How to automate your marketing and snag clients
Glen makes some good points. In addition, in my experience running my IT consultancy since 2007, I've found that automating my marketing has made it MUCH easier to get new clients and reduce the time I spend on marketing.
I've automated my marketing to the point where I haven't had to make cold calls for over a year, since I have a steady stream of new clients finding me, in addition to new work from existing clients.
For example, using SEO to make my website easy to find and ranking at or near the top for specific keyword searches does 2 things: (1) it brings prospects to me, and (2) makes me look like an expert since I show up multiple times on the first page of Google search results. Creating videos, posting them to YouTube, then linking to them from your website is an easy way to get quick & sustained SEO juice.
E-mail marketing is definitely alive & well. An e-mail newsletter containing actionable info can promote you as a credible expert and keeps you in prospects' minds.
Cold calling is also not dead, but it's time consuming, and most people hate to do it. Also, it can't be automated.
Forum participation--not spamming--is also a solid way to become known as an expert.
For any marketing though, you'll want to target a specific niche--and "IT consulting" is NOT a niche. Web-based ecommerce integration is a niche. Get more specific and you'll get found more easily by customers. Think like a customer: find out what they're searching for and target those keywords. It's MUCH easier to stand out in a specific niche.
Greg Miliates
StartMyConsultingBusiness dot com
