How to Grow Your Client Base - For Professional Services Firms

How do Professional Services firms expand their client base and attract new clients?

And how do they find the 10% of companies that are ready to buy?

Buyers Pyramid

The buyers pyramid shows us that only a mere 10% of potential customers are ready to buy at any one point in time.

With such a small percentage of the total addressable market open to purchase at any given point, it's really important to maximise opportunities to grow your professional services firm by reaching those prospects that are ready to make a buying decision. 

Answer: By honing in on their expertise and remaining within their chosen speciality. Find your niche and reap the rewards!

Why is finding your niche essential for Professional Services firms?

Businesses specialising in niche markets have the opportunity to leverage the following benefits:

Reduced Client Acquisition Costs (80/20 rule)

When aiming to reach a broad market, unaffordable budgets are required for success. However, focusing on a niche segment allows you to allocate resources to potential customers with a higher likelihood of conversion. 

80% of new clients can come from spending 20% in a niche sector.

This principle holds true regardless of the methods employed, whether it involves creating targeted segments through paid advertising campaigns or implementing SEO campaigns centred around specific keywords.

Lower Competition

Niche markets are frequently less competitive, making it easier for new businesses to penetrate the market and potentially become market leaders faster.

How to consistently grow your Professional Services business

Simplified 3 Step Process:

1. Select a niche and keep it simple

Don't try to solve every problem. Select just one business issue you solve (such as Legislation Compliance) and one reason you’re differentiated against your competition (such as experience, credentials, accuracy, geography, speed, rates).

How to Decide Which Niche Market to Target

Identifying niche markets is the first step. However, not all niches you find will be worth pursuing as a target market. Here’s how to choose which niche market is right for your business:

Consider the size of the total addressable market (TAM) and market consolidation: the division of market share among market players, including yourself. Most Professional Services firms hold less than 3% market share, which means that even in your core market, there is still plenty of room for expansion.

Client needs are the challenges or pain points they seek to address. These can stem from frustrations or changing market conditions, prompting them to seek out products or services that provide solutions.

Clients' requirements can be classified into one of three categories:

• Functional needs: Clients seek solutions that help them accomplish specific tasks or functions effectively.

• Social needs: are desires that focus on how a product or service is perceived. Although these desires may not be clients' top priorities, they can still influence their ultimate decisions.

• Emotional needs: These needs focus on the emotions evoked when using a product or service.

Compiling a list of competitors likely to be your main rivals in the niche market is a good starting point. It's helpful to look at the four P's of marketing for each competitor.

• Product: How their product meets clients’ needs

• Price: How much their product or service costs

• Place: How do their clients find their product

• Promotion: How they advertise to their clients

1.4 Define your niche and validate your idea 

During your market research, you should have an idea of the profitability of your niche as you gather information. Some niches tend to perform better than others because they are evergreen, which means that there is always demand in those markets (much favoured by Private Equity investment). You can conduct free market research using Google Trends to find trending topics and highly searched keywords. It is crucial to determine whether the niche you have chosen has a need and whether people are willing to pay for what you have to offer.

One more thing you'll want to do before deciding on your niche is to validate your idea by running a test. Consider creating a pilot outreach using landing pages and starting to collect leads just to see how well the promotion goes and whether the niche that you choose has any demand. One quick way to do that is to run a few paid ads to direct users to your landing page and measure the performance of your ads.

ACTION REQUIRED: Select your niche

Research your market, analyse your competition, determine profitability and select your niche. Laser focus on your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) and understanding how your target clients research solutions (called the buyer's journey) and what problems they are struggling with.  Often the niche is simply growing your market share, although defining the potential size is helpful.

2. Create Helpful Content

Once you have identified your niche and target market, it is crucial to communicate your differentiated offerings effectively to attract new clients. The messages conveying this differentiation are called content. By delivering a mix of informative and valuable content during the early research stages for solutions (called awareness and consideration), you can engage potential buyers ready to make a purchase decision.

Leveraging digital strategies is essential for professional services companies to reach a wider audience and attract new clients. By utilising various online platforms and channels, such as social media, search engine optimisation (SEO), and content creation and distribution, companies can effectively promote their services and establish a robust online presence. This allows you to connect with potential clients who are actively searching for the services you offer.

