Identifying 6 Marketing Diseases that Weaken Niche Practice Growth

Niche marketing checkup - how healthy is your marketing program?

This won’t hurt a bit (heh, heh).

But it’s time for your annual marketing checkup, and the doctor is in. Whether you’re a shareholder in a boutique consulting firm, a niche practice leader in a CPA firm, or a marketing professional responsible for filling sales pipelines, it’s time to stick out your tongue and say, “…….aaaaahhhhhh.”

So let’s take a peek at what’s going on.

Hmmm… it seems like you and your team are doing a pretty good job at your 1:1 marketing. Let’s see…. you’re  networking, you’ve joined the right trade associations, you’re out on the golf course schmoozing your way to new business, and it looks like you’ve got a decent contact list. Good job!

That’s only part of having a healthy niche practice. It just might be the most important part of being healthy, but your checkup is far from done. Now let’s take a look at how you’re doing with your online and inbound marketing.

Uh-oh. Not so good. Lucky for you that HIPAA prevents me from sharing your checkup records publically! But I will identify the 6 “diseases” that I look for when doing a client checkup or a competitive analysis:

SEO Deficititus

This could be a major reason why a niche practice or boutique is not being found online. Firms suffering from SEO Defititus generally don’t have a keyword strategy, monitor search engine results, continually adjust their site, or show consistency on web pages when it comes to URL structures, page titles and headlines. Many niche practices also fail to use a blog or other types of content built around a key word strategy to bring visitors to their site.

The cure: a comprehensive key word analysis and strategy followed by some website surgery, including a blog, to make corrections.

The Heartbreak of Differentiation

Practices that don’t bother to find out what makes them remarkable, and that don’t communicate what makes them remarkable suffer from the Heartbreak of Differentiation. What are the characteristics of your firm or niche practice that makes you different and that gets clients and prospects talking about you?  If I can go to your competitor’s website (and vice versa), substitute your name every time their name is mentioned, and not tell a difference, you’ve got the Heartbreak.

The cure: Hire a branding or an experienced market strategist to help you determine what makes you remarkable, and then re-write your marketing literature.

Niche Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NNPD)

Firms or practices that overuse the words “we” or “our” or their firm name on their website suffer from NNDP. Prospects don’t so much care about your firm as they care about solving a problem or issue they face,  so to avoid NNDP, use the words “you” or “your” on the site a lot more than using the word “we”. A statement like “You want a firm that can help you pass your business on to your kids without a huge tax bill” is a lot stronger and more meaningful than “we have over 25 years of succession planning experience”, right?

The cure: take 2 copywriters and call me in the morning.

Eyeball Leakage

This is truly a disaster. Unfortunately, most firms and practices don’t have a clue that once a visitor (the eyeball) comes to your site or page, you need something more than hope and other than posting an email address or contact us call to action to convert them to a lead. Are you offering valuable content, tucked behind a form, which will convert an eyeball into a lead?

The cure: offers, landing pages and marketing technology like HubSpot to manage the lead acquisition and nurturing process

Lost Link Syndrome

When the doctor visits your web pages, I not only look for signs of eyeball leakage, I also look for signs of lost link syndrome. If I don’t see reference and links to the bios of your niche team, you’ve got LLS; or if the pages don’t link to content, like relevant blog tags, you’ve got LLS. The longer you keep a visitor engaged on your website, and the more opportunities you present to them as they navigate around your site to convert them to a lead, the more productive your website will be.

The cure: a healthy dose of call to action buttons and links to appropriate internal web pages

Ugly Websiteinosis

There’s a lot to be said in favor of a clean, modern look to your site, and a user friendly navigation structure. You’re probably competing for the hearts and minds of prospects in a sea of beautiful websites. An ugly, old, creaky looking website will only serve to damage your chances to create an image that leads to filling the top of your sales funnel with leads. But be careful here! Don’t let website vanity issues take precedence over making sure that the strategic objectives of the site are being fulfilled.

The cure:  take one professional graphic/web design professional and call me in the morning.

The Next Time You  Say “aaaaahhhhhhh”….

I hope that in your next checkup a year from now, when you say, “aaaaaahhhhhhh”, it will a reflection of contentment and pleasure because you’re building traffic to you site, converting site visitors to leads, and then converting those leads into new business for  your niche.

I told you that your checkup wouldn’t hurt much, but for many of you, that might not be true. If you’re suffering from any of the maladies described above, they won’t go away with time or improve with age. If it’s time for a consult, call the doctor and set up an appointment!