Running a consulting firm and looking for an advertising system that…

• Keeps bringing in clients long after it’s launched.
• Promises even more clients.
• Attracts clients who refer others.

…Can seem like an impossible task.

GIF Source: Giphy

Well, that’s what content marketing is all about!

Curious?

Scroll down to learn more about this approach.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing approach that involves creating and publishing helpful content related to your consulting services, to capture people’s attention.

You produce content that gets them to: 

• Know you
• Trust you
• And do business with you

One content marketer on Reddit defined it this way:

“It is a way to establish trust and a relationship with potential customers. …a means of educating people about a problem which they did not know they have.

Simply [be] helpful with your content and give away as much of your trade secrets for free as possible. [Tell] the story of your company, why you got into business other than making money. Explain how your product or service can add value without being too pushy.”

So as someone who’s in the business of helping people, why do you need content marketing?

Continue reading to find out.

Why is content marketing important for consulting firms? 

According to the Content Marketing Institute, marketing today is impossible without great content. 

And here’s the story behind that…

Let’s say you create content that showcases your expertise (e.g. how small businesses can scale their business like a Fortune 500 company) and share it with your target audience. 

It shows them you’re knowledgeable and the right firm to solve their challenges. Before you know it, they begin to trust you. 

Once they do, you’ve hit the jackpot because they’re likely on the quick path to becoming buyers. 

That trust is crucial to your firm’s success as Michiel Schipperus, former CEO of Sana Commerce puts it. 

He says, “Trust is an essential factor in purchasing decisions […] suppliers need to set themselves apart from competitors to win customer trust and business.”

Plus, a survey of over 1.2k B2B buyers shows people are more likely to buy from brands they trust. 

But what does content marketing actually mean for you? Peep the next section.

What are the benefits of content marketing for consultants? 

Now, let’s explain in clear terms what content marketing gets you as a consultant: 

• Increased reach: After you create content, you’ll publish it on a hub that almost everyone on Earth has access to; the internet. You’ll post it on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, or your website. 

But that’s just the beginning. As more people see and like your content, they will likely share it with others in their network. Thus, increasing your reach. 

• People’s trust: While the internet is a great asset for businesses, there’s a lot of false information flying around that doesn’t help your clients at all. 

Consistently creating helpful content with testimonials to back it up makes you a trusted companion. People realize they can trust you to solve their problems.

• Increased sales: As stated earlier, getting people to trust you is good for business. It means they’re more than willing to pay for your services. After all, you’ve given them great free solutions in the past. 
• Recognized thought leader: Another thing that regularly creating good content does is to make you known everywhere. Potential clients look forward to your post because it’s helpful, existing clients rely on it for direction, and other brands want to invite you on podcasts, webinars, etc. 

Now, let’s see what types of content can get you the benefits we’ve just discussed.

What types of content are most effective for consulting firms?

You’ll make productive content marketing efforts if you use any of the content types we’ve outlined below.

1. Thought leadership articles

These articles are like blog posts that deliver original, genuine content that reflects your wisdom, insights, and experience in the consulting field. 

They’re an opportunity to show your unique selling point. According to Semrush, thought leadership posts can be detailed reports of industry trends, opinions on market development, educational content, inspirational content that drives change, or strategic innovations. 

The idea is to boost your brand’s credibility with readers and clients. And that will lead to people trusting you, and attention from key players in the industry and media.

An example of a thought leadership article is McKinsey’s insight platform.

Image Source: McKinsey 

The consulting firm has hundreds of forward-thinking original pieces and expert opinions across different topics that can convince people to work with them. 

2. Case studies

You’ve had great testimonials from clients since you started consulting, right?

That’s a content treasure chest you’re sitting on. You need to start showing those successful projects to people. 

That’s what case studies are about. 

You take potential customers on a voyage through the challenges other clients had in the past. Then, you show how the challenges were resolved, the step-by-step approach used in solving the problems, and the results. 

It’s like a detailed before-and-after story that provides social proof to prospects. They get to see how result-oriented your firm is just like this case study Ceros created for Allen Matkins, a leading law firm.

It began with a description of the client and how the static content they created was ineffective in capturing people’s attention. The case study further describes how using Ceros switched things up and empowered them to improve their online engagement. 

And rounded off with the results the client experienced — using Ceros helped capture and sustain visitors’ attention longer than before. 

3. Online workshops and webinars

Online webinars are simply seminars that are run over the web.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

You pick a topic for discussion, preferably an issue potential clients might be dealing with, and speak on it. 

 You can even invite other experts to contribute. 

Online webinars allow you to engage with participants (prospects and clients) in real time. They can ask questions, react to the discussion, and be more involved in the conversation. 

It’s a good way to build personal connections, humanize your brand, and demonstrate expertise. 

An example is this webinar from McKinsey titled Future Frontiers: Navigating the next wave of tech innovations. 

Image Source: McKinsey

Here, the speakers discussed 15 top trends that are the future of technology across different categories such as the AI revolution, building the digital future, cutting-edge engineering, and more.  

And the audience engaged by asking questions about the topic. 

