10 Tough Marketing Questions Partners Should Ask at Your CPA Firm’s Next Retreat

It’s Time to Talk about Issues Ranging from Marketing Responsibilities to ROI to Resources and a Lot More

As accounting firms move out of tax season and into retreat season, the opportunity to talk about marketing the firm should once again be on the radar screen. But this year, I’d like to propose a different approach: try using these 10 questions to stimulate and direct the conversation.

They’re not easy, and they may not be the favorite topics of discussion, but I’m hopeful that they’ll be useful in helping you make the best use of your available resources for using marketing as effectively as possible.

These Are Really Quite Nasty, But Someone Has to Ask

I’ve never run across a situation where a partner – especially a managing partner – has been reluctant to ask tough questions and make tough demands on other partners. So it’s not that I want to stir up a hornet’s nest, but your retreat should be the right time and place to put these tough marketing issues on the table:

(1) Do we have the right partner in charge of marketing?

If the partner that’s in charge of your marketing function is more of a guardian of the corporate coffers than a strategic thinker and planner that’s passionate about marketing, then it may be time to rotate a new partner into this critically important role. There’s too much change occurring at a breakneck speed requiring a marketing literate and motivated individual who’s facing forward to new approaches rather than someone who is only looking back to time worn marketing practices.

(2) Do each of our niche practices deserve the same level of marketing support?

Not all niche practices deserve the same level of marketing support and resources, At the retreat, some tough decisions may need to be made to put budgeting and resources towards the biggest and best opportunities, rather than paying homage to legacy spending habits. One of the critical criteria: give resources to the niche practice that has a strategically driven marketing plan.

(3) Are we getting a return on our investment in marketing?

You shouldn’t be pulling your punches at the retreat, and this is the time to ask the tough question about exactly what you’re getting from your investment in marketing ... but hold up for a second. If you haven’t defined quantitative goals like leads, new customers and revenue; or if you haven’t given your marketing team the tools they need to measure results, then you shouldn’t be asking this question.

(4) Is our website ineffective or obsolete?

Today, websites need to be the hub of the firm’s marketing activities and having a discussion about your site’s effectiveness should be an absolute must at the retreat. Your site should be generating and/or acquiring leads for the firm, and be the key to using thought leadership-based content as a means of competitive differentiation. If it’s just an online brochure, no matter how pretty it looks, you’re wasting the opportunity to do great marketing.

(5) Are we wasting firm resources with social media?

One of the questions you might ask at the retreat is how partners are personally using social media ...are they Linking, tweeting, Facebooking, pinning, Instagramming ... you get my drfit, right? Social media is critically important, but it needs to be used strategically, not tactically. Put these 3 questions on the table during the retreat and see what happens:   (1) what do we want to get out of our investment in social media ... leads? Branding?, (2) which social media platforms are the right ones to use to reach these marketing goals and objectives?, and (3) what kind of resources should we be devoting to these ends? Of course, if you aren’t measuring social media stats and results, then answering these questions with any degree of authority is going to be pretty tough.

(6) Does our marketing department have the right skill set?

This is a really tough question because it goes right to the heart of the matter as to whether you want to have a marketing function that contributes both strategically and tactically to the firm’s business development efforts ... or just tactically as is the case with most professional service firms. For example, is it time to add an unbound marketing expert to the mix of skills? (SPOILER ALERT: the answer is YES!) Even within the scope of a tactics-only driven marketing function, you may still need to address what types of tactical skills are necessary ... social media experts? Proposal writers? Event planners, etc.?

(7) How does our marketing program and efforts benchmark against our competitors?

I sure hope that you’re not flying blind when it comes to how your marketing efforts compare to your toughest competitors. For the retreat, you need to have some hard, quantitative data that lets you see not only what your competitors are doing, but how well they are doing it. Heck, we’ll even run a free competitive analysis for you.

(8) How good a job are we doing at creating thought leaders?

At the retreat, one topic of discussion should be about how critical content and content marketing is for helping the firm get found on search engines, for converting site visitors to leads, and for developing the personal brands of your subject matter experts. So, what are your plans to develop thought leaders, and what resources and tools will you be making available to help them publish their thought leadership? You might want to make this resource available to partners to help stimulate the discussion.

(9) How effectively are we bringing our branding and positioning to life?

Here’s a nice little exercise for the marketing portion of the retreat: Ask your partners to identify the firm’s brand and positioning. If they can’t ... hoo boy ... that says volumes about your partners’ engagement with the firm’s marketing program and function. If they can’t identify these, then how effective do you think your branding activities are for clients and prospects?

(10) Do we have the right marketing tools and technologies in place for reaching our goals and objectives?

The days of only having marketing technology that consisted of a website, an email program, and perhaps even a enewsletter like BizActions are long over. In addition to these must have fundamentals, there’s new marketing technology like HubSpot that you should be discussing at your retreat. Today, your firm needs marketing tools and technology to get found, to convert site visitors to leads, to nurture prospects through your sales funnel, and to measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities. Selecting and funding new marketing technology should be one of the topics on your retreat’s agenda.

Why Is It Called a Retreat?

I’ve always disliked the use of the term “retreat” to describe the function of gathering partners to discuss and plan a firm’s future. Doesn’t it make more sense to call it an “advance” – something that indicates a movement forward, rather than backward?

So here’s hoping that your next ADVANCE will help your firm get more visibility, more leads, more new business, and a greater return on your investment in marketing!