Are You Continually Learning?

Like any professional, you must work to stay relevant to your clients and market. This means you must stay current with the skills necessary for the market’s needs and knowledge about developments and trends in your industry. If you don’t keep up, you risk obsolescence. And your marketing must reflect all of this in obvious and subtle ways.

An example of keeping up regards using collaboration platforms. There are many of these platforms used to manage aspects of projects ranging from calendars and shared documents to conference calls and customer relationship management. If you aren’t familiar with the ones your market uses, you’ll be presenting a barrier to getting hired. These are the tools your prospective clients may use—ones they expect you to be comfortable using.

Your skills likely need to be enhanced on an ongoing basis, especially in industries where certifications or special tools are required to perform work. The nice thing is that you can find training for almost anything online. If not, be sure to keep up on trends and take any available courses. A good source for direction and offerings in this area is your local or national professional organization(s). I’ve had outstanding learning experiences through meetings, presentations, workshops and conferences via several organizations.

You might find great value in attending industry and related industry conferences. This can be an efficient way to stay current on skills, knowledge and trends. It also affords you opportunities to network with colleagues and prospects. In some cases, you might invest your time and money to build connections and familiarity with certain events to set yourself up as a future speaker or panelist.

Attending conferences can be costly, so I suggest that you choose them strategically. I consider conferences that provide solid training through workshops on trending skills or topics, networking opportunities with target clients, the chance to meet prominent experts in my field, and ideally visit a location where I can conduct other business activities.

Sometimes you can recognize trends in your field and industry by reading, through conversations with people in and outside your field, and by listening to clients. It’s easier to just keep up than to position yourself a step ahead, which is more valuable. Therefore, you must ask the right questions to a diverse group of individuals at the right times.

An effective way I’ve found to become aware of trends within my industry and those that potentially could affect my industry is through startups. I follow startup developments via various online news and notification services. I’m constantly asking: What’s going on here? How could the activities of these startups affect aspects of my industry? And, how these startups affect my target clients? Then, I ask how I can move in those directions with my services and marketing.

Additionally, I engage with startup founders and teams through networking and outreach efforts as potential clients. When I provide services to startups, I also ask plenty of questions and make observations to learn from those interactions for marketing purposes.

Within your marketing communications, you want to indicate how you’re staying ahead of the curve in your field. Specifically, this can be touched on in your Web content, proposals and conversations with prospective clients.

Excerpt from Smart Marketing for Solopreneurs and Microbusinesses by Douglas Freeman, available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GV55XJR?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_BR83A5H13WK2G85TV3BQ_1

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