Discover the Ideal Format for Billing Clients for HR

Format for billing client for HR

good morning everyone my name is fiona sanderson and i am the marketing manager here at my ahr toolkit uh firstly i'd just like to welcome you all to today's webinar we've got a lot of attendees booked on today so first of all i'd just like to talk you through a little bit about us for those who are new to us so myhr toolkit provides hr software to help small to medium-sized businesses streamline their staff management activities so things like booking holidays tracking absence and managing performance we've also got a partner program that works directly with both independent hr consultants and consultancies and if you're an hr consultant in our partner program you can benefit from receiving commission offering extra value to your clients and extending your product offering with hr software so whilst i just talk through the webinar and i'll feel free to learn a little bit more about our partner program and through the link that we'll just pop into the chat so um in today's webinar just a bit a little bit more information about what we're talking through so the topic is how to effectively attract clients to your hr consultancy and we'll be breaking that down on what marketing activities you can focus on to attract new clients so the things we'll be talking about today are how networking online and offline can help you to attract passive leads and then we'll be talking through a bit more about seo and the fundamentals of increasing tailored web traffic through search engine engine optimization i will be going through the benefits of developing a refer a friend campaign and also a little bit about creating business alliances and partnerships so following the presentation which should last around 30 minutes we'll have time to answer your questions so if you just hover over your zoom menu you should be able to see a q a box if you just pop your questions into into there and we will address them at the end there's also a chat box so feel free to get involved in the chat as we go along but please make sure you put your questions into the q a box so that we don't miss those and we also have a variety of handy resources so if you haven't seen our ultimate ultimate marketing guide for hr consultants we'll also pop a link into the chat and we'll be following that up in the email post webinar so here this morning to talk about how to effectively attract clients to your hr consultancy is our senior marketing executive hana weeta in hannah's previous role at b more social she was responsible for coaching business owners on their digital marketing strategy and since joining us in late 2020 she's been responsible for our partner marketing with our existing partner network of hr consultants so i'll hand over to her now brilliant thank you fiona and good morning everybody as mentioned i'm hannah i'm going to be conducting today's webinar and so thank you everyone for attending uh before we start i'm just going to briefly go over what fiona mentioned of the topics we're going to cover today and so as mentioned in the description when you're registered for the webinar we're going to go through how networking online and offline can create passive leads fundamentals of increasing tailored web traffic through search engine optimization also known as seo why hr consultancies can benefit from developing a refer friend campaign benefits of creating business alliances and partnerships and finally as mentioned we will have a q a session so if you have any questions as we go along or at the end of the webinar please do feel free to put any questions in the q a box today so before we get started we are going to launch a quick poll so paul is are you currently partnered with a hr software provider there will be two options available here uh so please do feel free we're just going to run it for 20 seconds um whilst you get along but quite a few people today that we work with in our partner program that are partnering with us for hr software needs and would just like to get some more information about that today so run that just for 10 15 more seconds if you want to choose through the following two options if you haven't already great perfect thank you um so thank you for those results um we'll uh move on with the rest of the session um so to start with as mentioned we're gonna look at how networking online and offline can create passive leads so networking is a huge part of b2b business activities and we found with hr consultants and consulting services networking is a great example for this um sorry one second i'll just go back oh right my slides appear not to be working um i'm just gonna stop share for one second whilst i get the bright slides up okay i apologize for this great uh one second sorry about this guys i'm going to share my screen again and hopefully you'll be able to see the text on here for some reason it's not coming up when i press that handy little presentation button um but we'll get on with the rest of the content sorry about that so networking online and offline um so what um are examples of networking online and offline so networking can include face-to-face business networking groups this might be something that people have done independently before face-to-face business and networking groups normally um attract local businesses uh you might go to local ones like the chamber um or there might be bmi groups that you might attend normally it's just a an informal meeting that you have with local business owners um so face-to-face businesses are really great for creating a personal relationship and getting to know people uh in your local community you also have local business in networking memberships so it can include sheffield chamber or there are other ones in sheffield like sheffield digital where you can communicate online with people in your local area about different business needs or topics you can also network through join social media groups they're aimed at client prospects or like-minded people and so for example facebook is a really great platform to show and display a lot of groups similarly linkedin's a fantastic platform if you're wanting to pursue professional opportunities and there are many groups that are aimed at small businesses or small businesses aimed in certain areas so if you are a