Dear Saburo,
I just went to have a look at your website and found that it was
unavailable. This is the first big problem. In this day and age the
internet is perhaps the single most important way in which consultants
can bring their services to the attention of the wider world at
minimal cost. I will therefore pay some attention to this factor
before suggesting some other ways in which you can enhance your
marketing.
ONLINE DEVELOPMENT
First of all, I would advise you to get your own domain name -
www.yourcompanyname.com - is the very first step. People do not tend
to take companies working off a free hosting service particularly
seriously. It is also important for another step that I will mention
in a moment.
Secondly, it is worth spending a bit of money having a professional
web-designer create a site for you. A good site should have a section
explaining in detail the sort of services you offer with some clear
examples; a section which tells people about you and your experience;
and contact details. This is the very minimum.
The third step is to make sure that you get as much exposure from
Search Engines and Directories as possible. For Directories it is
often better to have your own domain name (as I mentioned above). Some
directories do not accept sites that work from free hosting. Perhaps
the single most important directory for your purpose is the Open
Directory Project (ODP):
http://dmoz.org
This is a free directory and forms the basis of Google's own
directory. The main advantage is that it is free. However, in many
categories there is a very long waiting period. Be prepared. Once you
have your site built and have launched it, go to the ODP and browse
through the categories until you find the section that most accurately
describes your services. Then submit. You must make sure that your
site is complete and has no 'under construction' pages as this is
often a good enough reason to eb rejected from the ODP (and many other
directories).
After ODP you will need to look for other directories and do the same.
You will find that there are likely to be a good number that are free
to list. Make sure that you submit your site to as many of these as
possible. Be creative and search extensively. Find out who your
competitors are and see where they are listed. One good technique for
finding out where your competitors are listed is to go to Google and
type the following in the search box:
link:www.yourcompetitorsname.com
This should call up all the main sites where they are listed. Look
around and see where you can also be listed.
However, after ODP the main targets will, unfortunately, be pay to
list sites. The two main ones that you will need to focus on are are:
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com
Looksmart http://www.looksmart.com
Yahoo charges an annual fee of about $299. Looksmart is different in
so far as they have a system where you pay for every time a user
clicks on your link for the search listings they provide for sites
such as MSN. You can, however, set a monthly budget. Of the two, Yahoo
is probably the more important.
The single most important online strategy is, however, search engines.
As a word of warning - DO NOT USE AUTOMATIC SUBMISSION SERVICES. These
are the services that advertise themselves with 'submit your site to
1000 search engines'. Instead, you will need to do it manually. It is
time consuming, but worth it. Of all the search engines, Google is by
far the most important. Google not only is the most used search engine
on the web, it also supplies the search results for Yahoo! and AOL.
You can expect to get roughly 70-90% of your search engines referrals
from Google or Google affiliates!
You can submit your site to Google on the following page:
://www.google.com/addurl.html
There are many other searchengines, of varying quality and importance,
some of the main ones are:
All the Web www.alltheweb.com (increasingly popular in Europe)
Teoma www.wisenut.com (they supply results to Ask Jeeves)
For a full list of good Search engines and some starting Directories,
the following page is useful:
Search Engine Articles and Resources
http://www.sitepointforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=53874
Now, getting on to search engines is only the first part of the task.
There is a lot of competition to get to the top of the result
listings. It is no good being listed on page 10 of the results. You
need to be on the first page, preferably in the first three. The main
secret to doing well with search engines is to have as much
high-quality content as possible on your site. This means writing and
posting new articles on your site about your area of expertise. These
all help to add to your reputation and also provide valuable fodder
for the search engine spiders that come to your site to index your
material.
For a very good analysis of how to rank highly in Goggle using only
legitimate techniques (be warned there are people who will claim to
get use high ranking by using forbidden methods - avoid this at all
costs), you *should* read the following:
Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm
TRADITIONAL MARKETING
Apart from online marketing and business development, there is also
the more traditional forms of gaining exposure and signing new
clients.
One of the best ways in which you can enhance your reputation is by
contributing relevant articles to professional publications or the
news media. By professional publications I do not mean academic
journals, which only have a very limited exposure. Instead, try to
identify the types of magazines that are read by your target audience
and then get in touch with the editors to find out how you can
contribute. In return for supplying an article, make sure that they
give you a couple of lines to mention your company. If you are doing
something for website *make sure that they list your website URL*.
