There is a revolution sweeping professional services marketing. It's been a long time in the making, but it is beginning to have a significant impact on which firms are going to be winners and which ones are destined to hobble along. Online marketing is coming of age.
Not so very long ago, professional services business development was all about who you knew: join the nonprofit board to make the right contacts, learn to golf and, oh, those endless networking events!
While personal relationships are still very important, they are no longer the only game in town. There is a new way to develop business, and it's online.
It started slowly, with static websites that were essentially online brochures. And then the world changed. Buyers began to expect that they could go online and learn all about a firm. Then they expected to be able to find just the right firm… without having to ask for recommendations. Then came social media.
So here we are. People are apt to make snap judgments about your firm based on nothing more than their first impressions of your website. You are either on the list or not. They trust you or they don't. If you blow the first impressions, you are at great risk for blowing the relationship.
Would you hire a firm based solely on their website? Probably not. Would you rule someone out based on their website? Of course you would. You do it all the time.
So how do you gain the trust you need to stay in the game? Well, here is some great news. We've recruited one of the world's leading experts on online trust and visitor conversion to join us for a groundbreaking new webinar on developing trust for professional services firms. His name is Tim Ash. This is the guy that firms like Goggle, Facebook and American Express go to to help build trust and increase conversions.