consultant looking to get involved in businesses in your local area you are likely to find uh linkedin groups that are catered to that and so they're fantastic to join to get involved in to talk to people that are like-minded to you as well as communicate on what you're offering or how you can benefit them so what are the um how can networking benefit hr consultants so networking a great opportunity for consultants to build personal relationships and because you are networking and communicating directly with people not businesses you are likely to create a really good relationship with people other businesses and you can also interact with like-minded people you don't necessarily have to be in networking groups for terms of prospecting there's also an opportunity to meet people that might be in similar industries to you um and find out their experiences or how they also find clients too you can increase your brand's reputation if this is groups that are local or networking opportunities and national you'll be able to further your brand's reputation and services you can also use it to actively find new clients um i've been in networking groups in the past and know people who have been who are very direct in networking groups so i'm here for this reason i know that this service will benefit you for x y and z and you can be really direct and approach people about your services directly um to actively find new clients you can also get referred business from your networking connections so a lot of networking groups um if you're intertwined in them and you have someone that you've got a personal connection with that you've made in this networking group and they have found a client that offer that are wanting your services or similar to um that it's likely that if you've built a relationship with that person they're likely to then offer you um that service um just as a sort of a one-off referral and so they can be really beneficial to get from them when it comes to actually networking um to attract new clients what hr consultants specifically need to consider is finding the right networking groups for them so if you're a hr consultant that specifically focuses on clients in your local area and you aren't don't want to commute a really long distance to do consult consulting work with businesses and you might want to focus on local business networking groups so i'd suggest uh having a google search and seeing if there are any specific ones near you or if there are any networking groups that are specific to what kind of industries or groups your prospects may be intertwined with and similarly if you are a national hr consultancy and you're um connecting in with businesses in a certain niche or that are looking for a certain service it would be really great to do a little google search to see how many groups are out there and what networking groups you can join um you'd be surprised that the variety of groups are out there um and you can get as nifty christy as you want with them and it is to be to bear in mind as well sometimes networking groups may come at a charge and so it's really important when you start networking in groups do measure this and see how effective they are for your business um but why it's important is just to make sure you've got the right networking group for you and make sure that your time is well spent in those groups also when you actually start to network within these groups and see the benefits of it it's really important that people scheduling time to dedicate to networking i think a lot of people sign up to maybe sheffield chamber or membership groups or networking opportunities that they might um attend a couple times and then it might drip off um in the long run but it's really important with networking groups to stay consistent and to turn up because at the end of the day um you're there to build relationships with people and keep repeating the services and benefits that you could offer someone and ultimately it's not as effective if you turn up irregularly or not consistently so it's important when you do find the one that's right for you to consistently turn up and schedule some time in each week or month to dedicate to that networking group and also when it comes to networking there is also a lot of relationship building that comes around networking is undoubtedly but mostly everybody is there for a business purpose uh whether that's actual profit or other means but it's important that when you do find someone that is interested in your service or would like to learn more that you have practiced your elevated pitch um so that you can most effectively get across your benefits and services um as a hr consultant and also with networking there are two sides of it i found personally you do have people going in really professionally um and they are there for one goal one goal only and you do have ones that are there for more personal relationships and they're there for sort of longevity and so would just remember that you aren't in an interview when you go to networking groups and you're there just to be yourself and to obviously um represent a company and still be professional but people buy from people so it's great to just be there and turn up and show your personality when possible i'm gonna move on to the fundamentals of increasing tailored web traffic through search optimization so appreciate you're all qualified as hr consultants i'm qualified in marketing and you might not realize what search engine optimization is or seo um so here's a brief description so search engine optimization also referred to the rest of the presentation as seo refers to the process of strategies you can use to improve the visibility of your website on search engines such as google or bing or safari whichever search engines you may use to do this company and businesses will want to want your website to rank for the words or phrases also known as keywords that people are trying uh typing into searches so essentially search engine optimization is the process of embedding those keywords into your website that relates your business and it's also to do with optimizing your website to make sure it's easy for search engines to navigate and easy for users to find so i'm going to briefly go over the benefit of hr um search engine optimization and so how can seo benefit my hr consultancy seo um