4. Blog posts

Blogs are written content where you share insights with the target audience on relevant topics. You create content based on what people are searching for in your industry. 

Let’s say the audience is searching for what to look for in a consulting firm. You can create content that tells them what to look for. 

Content here can also be based on: 

• Pain points the audience is dealing with
• Industry trends
• Updates to your service offering

The goal of blog posts is to drive traffic to your site and, more importantly, educate your audience enough that they now trust you.

5. eBooks and white papers

This duo is widely referred to as gated content. In other words, content that requires people to provide some information about themselves (e.g., email and name) to access it. 

eBooks and white papers are similar to blog posts but offer more comprehensive insights into topics. 

Here, you take the time to provide a detailed explanation of complex industry trends or challenges. Touch on why people might experience such setbacks and offer recommendations on how to solve them. 

An example is this whitepaper from McKinsey in collaboration with China Chain Store and Franchise Association. 

Image Source: McKinsey

It was a deep dive into China’s retail market and provided solutions to executives who needed to navigate their business growth phase by implementing digital strategies. 

6. Infographics

We like to call infographics everyone’s friend. 

It’s primarily a content type that lets you present complex data and insights in a visually appealing format that’s easy to understand. Here, you’re using diagrams, charts, and images to break down the hard information.  

But at the same time, it integrates well with other content formats. Take the white paper, for example, it can be hard to read sometimes. However, adding infographics can simplify it for readers. 

You can also add it to case studies, blog posts, and more. 

Overall, because of its appealing and simple style, creating infographics increases the chances of people sharing the content. 

 7. Video content

Videos need no introduction as everyone loves this content format. It’s engaging, eye-catching, and captures and sustains people’s attention. 

There are several ways to use videos as a consulting firm. 

It could be: 

• Client testimonials where existing consulting clients share their experiences with your firm. 
• Explainer videos, showing the audience how a concept or your service works.
• Case studies. Yup, case studies can be in video format. That’s an approach Ceros uses too. 
• Interviews with industry experts like Jim Collins, author of Built to Last.

In Deloitte’s case, videos bring the company’s research to life. 

Image Source: YouTube

According to the financial services firm, videos illustrate its articles in greater depth. 

And that’s precisely what you’ll find if you scroll through Deloitte’s YouTube page. It also has inspirational stories that are related to Deloitte’s global network. 

8. Newsletters

These are personalized emails sent to existing and new clients to ensure you’re at the front of their minds.

It’s also a good way to keep an open line of communication with them. You can decide to send email newsletters on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. 

Think of this content format as if you’re pen pals with prospective and existing clients.

The newsletter can be about anything that adds value to them such as:

• Informing them about a report or survey you’ve just produced. 
• Curated industry news and what it means for them. 
• Updates about your firm. 
• Upcoming conferences or events that may be beneficial to your audience. 
• Recent success stories about how you helped a client a few weeks back. 
• Expert tips on how to tackle new policies that are being introduced. 

Creating this type of content promotes client loyalty and could lead to repeat business. 

9. Podcasts

This piece of content is an audio-based conversation for audiences that prefer listening to reading. 

You could invite industry experts to speak on trends or predict where they believe the industry is headed and best practices to follow. 

Another option might be to invite notable clients and discuss their journey. You can even repurpose webinars here so people can listen on the go. 

Alternatively, you could pick a sub-niche within the industry and talk about how it impacts everyone. 

That’s what Deloitte did with its podcast series. 

It has different podcasts for different areas the firm is involved in, from tax to cloud computing, and work well-being. You can do the same too and reach clients with varying interests. 

Now, the good thing about this format is that accessing it is quite convenient, allowing the audience to listen anywhere they choose. 

10. Interactive content

If you want a content format that captures and glues the audience to their screen, then interactive content is the right choice. 

It’s a type of content that allows people to actively interact with the content by playing a game, responding to a survey, and clicking or hovering over a hotspot to view information. 

Interactive content isn’t just another type of content that’s visually appealing, it gets the audience involved. 

You can create a quiz that helps potential clients if their business needs help or a decision assessment that guides them through choosing services that are right for them.  

If you’d like to know about interactive content and what it looks like, click here. 😉 You’ll be taken to our Inspire page where you’ll see different examples and try out some templates. 

With that out of the way, here’s how to create a marketing strategy for your consulting firm.

How can consulting firms create a content marketing strategy?

Simply by following the steps we’ve listed below. The first thing to do is…

Determine your goals

You need to define what you want to achieve for your consulting firm. 

No doubt an increase in sales is a good start. But you want to be more specific. 

So, a better place to begin is to brainstorm with your teammates to highlight different areas that can help you achieve that objective. 

Those areas, for instance, could mean improving brand awareness or lead generation. 

You then want to refine it using our favorite S.M.A.R.T. framework which stands for:

• Specific: Clearly define what you want to accomplish.
• Measurable: Ensure you can track your progress.
• Achievable: Set a realistic target.
• Relevant: Make sure it aligns with your overall business objectives.
• Time-bound: Set a deadline for achieving the goal.

Here’s what the goal would look like if you do: 

Increase brand awareness by 75% through launching targeted social media campaigns on LinkedIn and Twitter within Q4 of 2024. 

