As a consultant, your expertise and knowledge are your most valuable assets. However, to market your small business and attract a steady stream of new clients, you need to know how to market a consulting business.

Today, relying solely on referrals is no longer enough. While referrals can be a valuable source of business, the most successful consultants are those who take a proactive approach to marketing. A recent survey found that consultants in the $150K–$1M+ earnings bracket attribute only 20–40% of their business to referrals, indicating that they are actively leveraging other marketing channels to attract clients and grow their businesses.

To market your consulting business effectively, you need to develop a comprehensive strategy that showcases your expertise, builds your brand, and reaches your target audience through multiple channels. This may include tactics such as:

• Developing a professional website that highlights your services, experience, and unique value proposition
• Creating valuable content (blog posts, articles, whitepapers, etc.) that demonstrates your thought leadership and expertise
• Leveraging social media to engage with your target audience, share insights, and build relationships
• Implementing SEO strategies for businesses to improve your online visibility and attract organic traffic
• Attending networking events and conferences to build relationships and generate referrals
• Offering free resources or consultations to provide value and attract potential clients
• Partnering with complementary businesses or experts to expand your reach and offer comprehensive solutions
• Utilising email marketing to nurture leads and stay top-of-mind with your target audience
• Seeking out speaking engagements or media opportunities to establish your authority and reach new audiences

By implementing a diverse range of marketing strategies, you can build a strong brand, attract more qualified leads, and ultimately grow your consulting business.

In this blog, we will look at each of these steps to learn how to market a consulting business. 

Things to Do Before You Market Your Consulting Business

Research your Target Market and Understand your Target Audience

Trying to be everything to everyone is one of the gravest mistakes any business can make.

Most products are designed to solve specific problems for specific audiences — not everyone wants to buy custom Air Jordans, bacon-flavoured soda or organic soap made from peanut butter — so  targeting the right market is essential to allocate your investments better and convert customers through organic marketing efforts.

The better you know your potential customers, the more effective your marketing will be. If you think of your ideal customer as “All homeowners who want to save money,” you’ll have a hard time figuring out how to reach them. But if you can narrow that audience to “Women aged 40-70 who own homes valued at $150-$350,000, it will be easier to reach them.

Also Read: 30 Most effective ways to increase traffic to your website 

Create a USP For Your Brand

Smart marketing can help you make or break your product or service but you need a unique selling proposition to make your brand stand out. When your brand is distinguished in terms of branding, marketing messages or the clientele it serves, it becomes easy for you to market your brand. 

In simple words, a USP is what makes makes your business better than your competitors and why customers should buy from you

How to Market a Consulting Business [Latest Tips]

We will now look at different ways to market your consulting business effectively. 

1. Start a Blog 

Most of your consulting clients find you through your blog. So starting a blog is a great way to promote yourself, your brand and your consulting services. 

By writing great content and providing amazing help without asking for anything in return, you will establish yourself  as an expert. And, by providing this expert help, you will build rapport with potential customers. As your content keeps popping up in their Google searches, or on their social feeds, you will start to build recognition and trust in your brand / name. 

In general, the following tips will help you build a great consultancy blog.

• Write Great Content
• Prove your expertise
• Build an email list
• Promote your blogs and services
• Analyse traffic stats
• Improve and Reiterate

2. Market with Valuable Content

Creating valuable, informative content is a key strategy for marketing your consulting business. By sharing your knowledge and expertise through various content formats, you can attract potential clients, demonstrate your value, and build trust and credibility in your industry.

Start with identifying the topics that are most relevant for your target audience. 

Ensure your content is well-researched, accurate, and provides practical value to your audience. Back up your claims with data, case studies, or real-world examples to enhance credibility.

As your blog builds authority, so does your personal brand. 

3. Use Engaging Video Content to Get More Leads

One of the best marketing strategies for consultants is to use video content to establish trust and credibility. Video marketing continues to be a rising trend and as per a survey 76% of businesses say  that the use of video marketing increases their ROI and it only seems to increase year by year.

Videos are visual stories and they talk to your audience like no other content marketing channels can. You can make videos on all the things that your potential clients are looking for by asking yourself these questions

a) What makes your consulting firm unique?

b) What can you do for clients that other firms cannot

c) What is your niche area 

d) What is your take on trending news related to your consulting career

When you create video content around these topics, you build trust and credibility and can encourage more potential clients to reach out.

4. Start an Email Marketing Newsletter

Once you start a blog and use effective marketing to promote your business, the next step that naturally follows is to create an email marketing newsletter to nurture your clients. 

Email marketing for consultants is the most underrated marketing method for consultants.

But here’s the truth: the size of your list isn’t what matters.

