Tag Archives: Marketing

Your Firm’s Marketing is Unaccountable

Small firms (CPA, law, architects, engineers, etc.) often cannot afford full-time marketing staff. If there is full-time staff, budgets may limit the caliber of the person manning the position.  As a result of the lack of an executive, full-time presence, most firms subcontract with outside agencies for some or all of their marketing.

Unfortunately, the outsourcing of this key business function leads to marketing that is not accountable to the goals of the business. Many agencies are specialists in one area and weaker in others. Consequently, the marketing strategies that are often pursued are not integrated and, therefore, unable to achieve results that are superior and sustainable. In addition to the lack of breadth in approach, there is also likely a lack of measurement as to how successful the programs have been.

Marketing can be one area of the business for which metrics are hard to establish, monitor, and enforce. Internally, your leadership team needs to determine your goals before retaining an agency. Is reputation management your main concern, or is lead generation the focus, or are you trying to develop brand presence in a new niche? Starting with the end in mind will drive your goal setting. Break the goals down into intermediate measurements. For instance, if a firm is looking for more leads and you know how many leads are desired, then establishing a desired cost per lead generated seems like a reasonable measurement. An intermediate measurement may be determining how many leads are desired. Or, the size of the marketing budget. (As a general best practice, it is encouraged that you think in terms of 1-2% of revenues for marketing budget.)

After the metrics have been developed, then it is time to contract with an agency. Interview multiple ones–even if one of your partners has a relationship with a principal in one firm in town. During the interviews, challenge the agencies to provide you a proposal as to how they could meet your goals, including budget. Ask them if they would be willing to provide reports on progress against budget and step aside if they do not help you meet your goals.

Adding accountability into your marketing will yield appreciable benefits over time. The ability to anticipate the outcome of certain marketing actions becomes a competency that drives business performance. Sensitivity analysis can then be applied to determine how minor tweaks to the mix will affect the overall outcome(s). Get started today. Don’t wait until you are less busy. You will be glad you did!

How “professional” is your services firm?

Whether the billable workers are architects, CPAs, engineers, lawyers, or management consultants, there is a certain prestige that comes with being a professional services firm. The credentials on the wall, the exam that had to be passed, and the fees that can be charged for hourly work all distinguish these white collar technicians from those who procure their insights and performance of tasks often related to compliance.

In many of these firms, those without the primary certification–even those working at a director level–are misfits, not considered “professional” in their discharge of duties. In fact, the HR, marketing, management accounting, and similar roles are as accomplished in their respective fields as the billable personnel they serve. A healthy mutual respect would likely ensue and firms would benefit from the same array of expertise disciplines as a more general, “non-professional” services organization.

It is not uncommon for training and development, for instance, to be isolated to continuing education focused on technical skills to the exclusion of the softer, intangible skills that make for better managers, business developers, client relationship nurturers, and the like. When professional development includes fostering the “non-professional” competencies within the suite of requisite skills and roles of “professionals,” then services firms will have evolved.

From talent management and succession planning to emotional intelligence and employee engagement, there’s much to be gained from professional HR. Consultative skills, networking nuances, intentional brand building and thought leadership best practices can be modeled by the business development (or marketing) professional. And so on…

The time has come to either staff for these professional roles in house (which the regional and national firms are doing), or outsource the function on a fractional basis to competent providers (which needs to be done by everyone else.) Often,  the internal resource, regardless of firm size, is overtaxed perpetuating a stream of work tasks that existed before (s)he arrived and cannot carve out the time to address internal growth and development needs.

Find a solution!