One effective strategy is to create compelling and informative content that showcases the company's expertise. This can be in the form of blog posts, articles, or whitepapers that provide valuable insights and solutions to common challenges clients face in your niche. By positioning yourself as a thought leader, your professional services company can build credibility and attract potential clients seeking expert advice.

With your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyers Journey in mind, start with three stories or narratives that address solving the business issue while emphasising the importance of your differentiation. Transform these stories into bite-sized segments and share them concurrently across multiple channels (listed below). 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a valuable platform for professional services firms to raise brand awareness and attract new clients. By optimising your company profile and regularly sharing valuable messages, you establish yourself as an industry expert and attract potential clients.

One effective strategy is to publish thought leadership content on LinkedIn Articles. This can include long-form articles, blog posts, or industry insights that provide valuable insights and showcase your company's expertise. By consistently publishing high-quality content, companies can build credibility and attract potential clients seeking expert advice.

While publishing messages, actively engaging with the LinkedIn community with targeted automated campaigns can help professional services companies expand their reach and cover their addressable market. This can involve connection campaigns to 2nd and 3rd-degree connections, participating in relevant industry groups, sharing valuable insights and comments on other posts, and connecting with potential clients and industry influencers.

LinkedIn also offers advertising options that allow companies to run targeted campaigns to reach their ideal clients. Using LinkedIn's advanced targeting options, companies can ensure that their ads are shown to the right audience, increasing the chances of attracting potential clients.

Leveraging LinkedIn as a platform to raise brand awareness and run sales campaigns is a valuable strategy for professional services companies to attract new clients. Not only can you use LinkedIn to increase awareness and raise your firm's visibility with your target clients, but you also have the option to send targeted messages to your LinkedIn connections at scale.  LinkedIn automation helps you build your first-level connections faster, and you can also use the messaging tool within LinkedIn to highlight your services to potential clients, all while staying within the limits and guidelines set by LinkedIn.

Expandi is the perfect tool for professional services firms that want to grow their business using LinkedIn. Read more about using LinkedIn and LinkedIn automation tools to grow your business here.

Google PPC Ads

Running high-performing Google PPC ads is an effective way for professional services companies to attract new clients. PPC ads allow companies to display their ads at the top of search engine results pages, ensuring visibility to potential clients who are actively searching for the services they offer.

To create successful PPC ads, professional services companies should conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant keywords that have high search volume and low competition. By targeting these keywords in their ad campaigns, companies can increase their chances of reaching the right audience.

Creating compelling ad copy highlighting the company's differentiation is crucial for attracting potential clients. The ad copy should communicate the differentiation and benefits of the firm's services and encourage users to click on the ad for more information.

In addition to ad copy, optimising landing pages is essential for maximising conversions. Landing pages are web pages that can only be accessed from the ad. They should be relevant to the ad copy and provide a clear call to action that encourages users to take the desired action, such as filling out a contact form, registering for a webinar, or requesting a consultation.

Regularly managing, monitoring, and optimising PPC ad campaigns is essential for maximising their effectiveness. By analysing key metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost-per-click, companies can make data-driven decisions to improve their campaigns' performance.

Google PPC ads are a powerful tool for professional services companies to attract new clients. By targeting relevant keywords and creating compelling ad copy and landing pages, companies can increase their visibility and convert clicks into actual clients.

Email Campaigns

Email campaigns can be a powerful tool for professional services companies to attract new clients. By building an email list of potential clients and sending targeted and personalised emails, companies can effectively nurture leads and convert them into clients.

When running email campaigns, it's important to create compelling and engaging content that resonates with the recipients. This can include informative newsletters, case studies, success stories, and exclusive offers or discounts/promotions. By providing value and addressing the recipients' needs, companies can increase the chances of converting them into clients.

Segmenting the email list based on niche demographics, interests, or previous interactions can also improve the effectiveness of email campaigns. By sending relevant and personalised content to different segments, companies can deliver a tailored experience that resonates with the recipients.

Additionally, tracking and analysing the performance of email campaigns can provide valuable insights for optimisation. By monitoring open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, companies can identify areas for improvement and refine their email marketing strategy.

Blog posts

Maintaining an informative and engaging blog is an excellent way for professional services companies to attract new clients. By regularly publishing relevant and valuable content, companies can demonstrate their expertise and establish themselves as industry leaders. Blog posts can cover various topics, such as industry trends, case studies, best practices and practical tips that provide value to your target audience.

