The 8 Great Pitfalls of Professional Services Marketing

The 8 biggest growth pitfalls to avoid

Do you want more clients? Running your own business gives you the freedom to create the life you want. But not having enough clients can hold you back. And there are eight big marketing mistakes you must avoid to reach your goals.

While it's great to run your own business, the challenge of getting more clients can hold you back. If you're not an expert at marketing, it can take up a lot of your time. And there's always the risk of doing it wrong and wasting your money.

Many IT Consultants struggle to find clients. They keep their head above water like a hunter-gatherer foraging for food. But this approach became obsolete over 10,000 years ago.

If you want more stability and growth, you need predictable marketing. And this means overcoming the Eight Great Pitfalls of professional services marketing. Let's take a look at each one.

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Struggling to get clients? You've got issues

An Issue Tree is a model used in consulting to break down a complex problem into branches. This enables you to use a hypothesis-driven approach to solving marketing problems. You can drill down into your deeper issues and find the root cause of your problem.

Marketing is complex. Based on the clients I've worked with, I've developed my own issue tree (See figure 1.). My point of view is that the challenge of not having enough clients breaks down into a subset of two problems: No Brand Strategy and No Marketing Roadmap. These two problems can be further broken down into my Eight Great Pitfalls of professional services marketing.

This framework gives you a "starting point" for achieving growth. But you can't just check all the boxes. Each pitfall requires a solution that's unique to your business needs, goals, resources, aspirations, competitive arena, target audience, and so on.

The eight great pitfalls

1. Marketing misalignment

This happens when you haven't clearly defined your target audience. Because then you're not sure what motivates them. And it becomes difficult to create marketing that attracts and engages them.

2. Credibility gap

You have this problem when potential clients aren't sure if you can deliver on what you promise. Then it won't matter how good your services are because Business-to-business buyers always want to avoid risk.

3. Commodity rut

Your business is stuck here when you have too many competitors, and you look and act the same as everyone else. Then the only question left on a prospect's mind is what's your best price?

4. Identity crisis

This happens when your business has no reason to exist other than to make money. Then work becomes a chore. And your business will struggle to gain momentum.

5. Growth barrier

This happens when you're not constantly reaching out to new prospects. Because if you’re not building and nurturing new relationships, your sales will eventually decline.

6. Buyer indifference

This is a tricky one. This is when potential clients don't know what their problems are. Then they can’t connect the dots between their problems and your services. So they won’t see the value in what you offer.

7. Sales disengagement

This happens when you haven’t provided answers to all the questions buyers have before they’ll buy. So their buying journey comes to a halt. Or else they turn to one of your competitors who does have all the answers.

8. Low-status brand

This happens when potential clients have never heard of you. Or, they don't see you as an expert. Then you're not their top choice. And you may have to settle for less-than-desirable clients.

Learn how to avoid the eight great pitfalls

So as you can see, there's a lot more to marketing professional services, than just advertising. My Crash Course on Marketing provides explains how to overcome the eight pitfalls. Each video contains a Case Study and Whiteboard Demonstration of how you can use one of my principles in your business.