The Government’s UK Financial Centres of Excellence report (2016) describes professional services as a major contributor to growth and employment, with over 2 million people (making up 7 percent of the working population) working within professional services in the UK.
Increasing numbers of East Midlands professional services firms
More people working in professional services, means more firms are popping up across the UK and the East Midlands is no exception. Two thirds of people working in professional services work outside of Greater London and as stated in an article by TheCityUk, more than 82,000 people in the East Midlands are employed within professional services, which equates to over 4 percent of the region’s workforce and almost 8 percent of its regional economic output.
Competition in professional services is nothing new
If you are thinking that having competition in the professional services sector is nothing new and nothing to worry about – your firm may well have been around for hundreds of years and relying on referrals and recommendations is all you need to do – but whilst competition is nothing new, the way that your clients of the future are finding out about you may well be.
Yes, it’s absolutely correct that you need recommendations and referrals – that will probably always be the case. However, the way that a one-time client becomes a client for life (and so therefore becomes one of those valuable referrer/recommendations type of clients) can often follow on from using a ‘bread and butter’ type of service. For example, the first time that many people will use a solicitor is for conveyancing when buying a house and an accountant, for completing their first tax return as a self-employed person, or when setting up their own business.
These people could turn into your biggest ever client – and referrer! However, if they have decided to do their own research to find a solicitor or an accountant for what they consider to be a simple first service (and so one that they don’t need two or three recommendations for), the chances are they’re going to do their research online.
Being found for professional services
Even if you don’t think it’s something that your professional services firm needs to do, you can guarantee that most of your competitors are investing in digital marketing to make sure that their websites can be found online. They may well have realised that whilst their top clients don’t come from a simple conveyance or tax return, those clients can be nurtured and may one day turn into top clients.
So, how do they do it? The world-wide web is made up of over 130 trillion website pages, which are crawled and put into an index by search engines like Google. Sticking with Google as an example, it will then use clever algorithms to find a user the most relevant websites for what they are searching for. (See ‘How Search Works’ for more information on this).
Example:
According to data from Google, on average, between 100 and 1,000 people in Leicestershire search for the words ‘accountants in Leicester’ each month.
When I use an ‘incognito search’ (which disregards my browsing data, so that my most clicked on website doesn’t automatically come to the top of the results) and search for ‘accountants in Leicester’, the following results come up:
Location search:
- Smartfield Accountants
- TaxAssist Accountants
- Mark J Rees LLP
Organic search:
- Yell.com
- Accountants Leicester (Gower Accountants)
- TaxAssist Accountants
The reason that I have only included the top 3 results for both location and organic search (these are the headings in blue in Google results), is because research has shown that 90% of people do not go past page 1 of Google when they are searching for something and even within the first page, around 50% of people will only ever click on the top 3 organic results.
The top organic result above is obviously not a direct link to an accountancy firm’s website, but the other two beneath that (for Gower Accountants and TaxAssist) and the location searches above it, are most likely to receive the majority of clicks from the 100-1,000 people searching for ‘accountants in Leicester’ each month.
How professional services firm can use digital marketing to be found online
In order to work your way up the Google rankings onto Page 1, there are several things that you will need:
- A website (seems obvious)
- A website that is optimised for search engines (using search engine optimisation – SEO)
- A website that is regularly updated with relevant, unique and search engine optimised content that adds value
- A mobile optimised website – a Reuters report states that 75% of Internet use in 2017 will be from mobile devices and already, over half of Google users search for things using their mobile device
There are other aspects of digital marketing that are used for search engine optimisation, including links from other websites and use of social media, but the above are absolutely fundamental.
Digital marketing does not have to be complicated
Whilst it’s not the easiest process to move up the rankings (and usually takes some time) it does not have to be ridiculously complicated. If you’re working with an agency for search engine optimisation, you should be able to understand exactly what they are doing and why. At The Ideal Marketing Company, we make what we do as transparent as possible and always make sure that our clients are able to see exactly where we have spent our time.
To discuss improving your professional services firm’s SEO, website performance or website design please feel free to get in touch on 01858 374 170 or you can email me directly at hannah@idealmarketingcompany.com