Another very important way in which you can raise your profile is by
speaking at relevant events, such as conferences, workshops and
seminars. While I understand that this is your business, you might
also find that speaking at conferences can be a very good way to give
potential clients a 'taster' of your full offerings. This can also be
a proactive process, where you go out and try to identify conferences
that have been held in the past at which you feel you could have made
a good presentation and then contact the organizers to see if they
will be holding another event. Very often business conference
organizers are keen to have fresh speakers and if you have the right
expertise (which you would seem to have) then they would probably be
delighted to add your name to their list of speakers. With a good
website, and regular exposure in business publications, you should
find that event organizers will start to come to you!
More difficult, but sometimes successful, is the cold calling
technique. As you will probably understand, this is very frustrating
and will rarely bring results. However, a sale is a sale. For the type
of work you do the key to cold calling is letter writing (hard copy,
not e-mail). In terms of identifying the right types of company to
approach there is no really simple answer. It will take hard work and
a lot of time reading the international business press. What you need
to keep an eye out for are companies that are looking to expand into
your countries of expertise. The next step is to identify the key
people in the target company who are likely to be responsible for
purchasing your services. At that point you have your lead, the next
step is to write to the person you have identified as being the most
likely to be receptive to your idea. I have suggested a book at the
end of this answer that has a very good example of the type of cold
calling letter that should be used. Try to write at least five a week.
Do not wait and send out 100-200 at a time as you might just find that
you get flooded with more work than you know how to handle. Besides
which, it is better to keep a continuous flow going and create a
routine.
However, the single most important marketing technique is
word-of-mouth. Consultants more often than not get most of their work
from repeat clients or clients referred by a previous client. Look
through your list of past clients and contact them to see how they are
getting along and see whether you could be of any service to them now.
Try to remind them that you are around. At the same time, see if they
would be prepared to recommend you to any clients they may have, or
see if they have any ideas about other companies you could try
approaching. You should also look to try and form co-operative
relationships with other professionals. Very often you will find that
accountants and lawyers dealing with people entering new markets are a
very good source of referrals. This can work both ways. You may also
find that you can refer clients to them. Needless to say, this can
also be lucrative if you decide on referral fees. However, you will
need to check on the legality of this in various jurisdictions.
If you are looking for a very good book on how to develop your
consulting business, may I suggest the following:
Alex Dembitz & James Essinger
Breakthrough Consulting
FT / prentice Hall, 2000
ISBN 0 273 63707 X
I should note that most of this advice comes from personal experience.
It is not easy to reach into new markets when you are working in a
niche/specialized field, but the secret is to make all facets of
marketing work for you. The internet is an invaluable tool for raising
your profile, and giving prospective clients a way to find out more
about you, but I would say that the word-of-mouth approach is the
single most important factor.
I hope all of this helps. Good luck with your efforts. |
Request for Answer Clarification by
saburo-ga
on
08 Apr 2003 18:31 PDT
Your answer was full of useful information, even though you had not
sighted my website. However, it did not address my original question,
which was about identifying the target market. You assumed, I believe,
that I would know or could easily identify the target market, or you
assumed that the target market is composed (largely?) of people who go
to conferences or read the popular press on the topic. Unfortunately,
I don't subscribe to that because my experience is that clients (who
have come to me in the past) do so when they run into trouble -
otherwise they would not be likely to read articles or go to
conferences. That sort of runs me into a hole - namely, that the
target market is undefinable, and if so, why did I ask a question in
the fist place? I ask myself. Good question, Saburo. But I'm being too
logical. My target market can be defined as composed of organizations
- public and private - as well as individuals, who are doing business
with, or planning to do business with, East Asian countries or people
- they are in the early stages of the relationship, and have many
unanswered questions, OR, people or policies on one or both sides have
suddenly changed, and new issues, problems have arisen which cannot be
resolved. It was to get help (conceptual as well as substantive)in
identifying those organizations or people, or some of them, that I
asked my question in the first place. If I put myself in your shoes, I
think you've done as good a job as can be done, save for not
addressing this most central of questions for me. Thanks for your
effort, but I would like you to address this question. It will be OK
if there is no simple answer.
Saburo
|
Clarification of Answer by
civilitas-ga
on
08 Apr 2003 22:07 PDT
Dear Saburo,
Thank you for your comments about the information and tips. I should
note once again that my answer was based on accumulated personal
experience. I actually work as a conultant in a very closely related
field to your own. Essentially it would seem that we both work with
people who are looking at, or engaged in, unfamiliar markets and have
run into difficulties or have concerns. Our respective businesses,
albeit in different ways, and in different regions, would seem to be
about allaying fears when fears are unfounded or providing answers
when they are. I also come from an academic background and after a
number of years accumulating various degrees and teaching I turned a
very specific knowledge of a region into a commercial venture. This
was my first answer to Google Answers precisely because when I read
the question I understood *exactly* the problem you were having.
