Give Your Firm’s Marketing Some Strategic Mojo

Is it Time to Rethink the Firm’s Marketing Function?

There’s a piece in the recent digital edition of Accounting Today called “They’ve Come a Long Way ... Maybe” that provides a glimpse into the evolving role of marketing in accounting and law firms. The key premise of the piece is that while a lot of things have changed, there’s still a long way to go before firms – or more accurately (in my opinion) the holders of the purse string in firms – make the marketing function a lot more strategic and a lot less tactical.

There are a lot of reasons why partners want tactics and not strategy from their marketing team, and as much as marketers may wish to see a broad sweeping change in mindset and attitudes, they’ll always be called on to write proposals, prepare slide shows, send out a mailing, and so forth and so on. But there’s also a lot of reasons why partners need to give marketing a seat at the strategic planning table and have marketing strategists play a vital role in the firm’s development and growth.

Giving Your Firm’s Marketing Some Strategic Mojo

How do you make your firm’s marketing function more strategic? Here’s a few starter ideas to kick around at your firm’s next retreat:

1. Identify and put a strong Partner in Charge of Marketing into place.
2. Stop talking about marketing “budgets” and start focusing on marketing “investments” and the ROI you expect to achieve
3. Create annual strategic marketing plans for each niche and practice area with measurable goals for visibility, leads and new business
4. Install the right marketing tools and technologies that call help deliver marketing tactics as well as measuring marketing results and ROI
5. Give the marketing team enough resources to effectively reach goals and objectives, and hold them accountable for results

Perhaps the most significant and hardest change that needs to be made to make a firm’s marketing function more strategic is a change in partner attitude and mindsets. If you only think of the marketing function in terms of tactical executions, than in terms of firm growth and development, you’ll get what you pay for.

On the other hand, if you take a page out of the book of high growth firms that employ marketing strategically as well as tactically, then you’ll get what you invest in.

The “20-60-20” Rule

When it comes to CPA and other types of professional service firm marketing, I’ve always believed in the “20-60-20 Rule”.

That is: 20% of firms “get it” and will employ contemporary best marketing practices; 20% will never, ever get it and will remain mired in old and creaky ways of thinking about marketing; and 60% will be fence sitters, waiting for others to cut trail and as a result, will play a hurry and catch up game once they have a head smacking epiphany that the top 20% were right all along.

Another way to look at this is that 80% of firms are laggards when it comes to marketing, and 20% are movers are shakers. Hmmmm... of these two groups, which do you think is seeing more visibility, leads and new business?

But if you read between the lines of the Accounting Today article, there’ still some good news for accounting firms that are in the bottom 60-20 category.

You’re still stealing a march on the attorneys.