Professional Services Marketing 2.0

We all know that marketers representing sexy products and services can leverage social media channels to generate buzz about their offerings. People become Facebook fans of your carbonated beverage, you tweet your latest fashion insights to your followers, right? Even Sharpie has been successful in using social media to showcase products and ultimately drive people to their website which increases profile and no doubt brand awareness.*

Success in professional services, that is, legal, accounting, architechture, engineering etc., especially in the b2b space, is more often than not driven by the management of relationships between the fee-earners and the decision-makers of their clients' firms.

These relationships, while they may be orchestrated via business development or sales teams, are mainteined through constant engagement with clients through online and offline channels. Those include events, seminars, bidding for work, newsletters, updates, surveys etc.

Hey, wait, isn't relationship-building the very fibre of social media?

But how do you leverage social media marketing in the professional services space? In 2007, the veritable jurassic period of social media marketing, a survey completed by the Professional Marketing Forum identified that marketing experts in professional services firms are unsure of how to approach Web 2.0 and social media marketing strategies.

In 2007, the key findings included:

1. 18% of firms banned Facebook on office computers as a ‘time waster’
2. 20% allowed free access anytime arguing their people should be trusted
3. Large firms were actively exploring the possibility of upgrading intranets with Web 2.0 elements including RSS, blogging and social bookmarking
4. No firms were reporting commercial success through using Web 2.0 sites

Isn't it time for marketers of these firms to get on the social media marketing train?

What if in house thought-leaders tweeted their insights and clients were able to subscribe to their feeds? What if successes and tender wins were the subjects of blog posts? What if boring firms got rid of their staid, stuffy appearance and attracted new, young, forward-thinking talent through their Facebook groups? And how about if those leading-edge video podcasts weren't held captive to the company website, but were search engine optimized and posted on Youtube? Wouldn't these serve as ways to build profile, engage influential decision-makers (or decision-makers-to-be)?

Am I way off here? What channels are the professional services marketers out there using to leap into the social media marketing fray?

*Sharpie is not actually un-sexy, especially when associated with talent like David Beckham...