As a fellow marketer we would appreciate your help with short SURVEY collecting data for white paper we’ll be sharing in June 2017. Professional Services firms are the ultimate knowledge brands, built on the collective reputation of the people who work there. Clients value you as trusted partners helping with vital decisions in their business. Harvard Business Review put it well, “Professional services are what economists sometimes call “credence” goods, in that purchasers must place great faith in those who sell the services.”

Why do clients & prospects choose to put their faith in you? Likely because you excel at illustrating the collective wisdom, experience and impact generated by the people at your firm. As the world goes digital, is there an opportunity to drive impact by enhancing the personal brand of each individual at the firm? This is the question we’d like to explore.

You are what Google says you are.

With the latest research by Accenture showing 94% of B2B purchase decisions include on-line research, your firm, and more importantly your people really are what Google says they are.

What shows up when prospects or clients Google your people? Generally, the #1 result for search of a person’s name is their LinkedIn profile, followed by other social media accounts & blogs. Have you considered a program to ensure each employee has world class LinkedIN profile? Something to think about.

Social Selling, a sales & marketing tactic where employees proactively use social networks to find, connect and build relationships with prospects & customers, is now a core skill for leading B2B organizations. A recent LinkedIN study show organizations who enable & teach Social Selling are 51% more likely to hit their quotas and grow their businesses. To be effective a Social Selling program requires content support from central team, and more structured approach to how employees look and act in the channel.

People trust people vs institutions.

The Edelman Trust Barometer is a fascinating read. It’s an annual survey that tracks people’s trust of business, government & media. They recently published their 2017 results showing further decline in people’s trust of organizations accelerated by the recent political climate.

This shift further reinforces that people want to do business with people, not faceless companies. Demanding connected customers, require us to embrace social media and digital technology to give customers more transparency and interaction with the people behind the companies they do business with. How do you ensure your people are discoverable and accessible when clients or prospects have questions or want to connect?

Opportunity for Thru-Employee Marketing.

A few interesting facts:

  • Employees now #1 trusted source of information (Edelman Trust Barometer)
  • Digital reach of your employees 10x that of your brand channels (Cisco Case Study)
  • Response rates from employees 6-8x higher then from brand (itracMarketer email & social response data)

For professional services firms these trends could be an opportunity to impact your business. Building a modern marketing program to activate the collective digital presence of each of your people, will help you increase your marketing reach by 10x, marketing impact by 8x and ensure your people are accessible and look great to prospects & clients.

We need your input for a white paper.

As data always helps improve the case with executives, we’d appreciate your participation in a short survey that will serve as basis for a white paper on “Impact of Employees Digital Presence on Professional Services Marketing”.

Goal is to share this paper with you and other participants in the survey in June 2017. Participants would include marketing leaders from consulting, accounting, law, advertising, wealth management and other professional services firms in North America. Intent is to provide you with data & insight on what we are thinking as a marketing community.

  • What % of marketers see opportunity to leverage employee’s digital presence in their program?
  • What % of leadership in our industry aligned with this idea?
  • How many of your peers already have a program in-market?
  • What results & learnings are they seeing?
  • What do we collectively need to accelerate adoption of these programs?

Here’s LINK to short survey which should only take 5-10 minutes to complete.

Thank you in advance for your help and participation. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions on how this exercise could deliver the most value for you.