Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Made in the UK for HR consultants worldwide. You're listening to the HR Marketing Guys podcast.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, James here and welcome to this week's podcast. One of the top questions I get asked is, James, how do I stop relying on referrals and get new clients? Well, the easiest place to start is by increasing your brand awareness. And in this week's main event, I'm going to explain how you can do this and what's working well for my other clients. And in today's thought of the week, I'm going to give you the confidence you maybe need to start contacting business owners and asking for an appointment.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: So let's jump straight in this week's main event.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Every consultant I know, whether they're a startup or multimillion dollar or pound consultancy, has grown their business via word of mouth and referrals for those fortunate enough to receive them. They're a great way to grow your consultancy because they don't require any marketing effort from. But relying on referrals alone to grow or sustain your consultancy is really risky and there's lots of reasons why. First, your personal income is at risk. So as business owners, our personal income and survival rely on the success of our business, not to mention your family and the people you work with too. Next, your consultancy's cash flow is at risk, and this is a really serious one. All it takes is for you to lose one big client, which is why most established consultancy owners start working with me or for your referrals to dry up for a while before you start having cash flow issues, which can be a very slippery slope. Next, you're at risk of getting stuck in a boom and bust business life cycle. So consultants who rely on referrals are often trapped in a boom and bust business cycle, which is terrible for cash flow growth and your stress levels. And finally, your future is completely out of your control. So when you rely on referrals, your consultancy's future and personal earnings are completely out of your control. And that alone should terrify you into taking taking action. I know it certainly does for me. And that's why you need to stop relying on referrals and start marketing your consultancy. So the very broad subject of marketing can be organized via two types, farmer and hunter. The goal of your farmer marketing is to increase your brand awareness. To do this, you simply need to be putting as much content as you can out there on a regular basis. So think newsletters, blogs, emails and social media content. And it's this type of content that ticks along in the background to make sure, you're consistently seen and heard and then you have your hunter marketing. And the goal of this type of marketing is to convert warm relationships that you've been warming up via the marketing you've been doing via brand awareness into appointments. Most people will call this lead generation. To do this, you need to be doing targeted multi channel campaigns, focusing on entry level services like contracts, policies, handbooks, HR audits, HR software and HR advisory services. So if you said to me, James, I want to stop relying on referrals and get new clients, where should I get started? I'd tell you to focus on increasing your brand awareness first, because this is your marketing foundation upon which everything else is stacked. And that's why in today's podcast episode, I'm going to explain what's working for my other clients and how you can start increasing your brand awareness today easily, quickly and affordably. Okay, so like we've just said, the whole goal of your brand awareness marketing is to get as much content out there as you possibly can. Now, I've spoken to loads of consultants who have massively overcomplicated this in the past and I've actually been terrified by by their spreadsheets. They have every social media platform going under the sun. They're getting all of their employees to contribute to blogs and to write articles, and they're focusing their attention in all of the wrong places. Increasing your brand awareness doesn't need to be complicated. You don't need a huge spreadsheet and you don't need an army of people working on it either. So let me break it down for you and make it super simple based on what's working well for my clients, both in the UK and us, there are four channels that you should be putting content out on. The first is your website. This is the most powerful marketing tool you own and it should be the source of lots of great content advice and information for business owners. The second channel is your Google business profile, not because anyone actually goes there to read content, but you're simply doing it to improve your local SEO, which is an annoying hoop to jump through, but jump we must. The third is your email list. Now, this is another really important channel. You should focus on growing and I have lots of resources to help you. And finally, you have social media. What social media you use is down to your target market. My golden rule is that if your target market uses the platform personally or for work, use it. If they don't, don't. For me, my Advice focuses on LinkedIn because it's the best B2B platform. I also focus on personal profiles because they get the best traction. But it's also important to keep your business page up to date with content too. And you simply do that just by sharing what you're posting on your personal profile or vice versa. Okay, so now you know what channels you should be distributing content on. What should your weekly tasks and content schedule look like? Well, to keep things super simple, you should just focus on these weekly tasks. Task one weekly blog post on your website. Task two weekly post on your Google business profile. Task three, a weekly email. Task four weekly posts on your LinkedIn profile. And task five, a weekly edition of your LinkedIn newsletter. And in terms of what your content schedule should look like, I suggest posting every day on LinkedIn. So this is good for the algorithm. And then on a Tuesday you post a blog on your website and you talk or link back to it via your Google Business profile email and LinkedIn. This is called multi channel distribution if you're feeling fancy. And then on a Thursday you publish a new edition of your LinkedIn newsletter. You share it with your connections via a post and