makes your website easier to find and easier to view therefore it can improve improve your credibility and trust for example um if um you search anything into google um you kind of always trust whatever comes up first in a way because you'll be able to see what content that is and because it's the first uh sort of suggestion to pop up you're more likely to uh view that content and because it's the first one you you sort of associate that would be an incredible source that google's are promoting towards you um so it's really a great tool to improve your credibility and trust with people um searching on the web seo can also increase tailored web traffic to your website which is the main sort of benefit of seo so for example if you are a hr consultant that specifically focuses on consulting businesses of adopting a hybrid working strategy um your keywords the ones that you want to put into your seo strategy will be keywords around hybrid working so if the con if business is looking and searching actively on google uh or on other search engines for hybrid working solutions or hybrid working services if you are a hr consultant that has um focused your keywords on this you are more likely to be found by that business looking for these services so therefore that directed traffic is going to come into your website and people will be able to view what the information is on your website and decide then if to get into contact with you or to progress that interest further so it's really great tool to increase tailored web traffic to your website and obviously every every company and hr consultancy is different you might specialize on certain other services um or you might be sort of a general hr consultant that focuses on a variety of services to clients but it's important to make sure your keywords are upstate and reflect your business so that that traffic can come through and be directed to the right page or the right service that you're wanting to promote also benefit of seo is prospects are likely to stay on your website for longer uh because they've obviously had that intent to find out information about this keyword or service and so if you use those keywords that reflect what services you have that customer is more likely to stay on your website for longer find out more information about yourself the services or any information around that topic um and also if you offer more than just hybrid working consulting um that customer is more likely to navigate to other areas of your website to find other services you might promote um making it a better and bigger sell to that client and a more incentive for them to get in contact with you and also one great thing about seo is it's a really great future proofing strategy for b2d businesses so as hr consultants you are in a b2b market essentially meaning that your business markets to other businesses um so seo is a really great tool to future proof um your business strategy simply because it's not a quick fix it's not something that um you know is turning on a button and it stays live for a day or a week or a month um when you sort of make a bit of an seo strategy um or plan in advance you'll be able to use efforts to not just benefit your short-term goals but your long-term goals um as that sort of strategy and how many keywords you'll have on your website um determines sort of the longevity of your website and over a long period of time whoever is searching for hybrid working strategies in this example or hybrid working services is more likely to find you um not just that day but for that year or years to come so it's a really great tool to future-proof your business's strategy briefly just going to move on to how to improve your business's seo um so simple quick wins are to optimize your content this may include making image sizes smaller or making sure all the copy or text on your website is up to date um and reflects your businesses services and includes those keywords that we mentioned second is to improve your website speed time is really great no one wants to stay on a website for 10 minutes before they can load each page so it's great to make sure all the all the pages on your website load in a reasonable speed the best way to do this is to you can either google speed test and put in your url with google's handy tool um or you can just navigate your website is yourself and go through every single page and just make sure all the speed the speed and time of each page is up today and it's quite quick and not long enough for someone to wait a while and then bounce off that page third is to make your website mobile friendly there are tools within your cms or if you're using website tools like wordpress and you can make your site mobile friendly in a couple of quick steps and the fourth step is to include your nap and no i don't mean go for a nap i mean your name address and phone um so make sure those details are um addressed on your website structure and this is simply because people will be able to contact you directly but it also gives a little nudge to the search engines that you're credible you're a legitimate company that has a name address and phone numbers or basic contact information that search engines asks for and finally is to create a google my business account and actively encourage clients to leave reviews so i'm briefly just going to go over this on this page um so google my business is a free tool that google and gives you um and it essentially means that when someone searches for your business for example we've got my hr toolkit here they'll give you a list on the left hand side as you'll normally see on any search engines of all the website links that come up that relate to that keyword that you've just searched but in addition if you're a company you can create a google my business account which basically um gives you this option to create a little image on the right hand side of the search engine um which gives you a little promotion and highlights your business so for here on mine this obviously says work because it's my computer um but you can put in your website your address and contact information um directions and also google reviews so essentially this gives a bit of a nudge um to google that you are a credible business and you're legitimate which improves your seo um but in addition because you have your address linked