Just kidding! You want your professional services business to be successful, right? You're focused on growth, right? Whew, good. If you were looking to shrink your business, I was going to tell you to exit stage left.

So now that you’ve found the right blog, how do you drive growth? We’ll start by defining two kinds of growth: organic and inorganic. Organic growth is built on a mixture of expertise, experience, capability, reputation, and visibility. Inorganic growth is more straightforward and based on assets, cash, and liabilities.

Organic growth is what you should strive for in your professional services marketing – but the strategies to drive that organic growth can be counter-intuitive and often elusive, so the goal of this post is to get you started in the direction you want to go.

Organic Growth

You can achieve healthy organic growth by adding new customers and obtaining more business from existing customers. In other words, you expand your business by adding to and relying on resources you have. These resources include your relationships, experience, and knowledge. Organic growth is an investment for a business and is a long-term strategy, not a next-month approach.

Inorganic Growth

Inorganic growth is generated by acquisitions and mergers and is largely based on available capital and resources. Inorganic growth can quickly increase a business's size and revenue but often hides an underlying weakness – an inability to generate organic growth.

Building a Foundation for Successful Organic Growth

Research rocks! Research the clients you want to have. It’s surprising how many professional services businesses don’t develop a buyer persona – that is, what their ideal client looks like and what motivates him/her.

Most C-level executives in professional services companies don’t know or have only a vague idea who their target customer is or what they look like. Doing the research and creating a buyer persona(s) enables you to focus your marketing efforts to align better with your customers’ actual needs. Research helps you correctly position your business to create a competitive advantage in your target market.

Once you’ve researched your established target client preferences, you’ll be able to develop a much stronger marketing plan. And this is all possible because you’ve learned where your customers get their information and identified their key concerns and pain points.

Differentiate

A differentiator is a benefit or feature that you have that is distinctly different from anything your competition has.

The best way to differentiate? Make sure your company is in a defined niche and specialized. That’s your differentiator. Businesses with differentiators have an easier job displaying value to their prospective customers. Differentiating will land you more business.