Marketing Tips to be Successful as a Consultant

When I was called into my supervisor's office that Monday morning, I did not expect to get a “pink slip” as I thought I was indispensable, which turned out to be wishful thinking. After that meeting I called my wife who took it well, and then my coach, who congratulated me as it allowed me to become a “free agent” and pursue my dream of becoming a consultant. That was 3 decades ago.

Part of my severance package was a retraining allowance of which I used every penny; and it was worth every penny. I used it to become a CPC (Certified Professional Consultant). This was a multi-day training event where experienced consultants shared their wisdom. I learned valuable marketing lessons, which contributed to a large degree to my successful career. This is a list of those lessons:

1.????? Find your niche. The smaller and more specialized you are, the better. Our instructor told me that his career as a marketing consultant only took off after changing from being a generalist to becoming a marketing specialist for fitness centers. So when one of my colleagues and mentor told me to specialize in “DICOM”, instead of positioning myself as a general healthcare IT or PACS consultant, I took his advice. It has been proven to be important to shift that niche as it becomes mature and focus subsequently on PACS certification, IHE standards, then HL7V2 and FHIR, and most recently AI connectivity but the specialization has paid off.

2.????? Speak at conferences. It took a few years to get into the “speaking circuit” but fortunately I had a great mentor of one of the grandfathers of PACS, the late Sam Dwyer. Sam was chairing a couple of sessions at SIIM (then called SCAR) and he gave me a thick document at that time which was the HIPAA rule telling me to read it as it would make a big impact. A few weeks later he called me to tell me I was going to speak at the conference on this subject, which made me a de-fact expert overnight. I subsequently went on to do presentations at RSNA and other conferences to talk about it. It will take perseverance to become part of the conference “in-crowd” and your presentation proposals will likely be rejected a couple of times but as soon as you get to speak a few times you’re in.

3.????? Write a book. Anyone who writes a book on a subject automatically qualifies as an expert. A book seems overwhelming and a lot of work, but you can start by writing an article or post every one or two weeks and after doing that for 1-2 years you can bundle it as a book, which is what I did. Publishing a book today is relatively easy, and low-risk especially if you decide to create an eBook, but when I published my first book it was scary as a minimum print run for a thousand copies ran into more than $10k which was a big investment. Make sure you self-publish. I was approached by one of the big publishers to write a book on DICOM but the best you get is a few cents for every book sold and a few free copies. For a consultant, it is much more valuable to be able to give the book complimentary to your clients and students as it differentiates you and sets you apart from the competition. Also, selling the book online creates a nice steady cash flow. I sold more than 5000 copies of both the DICOM and PACS books which is more than the 3000 copies which is the average for a textbook, again related to the fact that these subjects are very much niche subjects. At every conference, several people approach me telling me that they read one of the textbooks I authored.

4.????? Write articles. Articles serve two purposes, first, they can become the core of a book and second, they keep your name in front of your potential clients. It is not unusual that I get an inquiry one or two days after a new post on social media. In addition, it creates a “bond” with your supporters especially if you write occasional a personal post. When I just started I first was publishing newsletters, sending out hardcopies, soon replaced by softcopies, and subsequently blog posts. Now it is all about publishing on social media of which LinkedIn is the most used and effective for business-to-business. Creating a following on LinkedIn is critical and takes time and effort. I typically get a couple of connection requests after every post so your audience grows steadily. As you can see from the LinkedIn screenshot, I just passed the 10,000 connection mark which makes me a “micro-influencer” which took me a few years of diligent posting.

5.????? Be active on social media. I looked at the stats of my last year's LinkedIn posts: I did 69 posts which is about 1.5 posts every week. There is no question that “content is king” as the technical articles get an average 7500 views which is more than twice the average of overall 3700 views over all categories. Travel stories, conference reports, and personal stories also get views above average, with 120%, 110% and 105% respectively. A good and easy way to get views is by reposting interesting stories from others, which could be from LinkedIn or from CNN, WSJ or the NYT, which gave me an average 2500 views. My passion for global radiology is not widely shared as posts on that subject get only 2500 views and dead last are advertisements such as “Come see me at RSNA” with an average of 1000 views. But each of these categories is important, they supplement each other and touch a different audience, both local and global.

In conclusion, to be successful as a consultant you need to find your niche, speak and publish frequently, and use social media on a regular basis. Using different categories of LinkedIn posts is useful and effective. I followed these rules and I can attest to you that it works!

?Herman Oosterwijk.

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