to google google will then show you on google maps which means that if somebody searches for hr consultant sheffield for example they will see your google my business account and they then have the option to get in contact with you from there why this is important is because if somebody a business owner is actively looking for hr consultants in a specific area they will be given a list of options of people in that area you could contact or who have been who have created a google my business account with those details provided and they will be able to then view their website understand if the services are right for them and getting contact them from them from there so this is really important because if you are a hr consultant that focuses on local business um you will be able to benefit from google my business because it's a really easy way for people to find out about you and also you're able to attract clients to from your local area um which is always handy whether you're a national or global local business um so one quick win with um creating a google my business account is if you've already got one that's great if you haven't do set it up but one key tip is to always remember to get as many google reviews as possible and this is simply because when you have um several google my business reviews it indicates to search engines that um you are a credible business and as a result they're more likely to boost your seo efforts and put you higher up in search engine rankings so that's one quick win um and secondly it can sort of promote your business more so than competitors so for example with this um image i've got here and i will make it slightly bigger because obviously um it's a bit smaller now that my presentations decided to pack in um before this example here we've got hr consultant sheffield um it is more likely to just to display this red owl hr uh if you're on the call today hello well done um but it's more likely to display red al hr because they have more credible or positive reviews rather than serenity hr so this is really important because if you're a hr consultant that is mainly based locally and you know that there are other hr consultants in your city or town um or sort of area and that you want to be more competitive with creating a google my business account and optimizing it to um include credible client reviews make sure that you're more likely to be promoted to search engines and out sort of outrank your local competitors so if you are a hr a business that needs hr consulting services you need it quick um you don't get care how much you cut it costs you just need a specific general hr consulting service it's really easy to just to get a few more clients or a few more uh website visits just having a higher ranking just through having a few more google reviews it's a really key takeaway if you are wanting to boost your local seo efforts i'm now going to move on to how hr consultancies can benefit from developing a referral friends campaign so again what is a referrer friends campaign a referral friend campaign um is where a business actively encourages its clients or customers to refer their connections to the business's services in return the client or customer is usually compensated for doing so you don't always get businesses that compensate clients for referring custom but it is a really effective way to actively encourage them and to get a result from uh for a friend's campaign so what are the benefits of promoting a referral-friendly campaign um i don't know about you but i see many businesses doing this especially in a b2b arena a business to business arena so businesses can receive engaged leads through one passive action so it may be that you um have an ongoing communication to clients uh that you have a referral friend campaign and what benefits uh what incentive you're providing and that you put on your website or you might speak to them in person whether you first on board them or you might speak to them once you've been working with them on a retention basis for a year so through one passive action you might likely find that your client refers you another business to get in contact with or another 10 in an ideal world or 100 who knows um but in return if that business if our client gets on a new um client for you uh you will then compensate them with a small incentive referrer friend campaigns can also increase retention with existing clients and promote client advocacy so if you do have clients on your books at the minute um and you know that they really benefit from your service or they've mentioned to you before that they really you really help them not only can you get a really nice review out of them for your google my business account um you can also um increase that retention by promoting a referral friend to them um and obviously in return of them referring someone to you uh they're more likely to get a small incentive and further promote that advocacy for your business um in addition referral friend campaigns usually lead to a high return investment or rao for businesses that have long client lifetimes so with hr consulting um some hr consultants on today's webinar may be working with clients on an ad hoc basis but more commonly uh it's more of a retention um basis uh business so if you have measured what your normal client life cycle is if you normally have a client life cycle of a year or five years or a couple of months it is debate it is worth debating um how effective refer a friend's campaign is for you but if you find that you normally get a client on um and they stay for a year um and they give you for an easy example 100 pounds a month um and at the end of the year um for their life cycle you get 1200 pounds for example if you then say to your clients if you get me one new client on board i'll give you 100 quid in cash or 100 quid off your next um sort of payment to me um not only is that client gonna appreciate that and be more likely to be retained long term um they're also um gonna give you a really great return on investment so for a payout of a hundred pounds um you're going to get a new business that will profit thousand one hundred pounds in that easy example and so there's the benefits of promoting referrer from the campaign in terms of developing a referral friend campaign it's really important to define an incentive if you