One of the hardest parts of starting a consulting business is landing your first few customers. The tendency may be to focus on building out your offerings, but none of that will matter if you can’t get customers. Every business needs to learn how to market their product or service, and consulting businesses are no different. Here, we have come up with a list of 10 ways to help your consulting business generate new leads, and ultimately land new clients.

Digital Advertising

Digital advertising has become very complex, so you may want to hire a digital agency to handle this for you. However, you’ll have to factor this into your budget. If you are unable to afford an agency, then you could start out with some ads on LinkedIn. Their platform allows you to highly target your ads, and it doesn’t require too much work. If you’re planning to do Google, Facebook, or other channels, then it gets more complex.

Direct Mail

Believe it or not, direct mail can be a very effective way to generate leads for your business. One way to make your direct mail items stand out is to put them in a hand written envelope with a stamp. Yes, this will take a lot of time, but it can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your mailouts. Because so much of our communications are now digital it can make someone feel special if they receive a personalized item in the mail. Be creative!

Cold Calling

Cold calling isn’t the most fun thing to do, but it can work if done correctly. The success of this technique is directly proportional to the number of calls you make. That may seem obvious, but the reality is that you may need to make 100 calls before getting a bite. For this reason, it often makes sense to have someone who can dedicate their time to doing cold calling. Making a few calls here, a few calls there, won’t work. If you’re the only person who can take on this responsibility, then, if possible, set aside one day a week to making calls.

Social Media

Regularly posting useful content on your social channels will help increase your brand awareness, establish you as a thought leader in your space, and help drive additional leads. When someone follows of likes one of your posts you should investigate who those people are and see if they might be a good fit for your services.

Email Marketing

Email marketing involves nurturing leads you already have. Let’s say that you have an email list with 1000 email addresses. You could set up what is called a “drip campaign” that sends a series of emails to each new email address added to your list. Doing this efficiently requires the use of marketing automation software, but there are lots of available options. In addition to having a drip campaign you will also want to send out a periodic newsletter. This could be every week, every month, or at whatever frequency you have time for.

Referrals

The best way to land new business is referrals. You may be surprised at how many referrals you can receive if you just ask the people in your network. Most people are happy to make introductions—just make sure you do the same for them!

Blog

Creating a blog can be a great way to generate leads for your consulting business. But don’t expect blogging to be an effective source of leads overnight. It takes time, although it is time that’s well spent. If possible try to write two blog posts every week. Share these blog posts on social media, and try to link to other sites to increase the effectiveness of your blog posts.

Facebook Groups

Joining, or creating, a Facebook group has been shown to be an effective way to market your brand. But you have to be careful. It’s important that you contribute to the group and not come across as too “salesy”, or else you may be banned from the group. The idea is that you want to be recognized as a thought leader in your space.

Public Speaking

Public speaking is one of the best ways to generate leads. And, if you’re asked to speak at a conference, then you usually get in for free! Not only will you gain credibility as an expert in your field, but you will also get to indirectly sell your brand by making suggestive statements that promote the need for your expertise.

Video Marketing

Video is one of the most popular ways to consume information. When users are searching for information regarding your offerings it can help tremendously if they stumble upon a useful YouTube channel. One idea is to create a series of short videos that highlight the problem that your consulting business solves. At the end of each video make sure you include a link back you your website.

 

CONCLUSION

Well, that’s it! There are so many different ways to generate leads, but these are often considered the most effective. Hopefully you found some useful ideas in this post that will help your consulting business drive leads. If your business needs help managing projects, resources, and client information, then you may want to checkout Ravetree. It’s an all-in-one work management solution that helps consulting businesses optimize their operations.