October 15, 2024 - 8 min read
Content marketing for consulting firms: complete guide [2024]
Author: Mary Mattingly
Remember those boring classes where the teacher talked for hours without stopping, practically lulling you to sleep?
Running a consulting firm and looking for an advertising system that…
…Can seem like an impossible task.
GIF Source: Giphy
Well, that’s what content marketing is all about!
Curious?
Scroll down to learn more about this approach.
Table of Contents
Content marketing is a marketing approach that involves creating and publishing helpful content related to your consulting services, to capture people’s attention.
You produce content that gets them to:
One content marketer on Reddit defined it this way:
“It is a way to establish trust and a relationship with potential customers. …a means of educating people about a problem which they did not know they have.
Simply [be] helpful with your content and give away as much of your trade secrets for free as possible. [Tell] the story of your company, why you got into business other than making money. Explain how your product or service can add value without being too pushy.”
So as someone who’s in the business of helping people, why do you need content marketing?
Continue reading to find out.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, marketing today is impossible without great content.
And here’s the story behind that…
Let’s say you create content that showcases your expertise (e.g. how small businesses can scale their business like a Fortune 500 company) and share it with your target audience.
It shows them you’re knowledgeable and the right firm to solve their challenges. Before you know it, they begin to trust you.
Once they do, you’ve hit the jackpot because they’re likely on the quick path to becoming buyers.
That trust is crucial to your firm’s success as Michiel Schipperus, former CEO of Sana Commerce puts it.
He says, “Trust is an essential factor in purchasing decisions […] suppliers need to set themselves apart from competitors to win customer trust and business.”
Plus, a survey of over 1.2k B2B buyers shows people are more likely to buy from brands they trust.
But what does content marketing actually mean for you? Peep the next section.
Now, let’s explain in clear terms what content marketing gets you as a consultant:
But that’s just the beginning. As more people see and like your content, they will likely share it with others in their network. Thus, increasing your reach.
Consistently creating helpful content with testimonials to back it up makes you a trusted companion. People realize they can trust you to solve their problems.
Now, let’s see what types of content can get you the benefits we’ve just discussed.
You’ll make productive content marketing efforts if you use any of the content types we’ve outlined below.
These articles are like blog posts that deliver original, genuine content that reflects your wisdom, insights, and experience in the consulting field.
They’re an opportunity to show your unique selling point. According to Semrush, thought leadership posts can be detailed reports of industry trends, opinions on market development, educational content, inspirational content that drives change, or strategic innovations.
The idea is to boost your brand’s credibility with readers and clients. And that will lead to people trusting you, and attention from key players in the industry and media.
An example of a thought leadership article is McKinsey’s insight platform.
Image Source: McKinsey
The consulting firm has hundreds of forward-thinking original pieces and expert opinions across different topics that can convince people to work with them.
You’ve had great testimonials from clients since you started consulting, right?
That’s a content treasure chest you’re sitting on. You need to start showing those successful projects to people.
That’s what case studies are about.
You take potential customers on a voyage through the challenges other clients had in the past. Then, you show how the challenges were resolved, the step-by-step approach used in solving the problems, and the results.
It’s like a detailed before-and-after story that provides social proof to prospects. They get to see how result-oriented your firm is just like this case study Ceros created for Allen Matkins, a leading law firm.
It began with a description of the client and how the static content they created was ineffective in capturing people’s attention. The case study further describes how using Ceros switched things up and empowered them to improve their online engagement.
And rounded off with the results the client experienced — using Ceros helped capture and sustain visitors’ attention longer than before.
Online webinars are simply seminars that are run over the web.
You pick a topic for discussion, preferably an issue potential clients might be dealing with, and speak on it.
You can even invite other experts to contribute.
Online webinars allow you to engage with participants (prospects and clients) in real time. They can ask questions, react to the discussion, and be more involved in the conversation.
It’s a good way to build personal connections, humanize your brand, and demonstrate expertise.
An example is this webinar from McKinsey titled Future Frontiers: Navigating the next wave of tech innovations.
Image Source: McKinsey
Here, the speakers discussed 15 top trends that are the future of technology across different categories such as the AI revolution, building the digital future, cutting-edge engineering, and more.
And the audience engaged by asking questions about the topic.
Blogs are written content where you share insights with the target audience on relevant topics. You create content based on what people are searching for in your industry.
Let’s say the audience is searching for what to look for in a consulting firm. You can create content that tells them what to look for.
Content here can also be based on:
The goal of blog posts is to drive traffic to your site and, more importantly, educate your audience enough that they now trust you.
This duo is widely referred to as gated content. In other words, content that requires people to provide some information about themselves (e.g., email and name) to access it.
eBooks and white papers are similar to blog posts but offer more comprehensive insights into topics.
Here, you take the time to provide a detailed explanation of complex industry trends or challenges. Touch on why people might experience such setbacks and offer recommendations on how to solve them.
An example is this whitepaper from McKinsey in collaboration with China Chain Store and Franchise Association.
Image Source: McKinsey
It was a deep dive into China’s retail market and provided solutions to executives who needed to navigate their business growth phase by implementing digital strategies.
We like to call infographics everyone’s friend.
It’s primarily a content type that lets you present complex data and insights in a visually appealing format that’s easy to understand. Here, you’re using diagrams, charts, and images to break down the hard information.
