It seemed to me that some of the most highly paid marketing and business development executives in the world could do with a little insider information on exactly what level of activity and effort goes into generating return on their investment.

Business Development

When a marketing consultancy is in its infancy job roles and titles tend to be blurred. However, there are still key functions that need to be performed. Firstly, the success of your business development function will be determined by your marketing consultancy's ability to create new revenue streams from existing clients and generate new leads.

There are media and events to help your marketing consultancy achieve these goals. Your level of activity will be determined by your budget. Use your experience to determine which of the following best suit your lead generation; regional networking meeting, trade shows, local advertising and telephone directories (i.e. yell.com, database acquisition, search engine optimization and email campaign initiatives, existing client referral. Keeping your marketing local to achieve local market share means you can cut down on traveling time and make all of your activity more revenue centric.

For me, by far and away the best resource available is local and national database acquisition. The ability to source a targeted list of your new potential clients and approach them directly makes measuring your return on investment a tangible process. Other initiatives will always leave you wondering exactly how many direct leads were generated. As a rule of thumb be sure to include media and direct response phone numbers, email address and website addresses on all your initiatives. This will go some way to demonstrating where your leads are coming from for you to base future marketing decisions.

Search Engine Optimisation

Basic search engine optimization can be achieve free of charge and is crucial to make sure your website receives as much exposure as possible. If you are operating specialist and niche services focus your search engine optimization for your marketing consultancy on these less competitive keywords and keyphrases.

Once you have a basic level of optimization the future decision to role out your website to mass article directories and website directories will be a smooth transition and any marketing spend in this area can be easily measured with the media and direct response initiatives covered above.

Designer

Every marketing consultancy needs a designer. The success of your marketing consultancy will largely be based on your ability to interpret your clients marketing and design requirements and you designer's ability to interpret the quality and attention to detail you demand for your clients.

There are three clear options for the integration of your designer into your marketing consultancy. Firstly, you can employ a designer full time that shares your ambition but brings the exact creative appreciation to move your business forwards. They can meet your clients and engage them on a creative level and play a front running role in driving your marketing consultancy forward.

You can outsource your marketing and design function to other agencies which will give you little control to administer the quality of service you expect for your clients and run the risk of you losing your clients to these agencies direct or you can outsource your design function overseas. This will create cultural design differences and lengthen delivery time. If you want your agency to work get your designer available full time and get buy in for your creative vision.



Web Developer

Your clients will invariably require website development work. Your web developer can oversee the development of your own portfolio website which will provide your best selling tool and provide you with the option to role out your revenue centric, web development function to your clients.

Historically the development work on a website can be finalized much faster than the design element to your marketing consultancy. The variables that your designer will encounter when meeting client expectations are infinite but the developer is working to much fewer parameters on functionality and layout. Either way, having an in house designer means your margin on any business can be a lot higher and your own interests are well looked after.

Your new website for your marketing consultancy will be your best sales tool. It is important that your best work to date is presented with good testimonials from good companies so beg, steal and borrow from anyone you have fulfilled marketing functions for. Keep a basic level of search engine optimization including keywords in your domain name and be sure not to include blank spaces in your portfolio. You want your website looking busy, dynamic, classy and clean so keep your portfolio simple but effective.

END

Darren Henwood

Director

Heir-Q Marketing Consultancy,

darren.henwood@heirq.com ,

http://www.heirq.com

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