Is the Marketing Plan For Your Consulting Business Missing This Vital Element?
If you want to start a consulting business, you are certainly in the right direction as the market for consulting services continues to grow every single year. But, how many consultants are adequately taping into this huge market through proper marketing? Not many! In fact, there is one vital marketing element that most consultants neglect to their detriment. That element revolves around ensuring that your business has a well crafted website that continuously brings you business.
But, why a website?
According to a study conducted by analysts at RainToday.com, a cool 60 percent of consulting clients are influenced by your website in the process of deciding whether to contact you or not. This definitely emphasizes the need for a website that not only speaks to your target market, but also offers clear value that uniquely differentiates it from any other competitor. A “me too” web presence” will not cut the grade.
The one key factor that will clearly differentiate your consulting business website from the rest of the noise is when you provide unique and high value content to your target market. High value content gives you instant credibility in the eyes of your target market and gives your prospective clients a clear idea of what to expect should they engage your consulting services.
So, think in terms of offering free reports, eBooks, videos etc. You may decide to get your prospects to opt in, but this will slow down the pace at which your information reaches your target market. Your free information offer must not only provide content, it must also compel your prospects to engage your consulting services.
Secondly, analysts at RainToday.com also found that around 80 percent of decision makers will first pay your site a visit before deciding to buy. What this means is that your website must be easily found online if you are to make anything out of it. It is clearly pointless to provide high value content that no one will ever find.
So, what are the elements of a great content site that can be found online?
To begin with, over 80 percent of visitors will find your website via the search engines. Your website must therefore be designed in such a way that it will definitely be found at all the major search engines. This means that you ought to pay attention to keyword research, on-page optimization as well as off-page optimization. What often happens is that consultants give this job to experts and this is not only costly right from the onset, it also ensures that you will pay every time you want to make changes to your website.
You can very easily do it on your own with the right software tools and rank very well in the search engines. So, get to work and create your very own high value and high ranking website for your consulting business.