But at the same time, it integrates well with other content formats. Take the white paper, for example, it can be hard to read sometimes. However, adding infographics can simplify it for readers.
You can also add it to case studies, blog posts, and more.
Overall, because of its appealing and simple style, creating infographics increases the chances of people sharing the content.
Videos need no introduction as everyone loves this content format. It’s engaging, eye-catching, and captures and sustains people’s attention.
There are several ways to use videos as a consulting firm.
It could be:
In Deloitte’s case, videos bring the company’s research to life.
Image Source: YouTube
According to the financial services firm, videos illustrate its articles in greater depth.
And that’s precisely what you’ll find if you scroll through Deloitte’s YouTube page. It also has inspirational stories that are related to Deloitte’s global network.
These are personalized emails sent to existing and new clients to ensure you’re at the front of their minds.
It’s also a good way to keep an open line of communication with them. You can decide to send email newsletters on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
Think of this content format as if you’re pen pals with prospective and existing clients.
The newsletter can be about anything that adds value to them such as:
Creating this type of content promotes client loyalty and could lead to repeat business.
This piece of content is an audio-based conversation for audiences that prefer listening to reading.
You could invite industry experts to speak on trends or predict where they believe the industry is headed and best practices to follow.
Another option might be to invite notable clients and discuss their journey. You can even repurpose webinars here so people can listen on the go.
Alternatively, you could pick a sub-niche within the industry and talk about how it impacts everyone.
That’s what Deloitte did with its podcast series.
It has different podcasts for different areas the firm is involved in, from tax to cloud computing, and work well-being. You can do the same too and reach clients with varying interests.
Now, the good thing about this format is that accessing it is quite convenient, allowing the audience to listen anywhere they choose.
If you want a content format that captures and glues the audience to their screen, then interactive content is the right choice.
It’s a type of content that allows people to actively interact with the content by playing a game, responding to a survey, and clicking or hovering over a hotspot to view information.
Interactive content isn’t just another type of content that’s visually appealing, it gets the audience involved.
You can create a quiz that helps potential clients if their business needs help or a decision assessment that guides them through choosing services that are right for them.
If you’d like to know about interactive content and what it looks like, click here. 😉 You’ll be taken to our Inspire page where you’ll see different examples and try out some templates.
With that out of the way, here’s how to create a marketing strategy for your consulting firm.
Simply by following the steps we’ve listed below. The first thing to do is…
You need to define what you want to achieve for your consulting firm.
No doubt an increase in sales is a good start. But you want to be more specific.
So, a better place to begin is to brainstorm with your teammates to highlight different areas that can help you achieve that objective.
Those areas, for instance, could mean improving brand awareness or lead generation.
You then want to refine it using our favorite S.M.A.R.T. framework which stands for:
Here’s what the goal would look like if you do:
Increase brand awareness by 75% through launching targeted social media campaigns on LinkedIn and Twitter within Q4 of 2024.
Right after identifying what you’re working toward, the next step is to determine your audience. This is important to know which approach to take when creating content so that it resonates with them.
So, how do you define your target audience?
First, go through your social media following and check who engages with your post the most. Look at their titles, locations, company names, and how often they engage with you.
Secondly, take a quick peek at your competitors in the industry using Semrush’s One2Target tool. After you type in their URL, it loads the necessary audience demographics you need to know.
Thirdly, interview existing audiences, aka repeat buyers, who’ve been around for a while. Ask them questions such as challenges they’re facing, primary goals, aspects of your service they love, preferred content type, or how they stay informed about industry trends.
Your next step is to find topics to create content around.
Here are different ways to do this:
In content marketing, you’re trying to use content to convince people to subscribe to your services.
As such, you can’t have a once-in-a-blue moon vibe. You need to keep producing content consistently, whether it’s once or twice a week, once a month, or even bi-weekly.
One way to do that is to create a content calendar using CoSchedule. It’s an app devoted to creating calendars and all things scheduling.
Along with an editorial calendar, using platforms that help you produce interactive content consistently will make content creation easier.
A tool like Ceros is a great tool. It lets you create and scale interactive content effortlessly so you can be consistent and keep the audience engaged.
Next up, you need to think about letting people know about this high-quality content you’ve produced.
Here’s how to do that:
If you’ve diligently followed the steps outlined here, you’re sure to have an effective content marketing campaign.
But then, how do you know the goals you set are being met?
Find out in the section that follows.
To know if you’re hitting set marketing goals or are close at least, here are key performance indicators (KPIs) to track:
Now to wrap up, let’s discuss helpful tools that can simplify your content marketing campaign.
Here are some top platforms we’ve curated for you:
That brings us to the end of this guide. Let’s wrap up!
We’ve shown you different tools that can help streamline your content marketing campaign.
But there’s one tool that’s so good we have to mention it again.
It’s Ceros, our very own tool.
Aside from promoting our platform, Ceros is a tool that delivers the results you want.
It helps produce interactive content that can turn people’s attention to you, bring in leads, and ultimately achieve your business goals. That’s what Frost & Sullivan experienced when they used Ceros, they got a 150% increase in visibility, a 20% increase in click-through rate, and more.
Your consulting firm can experience that too.
Schedule a demo with us today and let’s pick it up from there.