Sick of cold calling? Try inbound marketing for professional services

When you say cold calling to a lot of people, you’ll be met with an eye roll and a shudder. Cold calling in practice, is annoying. Especially now that new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) is coming in, inbound marketing for professional services is becoming a much more attractive option.

The times are changing, outbound is outdated and in some cases, can be potentially dangerous for your brand financially and in a reputational sense. Big fines are being handed out to serial data offenders. With inbound you can avoid this and get the best from your leads so read our blog “Futureproof your business against EU Data Protctions” for more information.

Name one person who enjoys getting calls about “an accident they’ve had that wasn’t their fault.” I bet you can’t, and the people carrying out those calls probably don’t enjoy being met with slam downs, expletives and abuse. 

If you’re in the business of cold calling, ask yourself: have you ever pretended to be someone you’re not just to speak to the person you want to speak to? Of course you have, and I’m not judging you (much...) However, there are better, more effective ways for you to get what you want, I promise.

Unsuprisingly, call centres have an incredibly high turnover rate, and you have to be a particular type of person to hack it… thick skinned. I personally couldn’t do it; I can’t handle rejection.

With the help of inbound marketing for professional services, the rejection won’t sting nearly as much or happen anwhere near as often. Intrigued?

The inbound basics

Before I delve into the processes you could use for professional services, it’s probably best to give you a quick overview of inbound if you’re new to it. For starters, here’s a nice little graphic to have a gander over:

This shows the buyer journey (from stranger to promoter) and the inbound marketing funnel which propels individuals along the journey. 

What inbound marketing essentially does is use many forms of 'pull marketing,' from social media to blogs, to increase brand awareness and attract new business or 'strangers' to your company.

When that new business has been 'attracted' the prospect will be directed  to landing pages via call-to-actions and links. Once on the landing page, they can fill in a form to access something of value - an infographic, ebook, or consultation.

When this form is filled in, you have the prospect's contact details and can get in touch with them in the future. Leads can then be emailed relevant material, and marked by certain criteria to be qualified (also known as lead scoring) Only then will they be contacted by a member of your team.

All of these qualification processes “warm-up” the lead, so they know a bit about your company and how they can help their business before a call takes place. There's more good news - these steps can be automated, so you don't have to remember to chase a prospect, or take time out of your day to send another email follow up.

Inbound marketing for professional services to the rescue

GDPR was mentioned very briefly at the start of this blog. If you don’t know what that is, you need to, especially if you work in a professional services industry. As of 25^th May 2018, the EU government will slap huge fines on companies who are serial data offenders.

Ultimately, GDPR is striving for companies to change the ways they collect data and become more transparent and honest with consumers about how their data will be used.

I know what you might be thinking, “EU government? That won’t affect me after Brexit.” Think again, GDPR will be wading in during the process of Brexit, and even when we’ve waved goodbye to the EU, it’ll still apply to anyone wanting to do business with companies within the EU.

So, why would inbound marketing for professional services work for you? We’ve outlined the reasons you should try it; GDPR, people hate cold calling, rejection etc. One of the biggest reasons you should give inbound marketing a go is that it will make your life easier. Instead of endlessly calling CEOs who don’t want to talk to you, and getting stopped by gatekeepers, attract relevant individuals that do want your business.

Where to start with inbound

So, what software do you use? If you’ve read our blogs before, you’ll know we’re a HubSpot partner agency. We talk about HubSpot a lot, but that’s because it really is the best platform out there. The sales and marketing dashboards allow you to do everything from maintaining your website, building landing pages, blogging, email marketing, social media monitoring and scheduling... the list is endless.

Secondly, how do you categorise the people you’re reaching out to? Just like the person sat next to you on the tram, we’re all different, and different marketing approaches work for different people. Look at the people you’ve worked with in the past, and build buyer personas based on their characters. They’ll most likely fall into different categories, each with different preferences when it comes to how they want to be spoken to.

Thirdly, how do you reach out and connect with the most valuable leads for your business? We’ve started using targeted outreach a lot more with our clients, building up lists of their ideal leads (whale hunting) and contacting them on social media to increase brand awareness. Follow your whales on Twitter and engage with their content, hopefully they’ll follow you back if you can offer them valuable content in return. Set up an automated direct message so when they do follow you back, you’ve automatically started a conversation with them. Make it interesting though - everyone’s Twitter inbox is filled with “Thanks for the follow” messages. Try opening with a question to spark a conversation. 

Work with an inbound marketing agency

There are so many ways to use inbound marketing for professional service, we’d be here all day if we went through all of them. Just remember that inbound marketing can be a slow burner, but using other marketing practices like biddable and paid social can accelerate your efforts, so you won’t have to wait as long to see results. Be patient with inbound though, and it will be well worth your time.

If this is a bit overwhelming, fancy a call? We can talk you through the processes in even greater detail.

The times are changing, outbound is outdated and in some cases, can be potentially dangerous for your brand financially and in a reputational sense. Big fines are being handed out to serial data offenders. With inbound you can avoid this and get the best from your leads so read our blog “Futureproof your business against EU Data Protctions” for more information.