomer Generation Ltd, an internet advice and solutions business aimed at SME’s. Formerly he was founder and CEO of InsightExec, an online advisory service for CRM practitioners. Prior to that he has led a number of internet projects and held senior sales and marketing positions in IBM and BT.
