There are so many good posts on how to market using social media and other forms of digital marketing that trying to point to just a few would defeat the purpose, but recently two articles got me thinking about a point that I think is rarely discussed. That topic is creating enough trust with the clients who either are afraid of digital marketing or do not think that they need to engage in digital/social marketing that they are willing to put both time and money in your hands so you can create and excute on a strategy for them.

In the recently published Social Media Predictions 2009 paper David Armano kicks off this point rather well for me. He writes “in 2008 we saw many organizations waking Web 2.0 very seriously moving from “why” to “how”  they should implement these new strategies and tactics…Organizations will come to terms with the reality that although it is now “cheaper” to launch a initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology – it requires qualified and passionate people to make them succeed. This will not be easy for many businesses/brands…”

There are businesses and brands that have adopted Web 2.0 marketing techniques because they are run by technically savvy people or because they play in a space where they simply cannot afford not to, but what about really traditional businesses like Law and Accounting. These are the businesses where there tends to be little (if any) income directly associated with the Internet and where for the most part the professionals that work in these firms are asked to write articles for newletters but there are little real digital marketing activities. Moving from a traditional newsletter to a blog seems like a simple enough transition but what about Webinars, Podcasts and even hosting a virtual seminar? For the most part these have largely been ignored by these professional organizations for a variety of reasons and in a time where every business is tightening budgets it will take tremendous trust to make them start now.

So how do you engage these clients who could clearly benefit from utilizing Web 2.0 technologies but are certainly not going to partake in digital/social marketing on the scale where they are Twittering with their clients? The first thing you need to do is understand that for the most part these professional firms are not looking for new and exciting marketing techniques, they work in an industry where the majority of revenue comes from large corporate accounts and they market for brand recognition rather than actually fishing for clients. If you keep that point in mind then you will realize that you need to show that especially in this economy the web is the most cost efficient way to both capitalize on current relationships and reach out to create potential new ones.

It is your job as the person looking to create and execute upon a digital marketing plan to ensure that your client feels comfortable that you understand their business to the nth degree. By letting them see that you realize that their business is about relationships cultivated over many years you will then be able to introduce them to ways in which they can utilize Web 2.0 technologies to continue those relationships and further capitalize as a more techno savvy generation becomes the person deciding on who to give the next legal (insert profession) file to.

It will be easier for some professionals than others to accept that they have to take an active role in their own digital marketing but it is certainly daunting to ask this group to allocate money to digital marketing techniques when for the most part they assume a website is good enough. As Armano puts it, “2009 will prove that the Web is not powered by technology alone. Organizations will realize they require warm bodies and bright minds in order to successfully execute programs, whether they be external or enterprise.”

If you start with an even more techno challenged group like that which discussed herein, I believe that you must first create the trust in you as a marketing specialist before you can even broach the discussion of how your customer creates their own online trust persona.


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