by doing so it also sends an email to all of your subscribers, which is absolutely fabulous. A LinkedIn newsletter and events are the only thing that actually email your connections or subscribers to. Which is why I highly recommend you set up a LinkedIn newsletter. So this is the exact content schedule I'm using for my business. And it's the exact content schedule that my other clients are using too. And it's working brilliantly. If you would like a PDF version of this content schedule, please send me an email on jamesarketingforhr consultants.com and I'll ping it straight back to you. And also, if you're a startup listening to this and you don't have a website set up and an email list, don't freak out. You can easily just get started on LinkedIn and then build out your marketing channels as you have the time. I'm just sharing this with you here because this is best practice and it's what's working for my other clients. So now that you know, in order to stop relying on referrals and get new clients, the best place to get started is by increasing your brand awareness. We've also discussed that it doesn't need to be complicated. Keeping it simple and consistent is key here. We've discussed the four channels you should be using and I've shared the weekly tasks and content schedule that's working for my other clients. Now it's time to talk about the things you need to set up in order to do this content schedule on a weekly basis. So you'll need to have a website with blog post functionality. You'll need to have a claimed Google Business profile page. You'll need an email list and CRM or email sender. You'll need an optimized LinkedIn profile, both personal and company. You'll need a LinkedIn newsletter. You'll need marketing content. And you'll need time to implement all of this. Now, I know that all of this can sound really overwhelming, but fear not, we're here to help with the ultimate brand awareness marketing solution for ambitious HR consultants, which includes the HR Marketing Box, the HR Marketing box Kickstarter, and the HR Marketing box va. Now I'm going to do a quick deep dive into each service to explain what it offers and how it can help you. At the heart of our ultimate brand awareness marketing solution sits the HR Marketing box. So it's an online portal full of content and ideas to help you increase your brand awareness and get new clients. It's a huge time saver, even using ChatGPT. And it's a thousand times cheaper than hiring your own content writer. All you need to do is sign in, personalize the content super quickly on Canva and publish it across your channels. And it really is as easy as that. And then on top of the HR marketing box, we have three bolt ons. The first is the HR Marketing box Kickstarter. So this is everything you need to get your brand awareness marketing set up. So we have a do it yourself version which includes lots of resources and checklists to help you get everything set up in order to do your weekly tasks and content schedule. And then we have a done for you version which is a one month program where we actually do all of the setup for you. So even if you have these things in place, that's really important to go in and optimize them to best practice. And then on top of this, we have the HR marketing box VA service. So if you don't have the time to personalize the HR marketing box content and publish it across your channels, we can do it all for you every single month. And that brings us the end of this week's main event. So to quickly recap, if you want to stop relying on referrals and get new clients, the best place to start is by increasing your brand awareness. In terms of what's working for my other clients, we just focus on the four main channels. So your website, Google Business profile, email and LinkedIn. We then get as much content as we can out there using our suggested content schedule. And to help you we have the ultimate brand awareness marketing solution which includes the HR Marketing Box, the HR Marketing Box Kickstarter and the HR Marketing box va. If you would like to learn more about these services or anything else to do with your brand awareness then please drop me an email and let's book in a call.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: I'm here to help Help James's Thought of the week.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: So today's main event was all about your pharma marketing which is to help you increase your brand awareness. And stacked on top of this you also need to do Hunter marketing. Like we said, this is basically lead generation activities and campaigns to help you get lots of lovely new appointments in the diary. And multi touch point campaigns are a great way to do this and sending People messages on LinkedIn. Now lots of consultants I know are really scared to contact business owners in this way and I've even seen posts of HR consultants talking about what an awful strategy this is, but I completely disagree. As long as you are being highly relevant to who you're targeting and you're helping them with the problem that they're facing. I received a message the other day which made me thought about this. A consultancy owner replied back and said, you're the first random LinkedIn message I've ever replied to and I'd like to book in a call. On rare occasions I do get the odd mean and unnecessary reply back from a disgruntled consultant, but mostly I get lovely replies and comments like this. And if you think about it is because my brand is very specific to HR consultants and I reach out in a really polite way offering a solution to a problem that you guys are all facing, whether that's in the form of a lead magnet, free resource or just a chat about their marketing. I'm telling you this because I want to give you the competence you maybe need to start reaching out to business owners in this way too. Yes, you get the occasional mean message, yes, you get some no's, but on the most part people are grateful you got in touch and need some help and that's where you jump in to save the day. So I'm currently in the process of developing our very own lead generation service for you to help you get lots of lovely new appointments in the diary. If you'd like to add yourself to the pre launch list, please get in touch and we'll keep you up to speed with what's happening.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: You've been listening to the HR marketing guys podcast, helping you to get new clients and create a life you love.
