Have you tried everything to market your Consulting or Contracting services? Are you getting the results you are after? You are probably shaking your head ‘No’ right now. I don’t think ANYONE has all the leads and potential clients they actually want. What are you currently doing to market your services? In job hunting (whether it be W2 or 1099 work), activity doesn’t equal productivity!

I believe that there are 3 key ingredients to marketing your Consulting or Contracting services:

1.Articles

2.Presentations/Seminars

3.Networking

Articles

Articles, like the one you are reading, are a great way to be viewed as an expert in your field. Since you have a Consulting or a Professional Contracting business, you must be at the point in your career where you have some valuable experience and can charge a primo-rate for it. Hence, you are an expert already! If you are an LAN Consultant, why not write a small article or free downloadable ebook about ‘how to maintain your small office network for free’? Don’t worry, you aren’t really giving away all of your secrets. More often than not, the reader will need help maintaining his or her small office network, and guess who they will get in contact with!

If your target market is small businesses (and you are the LAN Consultant that we are discussing), you could submit your articles to any local small business publication in your area. If you are going to go fishing, you need to go where the fish are!

Presentations/Seminars

Again, this is a great way to be viewed as an expert in your field. There are always organizations looking for people to do presentations and lead educational seminars. Let’s use our LAN Consultant friend; she leads a seminar on ‘Security for Small Business Networks’, for a group of small business owners. My guess is that only a very small percentage of the audience will actually know how to do the suggested strategies once they get back to their office. The majority of the audience is actually pre-qualifying themselves to become a client of hers. After all, a small business owners’ time is MUCH more valuable working on the business (sales, marketing, etc) than trying to figure out if the firewall is secure.

These presentations don’t have to be sales-y at all, rather chalk full of good tips and the mention that you are available on an as-needed basis, and you are done! Be sure to have hand-outs with your contact information and you are set!

Networking

While the first 2 strategies are indirectly networking one-to-many, let’s take a look at one-to-one networking. Do your friends and family actually know what you do? When your brother is talking to his friends, does he say “my brother does something with computers," but doesn’t really know the details? I think all too often we assume that our nearest-and-dearest know what we do, but I am willing to bet that half or more actually don’t know what exactly we do and what an ideal client for us is. Come up with a catchy and easy to understand tag-line that describes you and your services and rehearse it daily. My tag-line for my Consultant Coaching business is simple, “I help Consultants and Contractors secure more work in less time." It’s simple, it’s precise, and it’s not wordy. Sometimes I throw the work ‘Technical’ in after “I help" because that’s where I am the strongest, but I work with all types of Professional Service providers.

We could talk about all the other types of one-to-one networking techniques, but let’s just run with this one for now. There is nothing more frustrating to me than when someone stands up at a networking meeting, talks for 2 minutes, sits down and I still have know idea what they do or what they are looking for!

Extra

Your former clients can be a huge resource for you for 2 different reasons.

1) What do they want from a Consultant or Contractor that you couldn’t deliver, yet? Do they want someone who is able to work remotely part time and on-site part time? Do they want someone with experience working with a certain software program that you don’t have training on (yet)? What do they need? The best way to find out is ASK! Once you find out the answer, look into being able to deliver!

2) Who do they know that could benefit from your services? People who work in certain industries will likely know others in the same industry! But you will never know until you ask for a referral. When you get a referral from someone, be sure to send them a hand written ‘thank you’ note and perhaps a small gift!

These are just a few ways of turning your Consulting or Contracting business into a marketing machine! Don’t fear the ‘M’ word! Marketing can be fun, inexpensive, and rewarding! Implement one of these tips into your daily routine and watch it grow. It really is like watching a garden grow, it takes a couple of months to see the fruits of your labor, but it is worth every last bit of effort you put into it!