Professional Services Firms: Still Not Sold on the Business Case for Twitter?

by Erica Stritch on November 23, 2009

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I admit it. I am not ready to go to bat for Twitter and claim it as the next best marketing tool for all professional services firms—at least not just yet. However, Mike Stelzner’s new venture, SocialMedia Examiner may soon make me a convert.

Mike Stelzner's Social Media Examiner

A recent case study on the site, It Pays to Listen: Avaya’s $250K Twitter Sale by Casey Hibbard is worth a read. It details how communications giant Avaya has integrated social media into its marketing mix and closed a new, quarter-of-a-million dollar deal as a result.

The #1 take-away from Avaya’s story: go where your customers and prospects are.

This is a simple, yet powerful idea—one that professional services firms need to keep in mind not only when deciding which social media sites to join, but with every marketing and business development tactic considered.

If you’re trying to sell to the Fortune 500, would you look for networking opportunities at your local small business association event? Would you place an ad in Entrepreneur magazine? No, because these audiences are not the clients you are trying to reach.

“We identified conversations we wanted to go deeply into. Wherever conversations about small business and communications happen, we need to be there.”
– Paul Dunay, global managing director of services and social media marketing, Avaya

Social media—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogging, and the like—are simply tools you can add to your business development kit. They won’t do the all the work for you. And before you jump on the bandwagon, you must do the research to understand where your prospects and clients are.

Ask yourself:

Are my clients and prospects on Twitter? It doesn’t take long to do a couple searches of your clients typing in their name and “Twitter” into a Google search to find out.
Do my clients and prospects have their own blogs? Visit a few client and prospect websites, and you’ll find their blog (or lack thereof) fairly quickly.
Are my clients active in LinkedIn groups? Go on LinkedIn and search for a few of your best clients and prospects, connect with them, and see which groups they belong to. Join these groups and become a part of the conversation.

At the end of the day, professional services marketing and business development is all about building and strengthening relationships. The emergence of these new social media tools helps us facilitate this relationship building and client engagement online. If your clients use these media, you can’t afford to opt out.

And, if you decide social media is right for you, check out SocialMedia Examiner and sign up for their free newsletter. It has a slew of useful information, tips, how-tos, and cases to help you get started and get the most out of your social media endeavors.

Topics: Marketing Strategy, Social Media

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Is Twitter Right for Everyone?: February 2, 2010 at 6:04 am

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

Ian Brodie November 23, 2009 at 1:34 pm

“Go where your customers and prospects are” is indeed one of the simplest, most powerful, and most overlooked pieces of marketing advice.

I know lawyers, trainers, speakers, consultants, and writers who’ve all received work from relationships initiated via Twitter. In fact, I’ve done so myself.

Yet for others, Twitter has been a red herring. A terrible time-burner. A number of prominent professional services commenters have written it off as a dead end for business development.

And they’re right on average. For most professionals at the moment, Twitter isn’t a great way to get new clients.

But if your clients are in the media or high tech, then a great many of them are using Twitter (sometimes in the place of face-to-face networking networking). Even if only a few of your clients are using Twitter, but you’re the only one of your peers connecting with them, then again you can win business.

It’s certainly not a universal panacea — far from it. But for some professionals it could be a source of good new business. The key is not to write it off or wholeheartedly embrace it until you’ve done some digging and figured out if it might work for you.

Ian

Erica Stritch November 23, 2009 at 2:33 pm: Ian,

Great point. Thanks for sharing your stories and experiences. They remind me of 3 examples Dianna Huff shared on her blog recently about how social networking works together with face-to-face networking: http://ow.ly/EXpA.

At the end of the day, it depends on your goals and who you are trying to reach and connect with. There certainly is no blanket approach that works for everyone and every business.

Erica

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Cindy King November 24, 2009 at 9:35 am

I’m glad you liked Casey Hibbard’s case study on Social Media Examiner.

Reading through your comments with Ian, I just had to let you know that I use Twitter for business networking to develop my international business. As a new business I prefer to target good sources of referrals and not individual clients… and it works. But just like you pointed out, Twitter is only one part of the networking process. You need more than a couple of tweets to establish strong business relationships. The thing is, Twitter helps to make lots of those first-time connections.

Unlike Ian, I don’t see Twitter being limited to specific industry sectors, unless you are only talking about making sales. There are also other ways businesses of all sizes (and in different industries) can use Twitter. Think about networking to find referral sources, suppliers, and any other business contacts you may have.

Erica Stritch November 24, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Cindy,

Thanks for sharing how you’ve had success. Twitter (and social networking in general) is a great place to build relationships with referral sources. And as you indicate, these media have really broken down the international walls for our businesses. Using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the like we can make solid business connections all over the globe without leaving our desk.

Erica

Jeff Ventura November 30, 2009 at 10:03 am

I am the Director of Marketing and Digital Strategy for MIPRO Consulting, an ERP and SaaS professional services firm. By every measure, we are in a “dry” business, one whose sales cycles are long and insider paths to large $1M+ deals are paved through strong personal relationships and business politicking.

When I came aboard the company, there was no blog, no Facebook presence, no Twitter account. The company was missing every new media conversation out there in favor of more ‘traditional’ marketing vehicles: tradeshows, user groups, direct mailings, email campaigns.

After introducing the idea of social media participation and blogging, we have FAR more brand visibility than we ever have. Our competition is still struggling to get up and running on these platforms, and even once they are, they underestimate the time and effort it takes to be persistent with them.

While we haven’t directly closed any $250K+ deals as a result of Twitter, we do have about $500K in *potential* revenue in our prospect pipeline.

As these tools trend towards the mainstream more, your customers will be there, even if reluctantly. The adaptation curve has just begun, and at this point, I think it’s clear that there is a business play with social media done intelligently.

Good post.

Jeff Ventura
MIPRO Consulting
blog
Twitter
Facebook

Erica Stritch November 30, 2009 at 3:22 pm: Jeff,

Thanks for sharing your experience. The way your blog, Facebook page, and Twitter account are integrated is a great example for us all of how the media work together.

Furthermore, your point, “they underestimate the time and effort it takes to be persistence with them” is right on the money. Like anything, when it comes to social media you get out of it what you put in and it takes patience and persistance for results.

Erica

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