Business consultants need content marketing.
The life of a business consultant may seem simple to those outside the field, but as a consultant, you know it is anything but! Not only do you need expertise and knowledge in helping other business owners and entrepreneurs become successful, but you also have to find ways to constantly market your own business, skills, and prowess for business as well.
This can create many challenges from time constraints to what you feel are your best abilities to just not wanting to spend time on things like creating content when you could be drumming up sales or coaching a client.
However, marketing your expertise, the most important part of your business, is critical to the success of your consultancy. You also cannot simply prove your skills and knowledge once. You have to prove every day that you’re the right person for a business to trust.
The answer to this conundrum is content marketing, or creating a steady flow of content. Your content can consist of helpful business practices, advice for entrepreneurs, tips for small business owners, and so much more. It all boils down to providing value for your target audience as well as showing off your knowledge so that when someone is ready to hire a business consultant, you are the go-to resource they think of.
This is just the beginning of the benefits that content marketing can provide you as a business consultant. Let’s explore 10 reasons why you need this marketing strategy for your business.
10 Reasons Why Business Consultants Need Content Marketing
1) Start Important Discussions
Do you want to change your field from within? When trying to have an important conversation, you should always be the first to start talking. People who start conversations will have a place in them while taking on the power and responsibility to guide them. Use content marketing to push at the boundaries and bring in more ideas and concepts, or give people in the field something new to talk about. This is how real organic change tends to happen over time and it can solidify you as a thought-leader.
2) Prove Your Credibility
By creating content marketing, either in the specific niche you serve or for business owners as a whole, you have an opportunity to show people why you love working in the space and how your knowledge comes from that interest, all of which makes your expertise easier for everyone to believe in. Does your business consultancy often revolve around helping businesses become lean and agile in their practices? More competent in their sales processes? These are the things you want to focus on when thinking about what to write. You already know so much about these areas and now it is time to prove it with content.
3) Recognition As a Thought-Leader
Creating content in your specific area of business consulting tells business owners that you are an influential source of information. If your content is well focused around your particular field of expertise, this tends to become an archive of information for others to research. Being many people’s general knowledge base on a topic raises your reputation with them. Other thought-leaders will also begin to recognize what you are offering and may even want to be part of your content marketing, or have you as a guest on their own programs and content. As a business consultant, you know every connection you have within your chosen field could become a job later.
4) Spread Awareness Of Your Brand
Content marketing is a powerful way to express individualism as a business consultant, such as your beliefs, goals, and values. When a business knows who you are and what you care about, they’re more likely to hire you in the future. Let’s say you can create content at a rate of one high-quality article every week without fail. This record becomes a reason for others to respect and trust you. Consider how impressed you are at seeing someone regularly create anything. Additionally, by showing what you value and how you work, potential clients will already have greater buy-in before they ever sign up for a consultation, because they already have an idea of how you are.
5) Better Self-Promotion
Traditional marketing of all types can look like something a machine made in a factory, but content marketing is all about expressing yourself fully so that potential clients can get to know and like you before they realize they need your services. You don’t need to sell anything to people. By speaking as an authentic expert in the field, you are simply raising the public’s awareness of who you are while providing them with content that has real value.
6) Gather A Community
If someone particularly likes a piece of your content marketing, they’ll keep coming back for more. You can even keep your content marketing semi-private at first and shared just among a few people by using email. These followers of your work don’t have to be clients, but as your list of recipients grows, you gain a group that should be receptive to future offers of business consultancy, and far more likely to also check out other things you create like podcasts and videos.
7) Gain More Clients
You might have your competitor, but do they create consistent content on a regular basis? If they do, content marketing is necessary to keep up! And if they don’t, this is an excellent way to set yourself apart. When you have consistent social media and blog content for the world to see, this gives your potential clients a sense of the value you could bring to their businesses as well as reminding your previous clients of the positive change you were able to help make in the companies, turning them into advocates for you by sharing content with others who might need your services.
8) Be Sought After
We’ve all had those one-off project clients who appear and disappear seemingly at random, but great content marketing helps them remember you the next time they reappear in need of someone’s help, and to seek you out first. Great content shows your expertise in the field and is almost like sending your resume out (a fun resume that people want to read and provides them value) and may prompt people to ask if they can hire you.
9) Show You Recognize Greatness
Have you ever wanted to valorize someone in the field you consult for who did something so great that everyone should know? Content marketing is the perfect way to spread such accomplishments, and you’ll look good for doing so. Or if businesses use your content to improve their processes and strategies, ask them to tell you what happened next! Those stories can become even better content where you talk about why things worked and how they might be improved.
10) Helping Others Helps You
You likely became a business consultant in the first place because you wanted to help other business owners and entrepreneurs. You wanted to see other businesses and ventures thrive with the right process, people, and protocols. Through your consulting services, you are helping them achieve this. Content marketing is no different. By providing real value to your audience, you will not only be helping business owners and entrepreneurs, but you will be potentially helping your own company by creating buy-in and locking in potential clients as a result of the help you have given them.
How Business Consultants Can Get Started With Content Marketing
While all of this sounds great, you may be thinking “Where am I going to find the time to create all of this content?”
The great thing is, you don’t need much! There are many ways you can create consistent content, even when you don’t have a lot of time.
Download our free guide – 5 Ways That Business Consultants can Download Their Expertise to Create Ongoing Content – to learn more!
