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01How to Use Your Expertise to Start a Consulting Business

Turn your experience and expertise into a lucrative side hustle.

January 28, 2020 5 min read

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We all reach a point in our careers when we start getting questions about our experience or expertise. Perhaps you’ve been asked if you can do someone a favor and "look something over." Or maybe someone has even asked if they can pay you for a consulting session. Perhaps you tapped into a new way to create marketing campaigns or conduct market research that you know other people would want to know about. Whatever your expertise is, it’s likely you’ve felt the tug at one time or another to offer consulting services. 

Here’s how to get started marketing your expertise to do just that.

1. Understand your unique expertise, then offer it for free.

Of course, the first step to starting a consulting side hustle is to know what it is you have to offer. This could be based on experiences you’ve had or an area of specialty you’ve studied at length. Depending on your reputation in your industry, you could go out there and immediately start selling sessions. But, you’ll have more luck on sales calls and in marketing yourself if you have clear deliverables on what you’ve done for companies and individuals in the past. 

Related: Need Clients? The 5 Best Ways to Market Your Consulting Business

So, commit to working for 2-3 companies for free at first. This will give you a good sense of your consulting style, and there’s a clear difference between being able to say, “I can help you increase your profit margin” and “I helped two companies triple their profit margin.” Potential clients want to hear about clients you’ve worked in the past. The Ambition Plan writes that offering to work for free is also a great way to “meet and spend time with influential people in your industry.” Get out there and show them what you have to offer!

2. Craft an offer and a payment plan. 

Once you get some experience under your belt, craft an offer that makes sense. Choosing a price is also why it’s so important to know what exactly you can do for companies or individuals. If you help companies hit six figures in their first six months, it’s reasonable to charge at a higher price tag than if you just “help companies become profitable quickly.” Cory Jean, a credit and receivables consultant, noted to this end that, “Clients respond well to numbers. Telling potential clients exact percentages in sales growth helps them understand the full picture of what their investment in you is, and what it will reward them with.” 

Then, figure out if you’ll offer consulting on a retainer or just on one-off sessions. Both serve different purposes. If you have one core branding strategy session for startups, perhaps it will just be a two-hour immersive meeting at one set price. But, if you help with a longer-term strategy and go into the trenches with them, a retainer would be more appropriate. Consulting services usually go on retainer.

3. Create materials promoting your consulting business. 

It’s important that all numbers associated with your consulting promises are listed somewhere; ideally on a funnel or a landing page. Create the exact specifications of what your consulting services entail, including hours spent in 1:1 meetings, materials included, and what the potential client can expect to learn and get from you. The more specific you can be, the better. Make sure to write to their pain points and rely heavily on past experiences for credibility.

Related: Set Your Consulting Fees Using These 5 Tried-and-True Methods

Then, brand strategist Erin Feree recommends marketing through a blog, a newsletter, and a small website. Create more succinct versions of your sales script, such as small paragraphs that can be used as a bio on blogs or in the “about” section on a newsletter.

4. Engage in content marketing.

Finally, remember that the best way to demonstrate your expertise to your audiences online is to release content associated with what you consult on. This type of content is often referred to as “top of the funnel content,” and will give potential clients a taste for your style and insights, thus establishing trust. They need to be able to see your obvious expertise in order to want to hire you. 

Related: 12 Ways to Generate Leads for Your Consulting Business

Do you offer social media consulting? Post a few social media tips a week. Do you offer HR consulting? Post a few HR tips or stories a week. Over time, this will begin to equate with your brand and appeal to your audience. If you feel like you’re running out of content, Tsavo Neil recommends asking your audience what they’re struggling with. The more you can start to solve their problems, the more they’ll see you as the industry leader. 

Over time, as you continue to land clients and help them, you’ll have enough case studies and numerical evidence to expand your consulting business beyond a side hustle. You have something to share and a way to help entrepreneurs or businesses; get out there and show them!

02

How to Market a New Business Online

Looking to learn how to market a new business online? To start, there are two main categories. They comprise of paid advertising and organic marketing. Typically, you don’t choose one or the other, but rather a mix of the two. What are these options and how do they work?

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is any kind of advertising that you have to pay for, versus owned or earned advertising. This option provides short term, temporary growth.

Examples

There are plenty of examples, like a Google advertisement. A paid advertisement places a business at the top of Google, so that when you search for a related term in the same category, that business shows up at a higher spot rather than competing for it.

You can pay for advertisements on social media as well. Instead of your post appearing naturally to your followers, it will show up to new users as a sponsored post. By doing this, you can receive engagement from new faces and perhaps gain followers.

Paid advertising costs money and doesn’t usually equate to long term growth. While it has its negatives, it is an effective way to get your company’s name out to a large audience.

Recommended For You Webcast, March 5th: How AI Can Find Opportunities and Shorten Your Sales Cycles Register Now Organic Marketing

Organic marketing is the act of getting your customers to come to you naturally over time, rather than ‘artificially’ via paid links or boosted posts. In contrast to paid advertising, this option provides long term, continual growth.

Examples

There are numerous ways to grow your company organically. One avenue on how to market a new business online is by composing email lists. Once this group is organized, you can send out informative emails about your services and prices to entice new customers. You can also create a campaign with a specific call to action. Advertise this campaign across your social media platforms and on your website for maximum reach.

Speaking of social media, maintaining accounts is an effective method of how to market a new business with no money. With social media, you can reach potential clients, expand your branding voice, create a reputable community, build credibility, and target you market. Update these social media channels often. Don’t forget to update your website with articles and other applicable information as well.

