3 Tips Your IT Consultancy Can Learn from the World Cup

Now that World Cup madness has ended, use these tips to replicate its brand awareness success for your IT consultancy. 

Every sporting event, large or small, can be a metaphor for your work as an IT consultant.  But beyond the general “there’s no ‘i’ in ‘team’” and “stay true to your goals” take-aways from the 2014 FIFA World Cup that apply to every single small business owner in the world, there are some hidden gems of business lessons for entrepreneurs in IT consulting.  Let’s explore. 

Make it Easy for People to Get What They Want

To the rest of the world, the work you do is complicated at best and often impossible to understand.  To sell and deliver services like that, you have to make it easy for people to get done what they want to get done.

Your clients probably aren’t as excited about having to find an IT consultant for that security analysis as fútbol fans are about keeping tabs on World Cup statistics, but both groups want the same thing: The information they need, right now.  

Google met this need for soccer fans with an easy-to-find, easy-to-use FIFA data aggregator.  If you typed “World Cup” into Google during the games, the first result was an info box with everything a fan wanted to know in a hurry: who’s playing when (given in the searcher’s local time), game times, final scores and upcoming matches. 

How can you meet the “need to know now” for potential clients?  Employing infographics to explain concepts, sharing case studies of past projects to demonstrate results and translating “geek speak” into a language other professionals can get their arms around, are just three ideas for making it easier to buy from you. 

Practice Strategic Generosity

Google isn’t a sports company.  But they got millions of people to their site every day for all 32 days of the World Cup with their free aggregator.  

What can you do similarly?  Maybe provide free or reduced services to a local beloved non-profit in exchange for recognition on their website or in their newsletter, or host an annual event to help kids understand new technologies. You’re helping and you’re gaining exposure. 

Try Alternative Marketing

While definitely a global brand, Puma isn’t as big as Adidas, in brand recognition or marketing budgets.  But this didn’t stopped them from getting major World Cup airtime. They took advantage of a FIFA rule that players may choose their own cleats, Puma pursued players and won many loyalists happy to wear the Puma brand.  Then they topped their own creativity by making the two shoes in each pair different colors. If you saw any of the fútbol action you likely noticed Puma’s bright pink-and-blue footwear of the World Cup players. Mission accomplished. 

True, your IT consultancy probably doesn’t have an opportunity to reach a World-Cup-sized audience.  But you can gain exposure for your small business similarly – for example, if you don’t want to spend $500 on a chamber of commerce membership you might still reach that audience by offering free IT training lunches for chamber members. 

Every day of business is like a World Cup match. You lace up and stride onto a field full of opportunity.  Use the hat trick of World Cup inspired ideas above to help you score big in making a success of your IT consulting small business.

What types of brand awareness have you used for your IT consulting small business? Please share your thoughts in the Comments box below. 

Tiffany Winbush is the Social Media Manager for Hiscox USA Insurance, responsible for driving social media engagement and publishing the Hiscox Small Business blog. Tweet Tiffany at @TiffanyPR.