are going to provide one um it's clear to have sort of clear tnc's so i would encourage um patreon consultants on this call to um give a an incentive or proportion of what that client would get um and sort of clearly say that you will get this incentive if that um [Music] friend becomes a live client of mine not just how many emails can you send me in an hour because they might send you 100 emails and you obviously don't want to pay 100 quid for a pop if those clients then don't convert into active paying clients so it's important to draft a little brief tnc around it and define an incentive that you can communicate to customers and also to develop a reverend campaign you want to decide how to promote it so it might be in person you might want to um promote it throughout your client onboarding from the start when they first sign up um or you might want to make quarterly um communications to them so you might want to just every time you see them um every six months you may want to just mention it through passing them or you might want to promote it more on a regular basis through email marketing or emailing clients maybe every few months or once month to re-promote your referrer friends campaign or you can also have a bit of a long-term strategy and just add the information to your website um and stay a bit sort of um sort of clear with your messaging for any new clients that come on board too um with a referral friends campaign it's really important to stay consistent and the reason why i say this is uh you don't want to sort of midway through your trial period of your friends campaign change the incentive um or promote it more regularly or um than than you have been in the past simply because it's really good to measure for a friend's campaign if you haven't before um so if you want to stay consistent with how many times you communicate the referral friends campaign to your clients and it will benefit how you measure it in the future so leading on to that um if you haven't done a reference campaign it's important to measure it simply because it's a great tool that like we use that a lot of b2b businesses use um to create uh passive clients um however it's really important to measure your results because it's not a one one fits all kind of business um you might have uh clients that are retained for a longer period of time or a shorter period of time as a result for a referral friend's campaign so it's important to measure results over a fixed timeline and analyze its success against your business objectives and so when you do start your very friends campaign it's a bit important to have your incentive defined stay consistent with your messaging and to find how you want to promote it and also establish a fixed term that you're going to promote the reference campaign for and at the end of that time analyze if it was beneficial for your business how much customer did you get out of this uh how much effort did it um [Music] cost your business in terms of how many times did you promote it or how many hours did it take to get this message across um and analyze it against what your business objectives are and how it's fulfilling those objectives and finally we're going to move on to the benefits of creating business alliances and partnerships so business alliances and partnerships are essentially business alliances where two or more businesses come together for a mutually beneficial agreement or arrangement so examples specifically of hr consultants um that is that a finance consultant and hr consultants they both offer consulting services however what the of each of each of them are very specialized in different areas um but they may still have the same ideal clientele or prospects so those two coming together and communicating that if that client my new client comes on and asks for hr services i will then pass them your way um if a um a hr consultant has someone looking for financial services that they aren't qualified to provide services on they will then pass them to their final financial consultants way so this can be an informal arrangement where you don't have to give them sort of like a paid commission um but it can be arrangement of you scratch my back i scratch yours essentially um or you can have a different way so specifically as mentioned before with our partner program um our partnership with our hr consultants allows partners to receive a commission for promoting hr software to their clients and obviously they benefit from it through getting a tool that benefits their clients extends their product offering um but in addition my toolkit gets custom through that partner recommending us and so it's mutually a beneficial arrangement where two or more parties can come together and agree to um an arrangement that benefits both parties mutually so in terms of benefits of um creating a business alliance and partnerships there are three main benefits so your first one is to exceed client expectations by recommending products or service that would benefit them if the client is already asking for that service and it is a benefit to you um or to a business to offer a credible business that you know will give them results or fulfill the service or need that they are looking for um but it is also a really great way to um add value to that customer's uh lifetime review the second benefit is partnerships can lead to two or more parties being benefited financially which is obviously a main benefit and but also otherwise so you can have partnerships where you may not be benefiting in terms of financially but you may be transferring skills between each of the different companies or departments and or in addition you can get connected in with um different parties or be referred um sort of skills or outsourced um people so you might be looking for a graphic designer for example um and somebody a business that you know that um has worked with graphic designer they may then refer you them as their work so it's really great um for finding mutually benefit beneficial opportunities financially as well as otherwise in addition um it's alliances and partnerships also allow you to develop long-term trusted professional relationships so you're more likely to know these people on a personal and professional basis and you're also likely to know that they're credible and that you're happy um pushing business