Define your target audience

Right after identifying what you’re working toward, the next step is to determine your audience. This is important to know which approach to take when creating content so that it resonates with them. 

So, how do you define your target audience? 

First, go through your social media following and check who engages with your post the most. Look at their titles, locations, company names, and how often they engage with you. 

Secondly, take a quick peek at your competitors in the industry using Semrush’s One2Target tool. After you type in their URL, it loads the necessary audience demographics you need to know. 

Thirdly, interview existing audiences, aka repeat buyers, who’ve been around for a while. Ask them questions such as challenges they’re facing, primary goals, aspects of your service they love, preferred content type, or how they stay informed about industry trends. 

Find the right topics

Your next step is to find topics to create content around. 

Here are different ways to do this:

• Create content around the challenges existing clients are dealing with based on your previous research. 
• Carry out keyword research to find terms people are searching for in your industry using Ahrefs’ keywords explorer. Type in a keyword for a general search and click related questions or matching terms to identify what the audience is looking for. 
• Use Answer The Public to find content ideas. You only need to type in a keyword people are searching for and it’ll show questions and terms to build content around. 

Create content consistently

In content marketing, you’re trying to use content to convince people to subscribe to your services. 

As such, you can’t have a once-in-a-blue moon vibe. You need to keep producing content consistently, whether it’s once or twice a week, once a month, or even bi-weekly. 

One way to do that is to create a content calendar using CoSchedule. It’s an app devoted to creating calendars and all things scheduling.  

Along with an editorial calendar, using platforms that help you produce interactive content consistently will make content creation easier.

A tool like Ceros is a great tool. It lets you create and scale interactive content effortlessly so you can be consistent and keep the audience engaged. 

Promote your content

Next up, you need to think about letting people know about this high-quality content you’ve produced. 

Here’s how to do that:

• Launch an email campaign: If there’s an email list you send newsletters to, now is a good time to let them know you’ve got new content for them. 
• Collaborate with influencers and industry leaders: This involves them sharing the content with their followers and tagging you in the post.  
• Consider using paid ads: Another option is to promote the content via popular newsletters, blogs, or even boost it on social media. 
• Leverage social media: You can share bits of the content via social media platforms with links to the original to draw people in. You also want to add popular hashtags in your industry and trending sounds to get the algorithm to work in your favor. 

If you’ve diligently followed the steps outlined here, you’re sure to have an effective content marketing campaign. 

But then, how do you know the goals you set are being met?

Find out in the section that follows.

What key metrics can measure content marketing success for consulting businesses?

To know if you’re hitting set marketing goals or are close at least, here are key performance indicators (KPIs) to track: 

• Click-through rates (CTR): This is how many people clicked on your content, divided by the number of people who saw it. CTR is used to measure the effectiveness of keywords used so you know which one works for future campaigns. You can use Google Analytics to measure this if your website is connected to it. 
• Conversion rates: The number of people who’ve performed a desired action like subscribing, signing up, etc. Google Analytics can help track this too via the Reports dashboard. 
• User engagement: How many people are liking, sharing, and commenting on your content? That’s user engagement. You can monitor this metric via your CMS if the content is a blog or website post and a social media analytics page if it’s a social post. 
• Website traffic and rankings: Traffic is finding out how many people are visiting your website or checking out your content. Rankings, on the other hand, mean knowing your position on the search engine results pages. Both metrics can be tracked using Google Analytics too. 

Now to wrap up, let’s discuss helpful tools that can simplify your content marketing campaign.

What platforms should consulting firms use for digital marketing?

Here are some top platforms we’ve curated for you: 

• Ceros: Need a tool to streamline the content creation process? Ceros is precisely the tool you need. It’s a platform that allows you to produce interactive content from templates. Once you sign up, find a template that represents the kind of content you want, and edit. 
• Ahrefs: This tool is your partner for all kinds of search engine optimization (SEO) tasks from keyword research to content audit, researching content ideas, finding link-building opportunities, and more. 
• Sprout Social: An all-in-one social media management tool, Sprout Social can help streamline your social media marketing campaigns. It can automate tasks like responding to customers, publishing social posts, notifying you of mentions on social media, and driving brand growth with influencer marketing. Overall, it manages all your social media accounts in a centralized location so you’re not all over the place. 
• Mailchimp: You can use Mailchimp to launch email marketing campaigns. It can help create landing pages to collect leads, draft the newsletters, schedule when to send them out to your email lists, and monitor their performance. 

That brings us to the end of this guide. Let’s wrap up!

Over to you!

We’ve shown you different tools that can help streamline your content marketing campaign. 

But there’s one tool that’s so good we have to mention it again. 

It’s Ceros, our very own tool. 

Aside from promoting our platform, Ceros is a tool that delivers the results you want. 

It helps produce interactive content that can turn people’s attention to you, bring in leads, and ultimately achieve your business goals. That’s what Frost & Sullivan experienced when they used Ceros, they got a 150% increase in visibility, a 20% increase in click-through rate, and more.

Your consulting firm can experience that too. 

Schedule a demo with us today and let’s pick it up from there.