Professional services firms have, at times, had rocky relationships with their marketing functions. This has too often led to unrealistic expectations, disappointment, and a marginalizing of the marketing function.
This is truly a tragedy. An effective marketing team can have a profound impact on a modern professional services firm. When well staffed and well functioning, a marketing department can drive growth, profitability and a premium valuation.
What’s the best way to build such a valuable function? I believe it starts with a clear understanding of what to expect from marketing.
1. An understanding of your target market and competitors.
Marketing should always start with the market. You should expect marketing to be able to give you a detailed and specific description of your target markets and your key competitors in those markets.
But you already know your competitors and clients, right? Wrong. Unless you are already doing systematic, structured research (not impressions and anecdotes from the field), you are kidding yourself.
Our research shows that internal staffs are almost always inaccurate in their perceptions of the market and their client’s true feelings and priorities. In fact, firms that do objective research on their markets and clients grow faster and are more profitable.
A professional marketing function can commission the research and allow you to make decisions based on marketplace reality, rather than hunches and wishful thinking.
2. A strategy to drive growth and profitability.
With a research-based understanding of your firm and its place in the market, your marketing department should be able to help craft a compelling strategy to drive growth and profitability. That strategy may require adjustments in your target market, service offerings (see below) and marketing plans.
Your strategy should clearly identify compelling competitive advantages, a clear market positioning (are you the premium priced leader or a value driven alternative?) and a marketing plan. You should expect to be challenged with new thinking and bold choices.
3. Which services to offer and how to price them.
Historically, many firms have left the key decisions about what services to offer and how to price them to individual operating executives or the finance and accounting function.
Decisions about service lines and pricing are important elements of a growth plan. They should be informed by an overall research-based strategy, not individual client requests. Why? It is too easy to get over-extended trying to be everything to every client. You will soon lose focus and experience, increasing costs as you struggle to provide an ever-expanding array of services.
Innovation and client responsiveness can all too easily become undisciplined dabbling. A strong marketing function can help maintain that balance.
4. A steady flow of new leads and opportunities.
More leads! Better opportunities! Who doesn’t want a steady flow of well-qualified new business prospects? Fortunately, that is exactly what you should expect from marketing.
Your marketing team should turn your overall strategy into a plan to generate new leads and nurture your existing prospects until they become well-qualified opportunities. This plan should look out over at least a year and have metrics that can be tracked (see below).
Be careful that you do not make the mistake of constantly adding new “marketing ideas,” underfunding campaigns or otherwise derailing the plan. If you do, you cannot expect the plan to work nor can you hold your marketing team accountable. We have previously identified underfunding of campaigns as one of the key reasons for failure so don’t make that mistake.
Also, be patient. Lead nurturing can take considerable time. Don’t focus only on the immediate. You will need new clients next year and the year after as well.
5. The ability to monitor and optimize implementation.
This is the piece that makes everything else possible. Without accurate measurement of results, it is very easy to lose sight of progress through the process. Building a strong brand and full pipeline takes time.
With the appropriate tools and adequate cooperation from business development, marketing should be able to track lead generation, nurturing, opportunities, proposals, and closes. The entire pipeline can then be optimized over time.
If you are not tracking results, it is too easy to continue unproductive programs or discontinue efforts that are working. It happens every day. Tracking keeps you honest with yourself and allows you to optimize your efforts.
What you need to provide.
Now that we have identified what marketing can provide to your firm, it’s only fair to ask what is required for them to be able to deliver it. There are three basic things they need.
Talented people. Your marketing team must include people with the right skill sets and experience. If you don’t have the folks in house, you may need to outsource parts of the process or do some hiring. A word of caution here, marketing professional services is its own specialty. Don’t expect someone to master it without a learning curve.
Adequate resources. They must have sufficient resources to do it right. Underfund the effort and you will not get the results you deserve. The requirements are not excessive. Our research shows that high growth firms spend no more than average to deliver outstanding results. But don’t expect superior results with stingy resources.
A seat at the decision maker’s table. The kiss of death is investing the resources then ignoring the considered advice. No one would do that you protest. Unfortunately it does happen, especially in partnerships with diffused decision-making.
Patience and cooperation. If the above are in place, you will see impressive progress. But there is a catch. Just like any other functional area, marketing needs cooperation, support and a bit of patience from the firm. Support their efforts over time and you will be glad you did.
Looking for some more info on how your firm can take advantage of the new insights now available? Check out Spiraling Up, which talks about high growth professional services firms and what they do differently.
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