PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
ADVERTISING FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
With advertising, every business will have their own reasons for doing something at a particular point in time or for doing nothing at all.
This is certainly true for the professional services sector.
An Accountancy firm or Solicitors practice will to balance what they are advertising against the why as the core of their business is predominantly made up of historical clients.
Having worked with different professional services sector businesses over the years, CG Advertising understands this dilemma. We know how to work with the client and ensure whatever spend they make, will be effective.
Industry Specific Problems:
Established Accountancy firms and Solicitors will invariably have an historic client base and therefore do not need to advertise for new clients per se, though clearly they will happily accept them. Therefore, advertising will normally be for something specific. For Accountants this could be about tax returns or to do with something in The Budget. One off reasons such as expansion are also good reasons for them to go public with a message.
For Solicitors, individual departments within the practice like Personal Injury, Divorce and Conveyancing will need to generate new enquiries on a regular basis.
New start-ups across the professional services sector will initially need to be more proactive with marketing and advertising.
At CG Advertising, we have regularly worked with different types of professional service sector organisations and have the experience to be able to provide the right solutions at the right time.
Each time I will discuss the sound and vision concept with the client and work out the most effective and cost-effective way to promote their message.
'Sound and Vision'
All advertising campaigns should be put out on that organisations digital and social media platforms. If they aren’t, I will recommend this as it is important they maximise the free opportunities open to them.
This will then make any paid for campaigns more effective.
For all campaigns, the key is to maximise the number of people in your target market who are aware of the message. In most cases, if you give a really good reason to do something, then people invariably will, so give them a reason to find out more and direct them to the place they can find it.
Using a mix of commercial radio with outdoor and bus advertising will put the campaign squarely in the ears and eyes of the general public on a daily basis. Many of these will be your target market. The importance here, is the public will see and hear the message as they go about their daily routines. This consistency will then encourage them to find out more information either on-line or via social media. This then gets all parts of the marketing mix to work.
Here is an example of how to utilise 'sound and vision' concept effectively.
Commercial Radio
For a department within a Solicitors practice looking at increasing enquiries, they can either use airtime or sponsorship or a mix of both over a longer period of time to create a consistent message. The listeners then become used to hearing that business on the radio which brands them as the ‘go to’ Practice in that area. If the message is more short-term, then using airtime will be the right way forward as it can go out at a time to best suit the campaign.
Outdoor and bus advertising
we look at the time of year the campaign is required and book a bus and billboard campaign accordingly. Sometimes availability will dictate what we propose, but both options will give maximum visibility in the required area. If the message is short term, then we would look at a high volume of locations to maximise on visibility. If the message is more generic, then a longer campaign using fewer locations/buses will work as time will provide the necessary visibility due to the cumulative effect. That is, the longer the period of time you see something, the more you believe the campaign is bigger than it actually is.
As both the radio and bus and billboards are something most people will listen to and see on a daily basis, then the advertiser becomes a known entity that they will remember.
This is how sound and vision advertising works!
BUS ADVERTISING
Highly visual and mobile
A highly visual and mobile advert that works fantastically well in conjunction with other media, particularly radio. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business as you book a campaign of multiple buses in 4 week blocks. This brings the price in line with local newspapers and on many occasions is better than local radio.
BILLBOARD ADVERTISING
‘95 of the top 100 advertisers in the UK use outdoor advertising
This highly creative and visual medium is one of the fastest growing forms of advertising in the Country with popularity high among National, regional and local advertisers. In fact 95 of the top 100 advertisers in the UK use outdoor advertising as part of their mix.
RADIO ADVERTISING
Creative, relevant and memorable
Radio plays a vital, if somewhat unsung, role in people’s lives. Whether you like music or speech, there is a radio station for just about everyone. For many people, their choice of station is with them throughout the day. They wake up to it, go to work with it, they’re at work with it, and they come home with it. In fact they probably spend more time with the radio than they do with their family!
CASE STUDIES
SOME OF OUR HAPPY CLIENTS
Switalskis Solicitors
We initially put forward both a billboard and bus advertising campaign. We narrowed it down to a bus campaign as this gave them the best coverage for their budget. The bus rear advertising campaign consisted of 20 buses. It ran for a 12 week period out of the City Centre bus depot.
BFS Accountants Ltd
With price being a key factor in the decisions, we put forward a brand new D48 operated by Alight Media that had just recently gone live on Ratcliffe Gate in the town. We had some favourable rates with Alight already secured and put forward both a 4 week and a 3 month option.
"With Chris’s wealth of knowledge he was able to secure a number of advertising opportunities for my company that included radio and billboard advertising.
As a result of the advertising we have seen a significant increase of traffic onto our website and more importantly we seen a much higher level of new customers since the advertising started, so clearly it is working!"
PETER FROHMAIER, S&P GARAGES