What are The Four Pillars of Marketing™?
The Four Pillars of Marketing™ create the framework for implementing your marketing plan. They reflect an organizational system under which we provide customized implementation strategies. From leveraging current relationships, to new business development, to increasing your name recognition and measuring ROI, The Four Pillars of Marketing™ have the power to transform your marketing strategy. Following is a summary of The Four Pillars of Marketing along with examples of strategies we employ to help you implement a balanced marketing plan.
Pillar I. Retain + Grow Existing Relationships
Most people equate marketing with sales and new business development. But really, the most important growth strategies revolve around leveraging and growing your existing relationships by staying connected, relationship building, communicating, and engaging on social media.
Whether on LinkedIn or at in person events, meeting new people at conferences, trade shows, chambers, or other community or board involvement, will lay the groundwork for your future business. And for all you introverts, networking can be just as effective one-on-one over lunch or a beer. Read our blog on Referral Source Development: How to Start Networking with Confidence.
It’s one thing to do an occasional post on LinkedIn or your company Facebook page. But to really engage, you need to scroll through your news feed and like, comment, and share your contact’s posts to your network. If you’re not sure how to do this, talk to PSM or ask your neighborhood Gen Z or Millennial for advice! Read more about how we help our clients master social media.
Meeting client expectations and staying on top of client impressions of your responsiveness, work product, and team, will ensure you have happy clients who will be loyal and refer you to others. Consider periodic “Tell us how we’re doing” e-surveys to measure your client’s satisfaction with your company. Read our blog on Are your Clients Satisfied with your Service? Ask Them!
This term involves making sure you are delivering all of the services you possibly can to your clients. When you’re out to dinner and the server asks you if you would like dessert, they are cross marketing another culinary delight you may not have realized the bistro offered.
PSM recommends you proactively communicate with your clients and contacts at a minimum of quarterly. If you have a lot of timely, relevant information to share, some clients send a monthly e-communication. E-communications tools like MailChimp, Campaigner and Zoho, have analytic tools to quantify and measure the success of your communications.
Referrals are the lifeblood of your business. Remember when you build relationships with those who refer business to you, you are employing a “one to many” strategy so that one solid referral source will refer you a steady stream of new clients.
Pillar II. Develop New Business
When marketing for new business, there are myriad strategies we employ at PSM to help you develop new business. We believe a targeted approach is a lot more effective than dropping your flyers from an airplane! New business development should be strategic and targeted by leveraging your best relationships along the way. Here are some of the ways in which we help our clients develop new business:
The most effective way to develop new business is to use an extremely targeted approach. Dropping flyers out of airplanes is no longer the way to land your A-level clients. PSM will help you identify individual clients, referral sources, or industries, conduct the research you need to ask great questions, seek a warm introduction through an existing relationship and land new business.
At PSM we can help you nurture a lead through the sales process by the use of strategic website contact forms, live chat, and e-communication automations. If a prospective client provides contact information, they flow into a system where they will receive regular (but not too many) pre-written communications to encourage them to work with your company.
We discussed leveraging referral sources above. Once you know the type, level, occupation and industry your best referral sources have in common, we help you set out to meet more like them!
PSM can help you develop a professional proposal template for responding to Requests for Proposal (RFP), or simply having a well-designed capabilities presentation. We will help you determine if you should respond to the RFP, all the way through writing, designing and sending the proposal.
One of the best ways to build name recognition and relationships with prospective clients is to become an active member of their trade or professional associations. By writing and speaking you will become their go-to professional and can engage with prospective clients and referral sources at every meeting you attend.
Your website is often the first point of contact with prospective clients and customers and must be designed to reflect the essence of your company. Our award-winning website development team will work with you from the site map phase through the design, content development and optimizing the overall user experience. Learn more about our custom website development work.
SEO is the engine that makes your website fly! When PSM builds websites we SEO optimize each page of your website. Read more about What is SEO? Once the site launches, we focus on building your organic search engine rankings so your clients and customers can find you online through keyword searches. You can also impact your own SEO by proactively asking clients to leave five-star Google Reviews for your company. Read our blog on The Power of Google Reviews. You can also review How to Get Found Online: Onsite and Proactive Backlinking and How to Boost your SEO Without Breaking the Bank.
The relationship between SEO and content development is symbiotic. The only way to rock SEO is to have a steady stream of new content posted on your website. Whether the content is for webpages, blogs, or location landing pages, your commitment to content development will drive your SEO results. PSM also has a number of extremely talented copywriters that will do all the work for you! You might enjoy our blog on Content is King.
