I had a meeting yesterday with a client for whom De Leon did some work a couple of months ago. He runs a small, provincial accounting practice and his major target market for new business is start-ups and local SMEs.
Prior to the personal reputation management work that we have now implemented, the “marketing” of his company, in his own words, comprised the company web site and the occasional advertisement in the local paper. However, he said that most new business comes by referral or recommendation.
We had discussed this process and the client had pointed out that most referred, or recommended, clients also got the names of other potential accountants during the process and that potential clients usually did some research on their options prior to deciding to pick up the telephone and call.
Our work concentrated on working on his digital presence and that of his partner (business partner). We determined the criteria upon which a potential client may decide that our clients were right for the job. We concentrated on getting coverage on articles about starting a new business, press releases about his clients that had grown from start up to successful businesses with him, and created a personal blog site for each partner.
We helped write the first few blogs to indicate the style, content and stories that would be interesting and attractive and helpful to his target market. The blog site also included, in this case, some additional pages covering their business roles, their background and provided some RSS feeds on local business content.
In his words, the results “are astounding”! He has got new business in the last couple of months of course – but, importantly, two of the new accounts indicated that they had “read up on them” before deciding to call.
He generously told me that our fees were more than paid for already! The even better news is that he is a “total convert” and is now recommending De Leon Personal Reputation Management to others.
To any of you that are out there running businesses, you will understand how satisfying it is to work hard on behalf of a client and then be rewarded with unsolicited praise.
Philip Westerman, De Leon – Personal Reputation Management