Increasingly, as we talk to and work with leaders and marketers inside professional services firms we feel like the web has become a growing source of frustration. Yet, when we look across the landscape of new technologies and the changing nature of professional services buyers, we see nothing but opportunity for what a firm’s website should be today and could be tomorrow.
The Growing Web Frustration
In about a week, we’re going to be releasing the first half of a two-part e-book series on the state of content marketing and website development in professional services firms. Below is a summary of what we see and hear based on that analysis:
- Firms have been through a myriad of site redesigns through the years and feel like they have little to show from the effort.
- They see their website as a large annual expense, but not a source of large business value.
- They recognize that professional services aren’t bought through the web, and therefore relegate their website to a limited role of demonstrating credibility.
- Their website has a passive role in the business development process, at best.
- Their website is often disconnected from internal systems like CRM. If it is connected, integration is incomplete and is doing little more than passing on some basic lead information.
- They get bogged down with the technical aspects of content management and SEO and lose sight of the reason they have a site at all.
Your Website Should Be a Source of Competitive Advantage
At Mlicki, we envision a much greater role for the firm website in the marketing and business development process than it’s delivering now in most firms. A firm’s website should be:
- Creating opportunity for your firm beyond your typical geographic markets.
- Introducing you to prospects you’ve never met.
- The definitive, undisputed source of your firm’s collective expertise and previous experience.
- Functioning at all phases of the buying cycle.
- Delicately converting casual “faceless” site visitors into qualified leads for your business development team.
- Giving you visibility into where those prospects are in the buying process.
- Giving you visibility into what marketing programs are adding the most value to your client attraction efforts.
- Seamlessly integrated with your CRM in such a way that it’s creating both value and visibility for both your marketing team and your business development personnel.
- The source of upwards of 10-15% of your firm’s new business won every year.
Digging Deeper
In about a week, we’re going to be releasing the first half of a two-part e-book series on the state of content marketing and website development in professional services firms. The e-books are based on an analysis we performed of 85 firms spread across three distinct industries: A/E/P, consulting and accounting. The foundational thinking for the analysis was based on the vision we’ve outlined above for what a high-value website could look like.