their way because you know them um as a company as well as as people and you know how to work with them um and they also allow you to um keep and maintain that relationship through a long-term basis so business alliances and partnerships aren't really a short-term solution and did you take a little bit of research to get into and to have a bit of a conversation of how to arrange and maintain that relationship long term however it's really great long-term uh professional way to create trust and to maintain a professional relationship in addition um so how to create a business alliance partnership so one great way is to do your own research actually find businesses that may benefit from an alliance so do contact people directly and be clear on your motives and communicate how they could benefit both you and them thirdly it's important to arrange an informal chat to get to know them personally so you can identify you can work with them for a long term arrangement and so you might find that someone once you've had a quick call or a coffee with your businesses may be really aligned well um but they may say that they're looking for a short-term fix instead of a long-term win um so therefore it might not be of your business interest or it might not compare to your business's objectives at this time um suddenly there might be a really nice person um that you might be able to trust and maintain a long-term relationship with but your businesses after some scratching and searching around may not align as well as you thought they would so it's really good just to have a chat with them be honest um and speak about your mutual benefit benefits openly so that is today's session just to recap and we looked over how networking online and offline can create passive leads the fundamentals of increasing um tailored web traffic through search engine optimization why hr consultancies can benefit from developing your fair fund campaign the benefits of creating business alliance and partnerships and a q a will follow now so i apologize firstly about this slide it's very frustrating but um i hope everyone could still see the information clearly um what i will be doing is i will um upload a pdf and attach it to the follow-up information so that if there is anything that you won't be able to see because of this little malfunction and you'll be able to go through the slides and see that information that i've covered there thanks hannah and so we've got a few questions that have come in so i'll just address one now um so elaine has asked if the info links can be emailed um the ones i've put three useful links in the chat so we'll follow up with an email we'll pop all of those in into your email so um you should have those um second question which keywords do you use when searching for local business groups on linkedin um i would definitely search sort of your city or province or town um to see if there are any groups there but also search nearby areas if you're a local hr consultant wanting to get in touch with local businesses um as well as linkedin you may be able to find some on facebook although facebook is used personally there are still a lot of professional groups um on facebook so i would um encourage you to look on there as well as linkedin and also a really great tool is when you search something on linkedin um you'll have a few options to filter your search uh through some drop down arrows that you'll be able to see just below the search bar um so i would use those to narrow down if you're looking for a location you've got the option to use location filters if you're looking for groups specifically you can filter through the group filter there okay second question how do you know which keywords work for your business i think that's a really good question um i think that if your hr consultant that has a certain service um or a variety of services it's important to use the keywords that are around those services so for example um we talked about the hybrid working service if you provide hybrid working services as a hr consultant um it's important to have a lot of hybrid working terms or related terms in your website structure and you could also be a bit more advanced make blog posts around topics that are related to hybrid working so you might want to do a blog post on how to develop a hybrid working policy the benefits of creating a hybrid working business what benefits does hyper working have on culture how to communicate hybrid leaves loads of contents that you can then go off from from there um but it may be worth considering if your hr consultant offers a variety of services what services do people most commonly ask for um or what are most profitable to you um and making keywords centered around those or blog posts centered around those uh patreon areas okay and we've just got one final question unless anybody's anyone else has got any others um with the google reviews do people have to be logged into google i asked somebody to do one and then they told me they couldn't do it and when she's not sure on the reply yeah that is correct um you have to have a google account to either google my review google my business review and this is obviously just a sneaky way that google wants you to create an account just for saying a business did well whether that's your local coffee shop or business that you work with and so yeah you do have to create a google account most people have a gmail account i'd say you don't necessarily have to have a gmail email address um i use my icloud one for my google account um so you can just say that you can create one really simply with an email address that's not gmail so yeah i'd recommend that okay i think that's all for questions so i'd just like to say thanks to hannah for her time today we hope that we've given you some food for thought on how to effectively market your hr consultancy um as i said we'll be sending up a follow-up email including a full recording and more information on our partner program and a link to the resources that i mentioned in the chat and just one final thing is when you leave the webinar we'd really appreciate if you could just answer the three questions just so that we can um continually improve uh the webinars that we we deliver but that's all from us so thanks very much thank you everyone have been a great day and thank you for attending you