Marketing Strategy for Professional Services
The marketplace for professional services firms is dynamic. Relentless changes in technology, competition and corporate governance, as well as uncertainty in the economic and political environments, continually create new business opportunities and the demand for new expertise.
However, understanding which opportunities are the greatest and most appropriate to pursue can be difficult. The Bloom Group helps firms identify new business opportunities, determine which one(s) to target, and understand the impact of the choice on marketing, sales and capability development (see figure below).
Through a combination of external research, interviews with internal staff, and brainstorming workshops, we help clients answer such questions as:
Which industries and types of companies represent the best markets for your services?
Who is the client executive best suited for beginning a dialogue with your firm?
What do companies currently know about your firm?
How do companies view your firm compared with competitors?
Are the talents of your professional staff sufficient to penetrate the desired markets with the desired services?
What high-level messages would target executives respond best to?
What are the best marketing vehicles for reaching these executives?
How do you integrate your sales, marketing, and delivery operations to deliver maximum client value?
Read more about we helped a finance-consulting firm stake out and communicate a differentiated positioning in a crowded market.
There's little benefit to a great idea that remains secret. Therefore, intellectual capital must be marketed effectively and aggressively. The first step in the process is designing an integrated set of educationally oriented marketing and sales activities that first capture the attention of target clients on an issue and then lead them through more interactive and personalized discussions toward the purchase of a client’s services.
As part of this effort, The Bloom Group identifies the appropriate media targets (publications and journalists) for story and byline articles, as well as the relevant conferences and industry events at which the client’s experts should speak. We also produce a list of story and article ideas to pitch to the media, identify the appropriate topics for industry presentations, devise a direct marketing plan (include print- and Web-based) for the client’s intellectual capital, and create a self-sponsored seminar or roundtable program.