When creating blog posts it's essential to consider the needs and interests of the target niche audience. By addressing common challenges and providing helpful solutions, companies can position themselves as trusted advisors and attract potential clients seeking expert guidance.

Additionally, optimising blog posts for search engines can increase their visibility and reach. By conducting keyword research and incorporating relevant keywords into the content, you can improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results. This can lead to increased organic traffic and exposure to potential clients.

Overall, maintaining a high-quality blog that offers valuable insights and solutions is an effective way for professional services firms to attract new clients and establish credibility in the industry.

ACTION REQUIRED: Message Content Creation

Armed with your ICP, Buyer Personas and a clear view of your Buyer's Journey, create a minimum of three stories/narratives that demonstrate how your services solve your client's pain points highlighting the significance of your unique service. Break down these stories into bite-sized segments and share them across various channels simultaneously.

3. Capture contact details and nurture leads

By now, you will know that educating your audience is a definitive way to gain more leads and conversions. So, in addition to a content strategy, you need to have a lead nurturing strategy in place.

Imagine a visitor comes across one of your firm's social posts. They explore your website, read some helpful blogs and land on a content-gated landing page. They even complete the form on the page and share their contact information with you.  However, it's disappointing when they go silent and don't convert into clients.

But was all the effort put into turning them into a lead for nothing? Of course not. We know from the Buyers Pyramid that only a mere 10% of your total addressable market is ready to buy at any point in time, so nurturing your leads is vital to maximising the number of leads that convert to clients.

ACTION REQUIRED: Create Nurture Email Campaigns

Set Up a B2B Campaign Using Email Nurturing Workflows. Ensure that your B2B nurturing email campaign effectively engages with your target audience at every stage of the buyer's journey and that your business development subject matter experts leverage workflows to automate the nurturing so as not to waste their billable capacity. Having the right processes and tools in place to enable this is important, and selecting what will work well for your business can be a time-consuming task.

Check out this free HubSpot lesson: building a lead nurture campaign with workflows

And here's a little bonus tip, 'cos we're nice like that... 

Acquiring the right clients

Assessing the type of clients you want to attract and win should also give you a clear view of those who are not a good fit for your firm.  Parting ways with those who are not a good fit can help optimise your team's capacity to expand your business and attract and secure more clients, ultimately maximising your growth potential.

The Harvard Business Review framework below helps gain insight into the dynamic relationship between your practice's supply side and demand side.

On the supply side, you assess the practice's position on the spectrum and consider the implications for skill and capability development. On the demand side, you create a client portfolio profile to determine which accounts to focus on and how to tailor services to meet the needs of different clients.

By utilising this framework, you can establish a distinct profile among clients and craft a cohesive business strategy.

Establishing a growth strategy is a proven way of reducing the risk of your business growth slowing down.  Ultimately, an effective strategy involves understanding your core business and making informed decisions to support your growth and your operations.

A growth strategy should be tailored to meet your specific business needs and aligned with clear financial objectives. Suppose you have previously experimented with various promotional or marketing tactics without well-defined strategic goals and the right team to implement them. In that case, the desired level of success may not have been achieved.

Summary

Finding ways to expand is essential for every professional services firm. Typically, firms start with a few established relationships and referral sources, which they eventually outgrow. However, without a structured growth plan, most firms experience sporadic growth, if any at all.

Firms that strategically plan for growth understand where to find new opportunities. This is why a growth strategy with a clear plan for acquiring new clients is far more likely to be successful than the traditional ad-hoc approach of relying on networking and referrals.

These simple tips utilise a powerful combination of LinkedIn, Google Ads, Email Campaigns, and blog SEO strategies (to improve your online visibility), along with Marketing Automation tools and of course, AI are the essential elements for growing your professional services firm.

So, where should you begin and what should your primary focus areas be?

Start by refining your niche, then jump into creating and sharing high-quality content. And be sure to establish a solid nurture program to keep potential clients engaged and intrigued by educational content and your wonderful success stories.

Get the experts in...

If you need help setting up for success, get in touch we are happy to talk about anything and everything related to lead generation and client acquisition! 

We offer Google Ads, LinkedIn and Email Campaigns as a "done for you" service. The combination of these three key lead-generation strategies gives you the best possible opportunities to grow your business consistently. What are you waiting for? 

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