Because a service organisation often operates in a competitive marketplace where an intangible service offering is the key to your unique selling point – setting yourself apart from multiple competitors is often the difference between success and failure.
Regardless of whether your company operates as a consultant, architect, accountant, construction company, lawyer or IT vendor; the main underlying challenges faced are the same:
- How do we improve the perception of our specific services to our target audience?
- How do we drive down business costs and maximise profitability?
- How do we ensure a consistent quality of service?
- How do we ensure we retain customers and attract repeat business so they become our advocates?
In order to differentiate your business, communication is often at the core of the answer.
And in order to communicate well – both internally and externally – mind-set throughout the business is the ongoing solution; but this has to be supported by the right business systems and technology to facilitate.
What marketing methods are working currently for the professional services sector?
Do you know where your organisation sits against these trends – and therefore your competitors?
In a 2016 Marketing Leaders Benchmark survey conducted by Meridian West and PM Forum; 61% of respondents said that their focus was to tailor marketing processes by client segments and markets – moving away from standardised and generic approaches.
Content marketing – thought leadership approaches for positioning yourself as a credible player in the market – is also on the rise; “66% of marketers say they plan to do more of this in 2016, compared with 56% who cited thought leadership as a strategic priority back in 2015”.
No matter what the most successful mix of marketing and sales tactics is for your organisation, it is apparent that you need the right processes in place in order to manage campaigns, capture response and analyse success.
CRM solutions are no longer a one-dimensional system of record; for example with Dynamics CRM there is more and deeper integration with collaboration tools such as Yammer, Outlook and Skype for Business. What this means is that communication is made easier from within one business application, adapting to how your people naturally want to interact.
Tailored CRM solutions such as PSA CRM from Prodware can offer all of the standard functionality of Microsoft Dynamics for sales, marketing and customer service teams; but with all the additional requirements of a professional service organisation to help with streamlined project management.
Speak to Prodware, a fellow professional service organisation, about how we assist clients with forward thinking technology to support business ambition. For further reading into this subject, please download our free whitepaper.
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