Top 5 Ways To Market the Encore Service Business

If you’ve started an encore busi­ness, it’s likely that it is some­how involved in pro­fes­sional services.

Most midlif­ers and baby boomers pos­sess some skill they have learned while work­ing for larger busi­nesses. It’s in the sec­ond half of their life that they tire of the cor­po­rate set­ting and decide to open their own ser­vice busi­nesses. In corol­lary, many younger peo­ple, long­ing for more free­dom, are also are launch­ing into entre­pre­neur­ship after a few years in the cor­po­rate life.

Often this strat­egy is a result of a chang­ing view of work: Encore or “retire­ment” busi­ness oper­a­tors want to con­tinue to deliver their exper­tise, but often want to serve only a small sta­ble of clients so they can work closer with them and bet­ter man­age their time.

But tra­di­tional pro­fes­sional ser­vices’ mar­ket­ing doesn’t really address this desire. Like most mar­ket­ing, it focuses on mass – wide­spread lead gen­er­a­tion that cre­ates a fun­nel to fil­ter out the unin­ter­ested and day­light the “hot leads” that make for sales.

Inter­net mar­ket­ing has made this even more prob­lem­at­i­cal because it has raised mass mar­ket­ing to a higher level. Most inter­net mar­ket­ing aims to gen­er­ate lists of thou­sands, if not hun­dreds of thou­sands, of names that can then be sold some prod­uct. Again, this is waste­ful and all but use­less for the encore business.

So how does the encore or Baby Boomer busi­ness oper­a­tor mar­ket that busi­ness? Here are five methods:

1. Develop a clear value propo­si­tion. Many encore busi­ness oper­a­tors aren’t really clear on what they can do for clients. They may have tired of their tra­di­tional jobs, and so want to branch out into some­thing dif­fer­ent, but ancil­lary. There’s noth­ing wrong with explor­ing for a while, but this can con­fuse clients and even­tu­ally the busi­ness will have to focus on one ser­vice area. Your exper­tise is your ace card here: Deter­mine how your unique view can deliver value to your clients. And then artic­u­late it.

2. Gen­er­ate refer­rals. Aside from your skill and knowl­edge base, your top asset is prob­a­bly your rolodex. So why not use this valu­able asset as a tool? Over time you have prob­a­bly got­ten to know sev­eral other pro­fes­sion­als in var­i­ous fields – law, account­ing, mar­ket­ing, oper­a­tions, con­sult­ing, etc. Pick a few fields that also serve your tar­get clien­tele group, and reach out to peo­ple you know in that area. Point out that you’re both con­nected, and you wish to set up a joint refer­ral sys­tem that will be mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial. Because some will be more active than oth­ers, the gen­eral rule is that you should set up about 100 referrers.

3. Net­work. Every­body tells you to net­work, but rarely do they tell you to net­work strate­gi­cally. As a result net­work­ing ses­sions are often great wastes of time with peo­ple roam­ing a room, glad-handing every­one they meet, and dis­pens­ing busi­ness cards like the fall rains. This is not net­work­ing, it’s speed dat­ing. Effec­tive net­work­ing means being involved in con­ver­sa­tions that aren’t about your­self, deter­min­ing who would be good refer­rers as in Point 2, and then arrang­ing to meet them later to dis­cuss it. It stands to rea­sons then that effec­tive net­work­ing involves not always talk­ing to peo­ple who do the same thing that you do.

4. Form alliances. The very small ser­vices busi­ness is like a lone wolf shut out of the pack and con­demned for­ever to pick up the leav­ings. Sim­ply, it’s very dif­fi­cult to do all your mar­ket­ing your­self. So, smart ser­vices busi­ness oper­a­tors form alliances – some­times loose and some­times very for­mal – with other oper­a­tors who touch the same field and also need more mar­ket­ing power. If you’re a mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant join with lawyers, accoun­tants, and other con­sul­tants to offer a wider ser­vice array. This doesn’t have to gen­er­ate a lot of clients, but might yield a few that will anchor your core clientele.

5. Cherry pick other mar­ket­ing. Do you really need a brochure? Not likely, because today most infor­ma­tion has moved on to the inter­net, and a web­site will prob­a­bly be far more effec­tive. For­get adver­tis­ing, it’s for mass mar­ket­ing. Use social net­work­ing, but be choosy. Find sites that are fre­quented by your tar­get clien­tele, and ask and answer ques­tions, com­ment on blogs in the area, and gen­er­ally make your­self known – as an expert, not as a prod­uct pusher. Be care­ful not to get com­pletely caught up in social net­work­ing, how­ever. It estab­lishes cred­i­bil­ity but rarely yields clients.