Sometimes it’s a little harder to sell a service than a product. You can’t touch it, measure it, or define it the way you can a product. The outcome doesn’t fit in a tidy box, it’s amorphous, and its success often depends on a number of variables.
This is where your copywriting is critical. Make sure you’re emphasizing the results you help your clients achieve (increased clarity / greater appetite control / increased productivity) over how it is you help them achieve it (6-month program / hourly sessions / group work). Use language that they would use, so they can see themselves in your solution (Are you waking up tired every morning? / If you’ve had it with that same stack of papers on your desk…). Help them to realize the costs of not working with you.
Often, too, what a service professional is really selling is herself: her expertise, her energy, her track record. For those in the helping professions, selling oneself is likely the hardest part of the marketing process. The answer? Why social media marketing of course! If you cringe at the thought of blowing your own horn (see how I did that?), let others do it for you. Install social sharing buttons on your site right away so that your readers can share your content with their networks. Enable comments so that the readers who really dig your content can tell you so. Incorporate testimonials on your website.
Blogging is a strategy that I’d recommend to any professional consultant. Not so you can tell your readers how awesome you are, but so you can show them. Each of your posts educates your readers, demonstrates the depths of your understanding and brilliance. Blogging enables them to get to know, like, and trust you – all imperatives in a consulting relationship.
If you work one-on-one with your clients, as a coach or trainer, for example, consider using video blogging (“vlogging” anyone?) The question of fit and energy are central to any successful coaching relationship and when your prospects can see you and hear you they can more readily make these assessments. Better to qualify your prospects early on than after that preliminary free consultation, right? Your videos will enable them to self-select. Professional speakers, authors, lawyers, realtors, and consultants of all stripes could benefit from using video.
Don’t worry too much about quality; you definitely don‘t need these to be high-cost productions. For its ease of use and value-for-money, the little Flip comes highly recommended. Just be sure to hold the camera still, or better yet, use a tripod.
Do you think that social sharing buttons and blogging could improve your social media strategy? If you’re already using them, what results are you getting? Let me know in the comments below.
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Hey Cara Lynn,
Great information! It’s so true that when you aren’t selling something that’s tangible to buyers the selling job becomes more challenging. It’s even more so when you work virtually with your clients, like me.
I love the idea of video blogging and recently got a Flip camera myself. It’s so easy to use (one button – on or off) and I’ve been practicing a bit before biting the bullet and putting it on my site. I was actually thinking about recording my “about me” section so readers (viewers?) can really feel like they’re getting to know me.