Pillar III. Increase Name Recognition + Awareness
You can be an industry-leading award-winning company. But if you aren’t communicating to current and prospective clients and referral sources, they simply won’t know who you are. Building name recognition and awareness for you and your business can catapult you to become the go-to company in your industry. We help our clients increase their name recognition in many ways including:
The look and feel of your brand must reflect the personality of your company. It must be professionally designed and graphically interesting. At PSM we not only help you develop your brand, but we bring it to life in everything you do! Learn more about our unique branding services.
Many times our clients want to further drive new traffic to their websites. PSM will consult with its SEO team to recommend additional digital advertising in the form of Google AdWords, Facebook or LinkedIn advertising, or even advertising on local sites like NextDoor. Digital Advertising should augment and enhance SEO, not replace it, and PSM will conduct a cost/benefit analysis to see if digital advertising would work for you. Read our blog on Digital Communications for Small Businesses.
When you see an article in a magazine, or someone quoted in the newspaper, you likely believe their messages because they have the third-party credibility of the publication, radio station or TV station’s endorsement of you and your business. PSM will help you develop a proactive PR strategy designed to attract positive media coverage for your company. Read our blog on Public Relations 101 – while written for lawyers it applies to all businesses!
We tell our clients that social media and thought leadership are two sides of the same coin. To boost engagement on social media, it’s important that your voice, experience and accomplishments are creatively curated into memorable and engaging social media and blog posts. We find and post content for your social pages and help you engage on social media by liking, following and sharing the content of your connections. Read our blog on How to Engage on LinkedIn.
One of the best ways in which to increase your name recognition is to write for publications your clients and referral sources read, and to make presentations to the same groups. When we ask our clients what helped develop such a high level of name recognition, time and again they cite the writing and publishing they have done, as well as the presentations they have given to groups that could hire or refer them to others. Read our blog on How to Get your Articles Published.
Whether a large trade show, or a small community festival, PSM works with you to develop banners and booth signage, along with any marketing pieces you may want to have on hand. Trade show participation while time consuming, can get you directly in front of your prospective clients and customers. If you participate in a trade show, you can rest assured that our team will ensure you make the best impression. Watch our Video on Why it is Important to Engage in Trade and Professional Associations. Here is the companion blog to the video.
While most people are not active in the community because of marketing, community involvement can offer great opportunities to build relationships with other community leaders on non-profit boards, community groups, places of worship, or even coaching your daughter’s T-ball team. Read our blog on How Professionals can Volunteer their Way to New Business.
Pillar IV. Measure Return on Investment (ROI)
We tell our clients it’s critical to have metrics in place to measure the return on investment of your marketing efforts. In general, marketing is hard to measure, so at PSM we have identified myriad ways in which to measure the ROI of your marketing efforts. We wrote a blog on How to Measure the ROI of your Marketing Efforts that you may also find interesting. A few tools we use on a regular basis include:
We help clients understand the user experience of visitors to their website by tracking how they found the website, and once there, what actions they take. You will enjoy our blog on If Websites were First Dates.
We have built a science around tracking and measuring the results of your website. From unique visitors each month, to tracking climbing organic rankings, PSM works every day to ensure your website is helping drive new business into your firm. See our blog on Making Sense of SEO – Tricks, Tips and Lingo to Know.
Posting on social media is one thing – but truly engaging with those you are connected to is another. PSM can monitor and assess the engagement you are getting on specific posts, using this data to refine and focus your overall approach to social media management. Read more in How to Use Social Media to Grow your Practice.
Every time you send an e-communication, PSM has the tracking analytics to measure important metrics like how many people opened your message, and what links they clicked through to on your website. Watch our video on How Communications Fit into the Overall Marketing Mix. You will also enjoy Design and Send Professional Communications.
PSM actively works with clients to nurture and generate leads for the firm. Whether driving people to the website contact form, analyzing live chat results, or using communications to generate interest in your company, PSM will work with you to make lead tracking measurable.
The biggest gauge of marketing success is continued revenue growth. PSM has clients now experiencing nearly half of their new business coming from website leads, with jumps of revenue in the 30 – 40% range. This is what an outsourced marketing approach can do for your business to free you up to do what you do best – deliver services and continue to grow.
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How Can The Four Pillars of Marketing™ Help You?
The Four Pillars of Marketing guide the implementation of every client’s strategic marketing plan. The Pillars ensure that your marketing plan is well balanced which increases the likelihood and probability that your marketing efforts will pay off for you in strengthened relationships, more referrals, a steady stream of new clients, and a reputation where you and your company are sought after – where your reputation precedes you! You will be surprised how cost-effective outsourced marketing can be! If you are interested in a turnkey, full-service marketing approach to your growth, contact PSM today for a free, confidential consultation. You can also use our assessment: Is Your Company a Good Candidate for Outsourced Marketing?
We look forward to implementing the Four Pillars of Marketing in your business!