I also took a look on the net for some background information and came
across the Gallagher case and your very interesting commentary on that
particular issue:
http://www2.kumagaku.ac.jp/teacher/~jtomei/gwen/margal.htm
Your insight into this was fascinating. It was also the sort of thing
that made me wonder if you could not try and find a magazine or paper
and write a regular column on the issue of cultural differences and
the specific impact this has on business. How about looking at
contributing to publucations like the following:
Success Stories Japan
http://www.successstories.com/sshome.htm
Asia Business Today (Management articles)
http://www.asiabusinesstoday.org
This is one part of the techniques I alluded to in my previous answer
where I tried to lay out the ways in which you can take a more active
approach to marketing yourself and your consulting business. It is for
this reason that I suggested the following main points:
-Build a website with useful information and articles and publicise
it.
As far as ODP listings are concerned, try the following:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Asia/Japan/Business_and_Economy/Consultants/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Asia/China/Business_and_Economy/Services/
-Start writing articles in business publications.
The following list might be helpful asa starting point:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Asia/Japan/Business_and_Economy/News/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Asia/China/News_and_Media/
-Speak at business oriented events.
Look at some these event organisers:
http://www.economistconferences.com
http://www.marcusevans.com/offices/tokyo.asp
http://www.marcusevans.com/offices/shanghai.asp
-Get referrals from past clients.
-Form relationships with other professionals.
These are the standard tools of consultancy marketing. (I left out
advertising for the simple reason that it is often expensive and is
not usually a particularly good means of marketing in consulting.)
However, if I am correct, you have said that this advice is all very
well but how do you identify the market. You asked for specific
prospects from the following:
-SMEs
-Large Companies
-Multinational corporations
-Government departments and agencies
-Diplomatic missions
-International Organisations
-NGOs
Working in:
-Japan
-China
Facing:
-Changing circumstances
-Unfamiliar environment
-Concerns about specific situations
-Particular problems
But you made the very valid point in our field, 'how can I identify
people who have not made their intentions or problems publicly known?'
To use logic, I would then have to ask how you could possibly hope to
identify the unobservable? We work in a field in which people are none
to keen to have the wider world know about their problem or concerns.
This was an early stage problem that I encountered. Sadly, there is no
magic bullet to this problem. If there were then independent
consulting in this field would be an easy business. You have the
knowledge and people would queue up to use it.
The answer, therefore, is to publicise yourself so that prospective
clients can come to you when they have problems. You said that I had
made the assumption that these people would go to conferences or read
the popular press (in fact I made it clear that it was a specialist
publications - but not academic journals), but that, in your
experience, this was not the case. In my experience, no serious
business or organisation plans to work - or works - in an unfamiliar
region without trying to learn something about the environment. Even
if they do not read the press or attend conferences, they will use
professional services. There is no getting around that. I would
therefore suggest that you try to make contact with professional
services firms and let them know about what you do and see if they can
refer clients to you. As I mentioned, make it clear that this is a
two-way street and that you will come across clients who will need
professional services and you will refer work to them. If you add a
financial incentive to this, it can work very well.
I would also take a second, closer look at your previous clients. How
did they find you? This in large part gives further validity to my
earlier points about the very best form of business development in
this situation is not to identify specific prospects, but for specific
prospects to be able to identify you. In the past clients came to you.
You now want to go to them. But this is, perhaps, the wrong way of
looking at it. You still want them to come to you, but now you want to
expand the numbers who know about you.
I make sure that I, and the members of my company, get out there and
engage in all of the above cited marketing tactics. We never know who
is our *precise* target market. We just make sure that we do
everythign we can to be in a situation whereby when someone does have
a problem or a concern and start asking around, or doing an internet
search, we are the first name they come across.
I am sorry if this is not what you wanted, but please understand that
I am not writing this as someone removed from your problems. I am a
practitioner myself and after years of experience, and frequent
contact with others working in the same field, my answer was a summary
of the conventional wisdom on the subject of marketing yourself - a
process that allows worldwide prospects to identify you. It is never
easy.
SEARCH TERMS
------------
Business conferences in Japan
Business conferences in China
Business publications Japan
Business publications China
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