Effective marketing is absolutely crucial for any small business, and HR consultancies are no different. HR consultants start their business largely because they enjoy HR, but running a successful consultancy involves a lot more than just the HR you are already good at. You need clients and unlike when you’re working in a bigger organisation, they are not just there waiting for you. So good marketing is key.
HR consultants starting out on their own usually spend months or even years finding out how to get clients, trying different things, spending money and time on activities that don’t work, or doing them in the wrong way. They often don’t have characteristics of natural sales people and can struggle in this area.
One of our main objectives is to remove all that time and money wasted and get clients coming to you as soon as possible, through the correct marketing activities and techniques so that you make a profit much sooner than you otherwise would.
So how exactly do we help with your marketing?
Marketing strategy
Our marketing strategy is to get people to come to you, and we know exactly what marketing activities will do that. We can identify with you exactly what you should be doing in your marketing both initially and on an ongoing basis, and can help you make sure that as well as identifying the right marketing activities, you are absolutely making the most of them, targeting them correctly, and doing them in the most cost- and time- effective way.
We can help you prioritise marketing even if you only want to work very part time, to ensure that your precious time is used in the best way possible.
We draft a marketing plan for you, with your input, based on your local area, and based on the marketing activities you’ll need to do during your first year. We’ve done all the research and identified trends, products and brand qualities to help you. We’ll work with you to set realistic but challenging objectives that you are comfortable with, and will constantly review your marketing plan and activities to make sure they are working.
If you aren’t comfortable with a marketing activity we recommend, we’ll give you more support and guidance, and more training if necessary.
Tips and guidance
Details of what marketing works, what doesn’t and how to do it are all contained in our PlayBook, along with downloads of crucial tips and information to help you.
Website
A website is a key marketing tool, and creating one isn’t just drafting some text and finding some images. It’s incredibly time consuming and expensive and we take care of it for you, from domain names and technical support to search engine optimisation and monitoring, with continuous updates and professionally-drafted text.
Marketing collateral
We pay experts to design and develop marketing collateral that works for you, including business cards, brochures and exhibition banners.
Direct marketing
We produce a monthly newsletter for your clients and contacts and regular marketing mailshots and provide you with an in depth report on open and click rates, to help you maximise its impact.
Content
We provide articles on our website every week carefully written to appeal to small business clients, on subjects they want to hear about. We theme these monthly to maximise how effectively you can use them throughout your marketing activities.
We also provide reams of tweets and short status updates which can be used in conjunction with your personal updates, so that you have a steady stream of information designed to engage with clients and enhance your credibility. These are divided by subject matter and are easy to source and select, minimising the amount of time an effective social media profile takes, leaving you more time for fee earning.
Brand
We have developed a series of brand values and a brand profile identity after working with a branding specialist. These are designed to reflect our business and to engage with clients and potential clients as well as inspire partners.
All this is designed to make sure our consultants feel confident in their marketing, and are successful as soon as possible. If you would like this level of support in marketing your own HR consultancy business, do get in touch.