Several marketing lessons were reinforced at, of all places, a conference of jewelers in the antique and estate business. It’s not the first place you would look for advice as to how to market a professional service such as law, finance or commercial real estate. However, it provided some good marketing reminders.
Camilla Dietz Bergeron was honored at the conference for her work to raise the profile of women in the jewelry business. Bergeron spoke about how she became successful: Merely opening the doors of her eponymous Manhattan storefront wasn’t enough. To spur sales beyond walk-in traffic, she spent much time on the road talking to small gatherings of trade associations, professional service organizations and the like.
Volunteering herself as a guest speaker not only spread the word of her shop, but it differentiated her as an approachable expert on a subject that might seem obtuse and intimidating with its language of Asscher-cut diamonds and GIA “certs”. Thirty years later, she still firmly believes in speaking as a superb means of increasing your firm’s visibility and reinforcing its credibility, whether it’s a law firm or an estate jewelry business. It was then and still is a marketing strategy from which robust earnings flow.
Of course, there are many more tools available now to invite potential clients to join the crowd of people eager to learn more about your offerings, and then afterward, to repurpose your presentation into something suitable for social and other electronic media — a Top 10 list, an article, video snippets or a Webinar.
The online world is the modern version of traveling the lecture circuit. But for optimum impact, you first must give the presentation.