Another factor in how to market a new business online is SEO. Search Engine Optimization plays a huge role in organic growth. What is it? SEO boils down to how searchable your website and content is. SEO work, while seemingly mundane, can make all the difference in getting your name out there. Some smart SEO tactics include using Image Alt Tags, writing readable and memorable URLs, organizing content with title tags, and utilizing keywords within content.

How To Market A New Business Online

Now you’ve grasped the basics on paid vs organic strategies! Understanding the basics on how to market a new business is a useful skill for any business owner. Looking for even more ways to get your business in front of others online? Download the Ultimate Guide for New Website Traffic and learn actionable steps to catapult your brand new website in front of customers.

Download our Ultimate Guide for New Website Traffic

Author: Erin McDonald

Erin McDonald is the head graphic designer of Expert Media Design. She works with small businesses to develop a cohesive and inviting brand. Her obsession is making things beautiful yet functional. From ideation to execution, every aspect of the creative process interests her. … View full profile ›

03

How to start a cloud hosting business

The web hosting industry is rapidly developing day by day, and every business is in need of hosting services. Nowadays businesses are giving immense importance to the cloud as it can provide immediate access to the website and the applications that are hosted in its infrastructure. Now you can find cloud infrastructure in almost every IT company. One good news for entrepreneurs who want to start cloud hosting business is most of the organizations haven’t been shifted to the cloud yet, so this is the right time and an excellent opportunity if you are planning to enter into the cloud hosting market.

Starting from small business to multinational enterprises, everyone are showing interest in shifting or move their operations towards the cloud. In this modern era, everything is running on cloud, be it gaming, file transfer, billing systems, gaming, etc. It is the right time to take a step forward if you are planning to start a cloud hosting business. Ever-increasing need for big data storage is the main reason for the rise in demand for cloud hosting solutions. Let us look into the things that you need to focus on for becoming a cloud hosting service provider.

So what are all needed to start your journey in the cloud hosting business?

High Quality Hardware

Related Softwares

Blueprint of your business plan

Look for a reliable partner

Get a Physical Office Space

Purchase High Quality Hardware

Basically, to start a cloud hosting service, initially, you need to have a server. The server that you pick should be in such a way that it should run continuously for a longer duration and should exactly meet your business requirements. If you have budget issues and can’t afford to buy a new server, the best option is to choose a refurbished server from a trusted vendor. If you browse through the websites of leading online server sellers and cloud hosting service provider like Server Basket, you can find a wide range of certified refurbished servers and their accessories at the portion of the cost of new servers. You can easily purchase a powerful server with warranty assurance within your budget, or else you can hire a high end server on rent.

Get Required Software

To start offering cloud services to the clients, you need to have a control panel from where you can manage all the clients and enable them to create and control their Virtual machines. The number of virtual machines that can be created depends upon the type of server you have and the type of processor that your server supports. A VM is nothing but a virtualized computer-based in the cloud. Your customers can select virtual machines with their choice of operating system and configuration. Being a beginner in the hosting market, you need to invest a lot of manpower, and it may eat away a lot of your time to develop the software. Therefore it is a good option to get the readymade control panel.

Research Competitors and Prepare Business Plan

Before starting a cloud hosting business, it is very important for you to create an effective business plan to expand your business reach and gain a crucial place in the cloud hosting market. Before this, you need to keep an eye on your competitors. You should analyze your competitors and the services that they are offering. Identify where there is a chance for improvement and what more attractive services you can offer to the customers to attract them. Doing research on competitor’s business and analyzing their strategies will let you plan your business plan more effectively to beat them. You should prepare a plan with a set of tasks or guidelines that you are going to implement in the course of your hosting business. This set of instructions or business plan will let you make crucial decisions or make any changes if required.

Search for a Reliable partner

Once you prepare a business plan and decide the type of cloud hosting services that you are planting to offer to the customers, the next big and crucial thing you must do is to find out a reliable partner company that provides the services that you have decided on. This must be done only when you come to the conclusion that reselling cloud hosting services is a cheaper and affordable way to make money than to set up your own infrastructure.

It is also very important to research and analyze about the reseller service provider before making a final decision. You should not forget going through their terms and conditions, guidelines before signing the contract. The compensation plan is the key thing that you need to focus on before finalizing the contract. Apart from compensation, maintenance responsibilities, and your role should also be clearly discussed with the hosting service provider.

Acquire Physical Office Space:

You might be thinking that what the need of office space is when you are planning to start a cloud hosting business by becoming a reseller. Your assumption is right to some extent, but you will have more chances of pulling potential clients when you have a dedicated physical office space. Having an office space will gain the trust of your customers, and it boosts their confidence. As your business grows, you should also consider hiring support staff to help you in the day to day operations. Resolving the customer’s issues on time will increase customer satisfaction and your company’s reputation as well. Good reviews will bring more number of customers.

Once you get enough infrastructure and softwares, you should create your business model and concentrate on your brand, prepare your brand logo, tagline, register your company name and then prepare an effective marketing plan to promote your business. Once you are done with all these things, you should prepare attractive pricing plans and hire potential staff for increasing your business reach and revenue. Either you can hire marketing staff or invest in paid marketing to generate sales. If you don’t have enough budget to purchase the infrastructure and develop softwares, you can rely on the leading reseller cloud hosting providers like Server Basket. Cloud hosting business is an excellent business that brings in lots of money. Still, you need to work hard and analyze the market trends regularly to be able to be successful in the heavy competition. Earning potential in cloud hosting business is very great at this moment and this is the right time to start your venture. As more companies are trying to take the advantage that cloud offers to their data, you can become a leader in the market if you provide quality services at a reasonable price.