At the start of lockdown, I found some very handy marketing advice for professional services firms on the Hinge Marketing website and I thought I would revisit it a few months on, to see if it still holds true.  

Interestingly a lot of it does and actually a couple of the tips stand out even more so taking into account the digital journeys that many firms have embarked on over the past few weeks and months.  I have summarised the most relevant and hopefully helpful ones below:

Visible Experts: Firms need to enable leading figures within their ranks to showcase their expertise and cultivate from within.  Research carried out by Hinge actually points to the fact that visible experts create more enquiries and leads, close sales more regularly and can command billing rates up to 13X higher than their peers.

Blogs and short-form articles: Short form written content is a really good way of showcasing expertise within a firm and when married to the fact that 50% of buyers read articles to learn more about topics important to them, it seems like a good technique to explore.  By educating audiences then the expert can demonstrate relevance and build trust with a second benefit coming from the ability to drive traffic back into the firm's website as a whole.

Linkedin: The b2b platform is still second to none in terms of networking virtually and this has been further enhanced during the lockdown.  Individuals within a professional services firm should be encouraged to develop good individual profiles and engage with relevant groups that peers and clients are also part of. This should then be supported by a robust corporate firm page.

Speaking Engagements: A great way to build an experts brand and get in front of the right audiences.  The format in which this can now be done has changed somewhat with live webinars and podcasts taking centre stage but none the less it is still a very important part of the marketing toolkit and much easier to distribute post-event.

Online Video: This is the final tip that I have taken from the article and it is the one that nearly every firm has now adopted wholeheartedly.  In fact, when the article was first published back in March, the importance of the online video tactic was underplayed because it wasn't apparent at first just how integral this channel would become for professional service firms.  One of the points that really does resonate especially with the fee earners and firms that we work with, is the fact that video really does showcase not only the expertise of a firm, but it can really breakdown barriers by adding a human and personal element.  Those that combine this whilst giving expert advice are very well-positioned moving forward.

On reflection looking back, a lot of the techniques seemed like short term fixes back in March 2020.  

What has become clear though is that they are very much mid to long term tactics that all professional services firms should think about embracing if they haven't already?