As a consulting business owner, you should focus on building a QUALITY list instead of quantity.

The process is simple.

You first collect email addresses through a pop in or opt-in form and then start sending emails to the list of people who have given you permission to mail them.

You can use the following types of email content to help you grow your consulting business.

a) Weekly email to promote new content

b) follow-up emails to generate calls

c) survey mails for market research

d) auto-responder mails for audience onboarding

Also Read: How to Increase Website Conversion Rate 

5. Promote your Consulting Business on Social Media

The next step on how to market a consulting business is to use social media marketing to promote your content and services. Based on the type of consulting that you provide, you can use different social media channels like Linkedin, Facebook or Instagram to promote your social media content. 

Here are 5 ways to promote your consulting website on social media.

a) Position yourself as an expert

b) Address the pain points of your audience with catchy hooks

c) Find and get new clients on social media platforms

d) Nurture existing followers with the right content

e) Market your business and services to become a successful consultant

6. Get More Clients with Paid Advertising

The next step in your consulting marketing strategy is to use online advertising for lead generation. When you have a USP and have niched down appropriately, it is easy to find the right customers through SEO and Google Ads. With the right targeting, you can easily attract the specific clients with the right targeting. 

Once you have selected your target audience, you need to choose the right ad platforms. While Google ads allow you to target high-intent searchers looking for your services, other social media ads (Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter) enable demographic and interest based targeting. 

When you craft a compelling ad and speak directly to your potential clients, paid advertising can be a highly effective way to reach your ideal consulting clients at scale.

7. Host Events

Hosting events is one of the best ways to get in front of the right audience. When you market the event to a niche audience, you bring in the right kind of people who are interested in your consulting services. 

Video marketing is very effective. Research undertaken by Wyzowl in December 2020 showed the following responses from those who had used video to market or explain their products:

• 83%: Video has increased the average time that visitors spend on their websites
• 94%: It helped increase user understanding of their product or service
• 84%: Video helped to generate leads

From the customer perspective, the research showed that 69% said they’d prefer to watch a short video, compared to 18% wanting a text-based article and 2% wanting a sales call or demo. People are also twice as likely to share video content with others than any other type of content.

Interestingly, webinars were the video success story of 2020, with 62% of marketers saying they used them in 2020 (up from 46% the year before) – and 91% of those who used them saying they were effective.

When you host webinars or LIVE events to start marketing your products. the customers understand your product better and remain better invested in your brand than without.

8. Reach Out to Potential Clients Directly

Most marketers recommend both the use of inbound and outbound marketing strategies to market your products or services. Reaching out to potential clients helps you network with people in your industry and help them solve a problem. When you solve a problem for potential clients and detail the strategies you will use to help them achieve their goals, clients become more entitled to listen to you and hire you.

Of course, you’ll have to find potential clients to reach out to. Depending on your field, there are many ways to do that. Here are just a few:

• Look on Crunchbase to find companies who have recently gotten funding.
• Pay attention to local news and listings to find out when new organizations start doing business.
• Pick out a few ideal clients that you would love to work with.
• Hang out in LinkedIn groups to see who’s talking about the issues you consult on.
• Peruse business listings to find people in your industry.

9. Partner with Another Consultant

Lots of consulting services go well together:

• Web design and content writing
• Engineering and legal
• Marketing and sales
• Management and operations
• Financial and human resources

If you can find someone who works in a field that complements yours, you can partner to help each other with business. 

Partnering with another consultant can be a highly effective way to get in front of potential clients. By collaborating with a complementary expert, you can expand your reach, offer more comprehensive solutions, and attract new clients. Here are some strategies for successful consulting partnerships:

a) Identify potential partners or influencers

b) define partnership goals and structure

c) co-create valuable content and resources

d) engage in co-marketing or co-selling

e) nurture your partnership

Also Read: Case Study: How we Ranked 226 Keywords in Google Top 10

10. Offer Free Resources and Consultations

Offering free resources and consultations help you stand out from your competitors and attract more visitors to your consulting website. When you feature your free resources prominently on your website and include CTA links to download the same in your blog posts, social media posts and email newsletters, you not only get traffic to your website but also establish yourself as a niche consultant that is important for consulting success. 

Other kinds of free resources include offering free consultations to help prospects identify their needs and challenges and educational webinars that provide valuable insights and actionable tips.

Promote Your Consulting Business with SEONerds

Every consultant finds a different mix of marketing strategies that works for them. You might go all in on social media. Or spend most of your time asking for referrals. Or you could run a newsletter, go to events, give presentations, and write a blog.

The mix that will work best for you depends on how you like to market and where your customers are. 

For a detailed marketing strategy for your consultancy business, get in touch with SEONerds