How to Grow Your Firm in 2019: A Marketing Checklist

As you head into busy season, marketing your firm might not be top of mind. Indeed, between special requests from clients and managing your growing workload, there’s little time to focus on much else. But giving your marketing plan thought before you kick into high gear can be beneficial for your firm. Implement a strategy now so brand awareness doesn’t fade when the work starts flooding in. Concentrating on a few efforts in particular – like your content, online presence, and referrals – will maintain your firm’s visibility when your marketing resources dip. Let’s take a closer look at these strategies:

1. Take another look at your website. Your website might be a prospect’s first interaction with your firm, so make sure it’s clean and easy to navigate. After you’ve ironed out a consistent design, you can focus on the content. Your content plan can be simple: make sure pages have significance and feature quality topics. Providing relevant resources will help you build trust and convey a client-centered culture. Security also plays a role in establishing credibility, so get an SSL certificate, switch to HTTPS, and use a web application firewall. And don’t forget about user experience: things like loading times and website accessibility make a difference in keeping prospects on your site.
2. Update your LinkedIn firm profile. First, the facts: LinkedIn has contact information for more than 500 million individuals and companies, which means it has substantial marketing potential. Make sure your firm has a company profile and you fill out as much information about your firm as you can – including its size, industry, and location – and upload your logo, your website URL, and a description. (This data will help your target audience find you.) Then, add contacts and start posting regularly. Sharing relevant content with employees, clients, and partners invites them to engage with you. Google will pick up and index your posts, offering even more visibility.
3. Examine your marketing collateral. Your marketing materials should speak to your firm’s differentiators. Do you use the latest security measures? Prospects value that. Do you make extra efforts to develop client relationships? That’s a huge selling point. Does your firm have industry-specific knowledge? Your expertise is driving prospects to you. The most marketable aspects of your firm should be all over your one-sheets, brochures, and email signatures. Short of shouting your value proposition from the mountaintops, updating your marketing collateral is one of the best ways to get your message across.
4. Follow up with referrals. Make a list of referral sources you want to contact after the deadlines pass. You may not be able to reach out to them now, but remembering to connect with them later will drum up business when your calendar has cleared up. Besides, touching base with leads is a nice way to ease back in to pick up after recovering from busy season.

With a little planning, your marketing initiatives can continue to deliver results during busy season and beyond. Review you’re the next few tasks, start tackling them in the next month and aim to pick up where you left off after your post-season vacation. Your efforts now will engage future clients and generate leads that keep your firm hustling year-round.