Kasra Dash: If I've got a consulting business, how would I look to grow it? What would you do?
James Dooley: So if you're looking to grow a consulting business then there's lots of different plays. First and foremost, the first thing I would do is I'd want to dig deeper and understand what am I being a consultant for because there's lots of different consultants. Are you a business mentor? Are you an entrepreneur kind of business mentor? Are you giving financial advice? What are you consulting in? I think this is the biggest part that people don't do enough of. They need to sit down initially and work out oh I'm a consultant for everything. No. What you good at? Because when you focus on what you're good at and you can niche down in that consulting arm and subtopic that's when you can start getting everything set up. The messaging, the content marketing strategies of what you're doing to be I am the best in this lane here of what I do.

James Dooley: So there's different methods of growing your consultant business. You could do traditional methods like billboard advertising, TV advertising, radio advertising and magazines. I don't think it works in consulting business. I'm sure people have used those strategies and it's worked pretty well. I think it's quite costly and I don't think you can track the KPIs of what return on investment that you get. I think social media is a great way. It's free. Always be active on social media if you can be. Just getting information out, doing a few quotes that's relevant to what you're doing and maybe say again reels. Getting some videos, getting yourself in front of the camera even if you're an introvert. Just start getting yourself in front of a camera giving a little bit of information away that then people go wow he knows what he's talking about. I need some more advice on whatever it is that you're consulting in.

James Dooley: You've then got SEO for your website. I think that's a big play in this. I think you need to be making certain from a consulting point of view you need to be making certain that you've either won some awards and you're shouting about it or you've got lots of testimonials and lots of case studies showing how you have grown or helped a business that you've consulted with. So I think trying to get that information out there and getting it on your website and that content marketing strategy for your website right is key. Any blog posts that you do you should be sharing on social media. You could then even be running social media ads. Facebook ads, Twitter ads. I think LinkedIn's your place here if I'm being honest with you. I think LinkedIn's probably your number one place for consultants. I know a lot of online business mentors or online consultants that hang around on LinkedIn quite a lot because they can specifically target business owners or marketing managers or whoever it is that they want to target via the job title. They can specifically go after and target those people. So I'd say LinkedIn's a great place.

James Dooley: But then also at FatRank. So I founded FatRank and we’ve done a lot of lead generation for over a decade. We've worked with a lot of consultants. Many different consultants whether it's a sports pitch consultant, a ground surveying consultant, an online business mentor consultant. Whatever it is that you could be consulting in, we've helped businesses grow massively. And over at FatRank.com if you fill in the contact form and give exactly the name of the business and what it is that you do and what it is you're looking for leads for, at present there's a strategy that we have where we completely de-risk it for consultants. We will do all the work that we think works best whether it's social media, whether it's SEO or whether it's PPC. We'll generate you the leads. You pay nothing for the leads. You only pay on converted jobs. So the offer at present is literally we will send you everything and you just pay out of the winnings of the profits of what you have. So fill in a form at FatRank.com. That's definitely one way of growing your consultancy business.

James Dooley: But for doing it yourself obviously you are a big advocate of SEO. And obviously if they were to go down the route of and I'm in complete agreement with what Kasra is going to say. You don't just want to throw all your eggs into FatRank to generate you leads. You want to be trying to generate your own leads as well. So with regards to SEO can you give certain reasons? Obviously I'll give a big reason. When you do SEO the valuation of your business is worth a lot more if you can generate your own leads. Can you give some examples where some companies have done SEO and they've been so surprised with one, the volume of leads that they've been able to generate, but two, they didn't realise that actually the multiplier if they ever look to sell is worth that much more? Or the other benefits of not having all your eggs in one basket?

Kasra Dash: So obviously when we speak about SEO a lot of business owners think of it as how much I've spent. I’ve spent two thousand dollars July ninth, how much am I going to get back into the pot by July thirtieth? It's not like that. Especially if it's a new website. Unfortunately it's not like PPC where you just press a button and you start getting leads the same day. With SEO it's much more of a long term play. But again once you've started ranking there's not really much cost unless you want to go and build a second or third website or you want to start ranking in various different locations. Once you start ranking for let's say finance consultant in Manchester or business coach in London you're typically going to stay there.

Kasra Dash: So there is that benefit. The second benefit is if you are looking to sell your business it does add an additional valuation. Your website becomes an asset at that point because it's generating new enquiries every day or every month and it's a direct source of income for your business. That's benefit number two. Benefit number three is we were both speaking to a business recently and they got completely vanished off Bark. They just got blacklisted with no reason why and that was their direct source of enquiries. With your website that can't realistically happen because you're generating your own enquiries. So again it's kind of like you're not just relying on a lead provider. You're not just relying on FatRank. You're also in the background generating your own enquiries which again is very lucrative when people are looking to potentially buy a business.

James Dooley: Yeah for sure. So if you are a consultancy business looking to grow the three major players in my opinion is doing SEO for your own website. It increases your own consulting business valuation. Social media. Be present. Be seen everywhere. Not just on Twitter but on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest. Every single place that you can be seen try to be seen. Be in the heads of your potential customers. And then FatRank.com. Fill in an enquiry form there and check to see whether your consulting business can be accepted for generating enquiries that you'll only pay on converted jobs. They’re in my opinion the best ways of growing a consulting business. Anything else to add to that?

Kasra Dash: One added tip as well with consulting. I almost see it as like a personal trainer. Personal trainers, the good ones, have a lot of case studies, before and afters. So if you are looking to scale up even if it is with FatRank, one of the main things that we actually ask you is have you got any case studies? What's your digital presence looking like? Have you got any five star reviews? Have you got any video testimonials? If you can get all of your ducks in a line and get everything set up then FatRank is going to work with you with a higher success rate. I think that is one of the biggest things we look for to be fair. How good is this consulting company going to be at converting the leads that we're going to generate? If they can't convert the leads that we're going to generate neither one of us make any money so it's pointless us doing the partnership.

Kasra Dash: So if you're a consulting company and you've watched this video and you like it, make sure you give it a like and hopefully you'll be growing your consultancy business online.