Top Line Growth -New Rules, Roles & Responsibilities

New Rules for Professional Services Marketing  - Rule 2: Demand Accountability From Everyone

3^rd in a series of posts about the transformations in CPA, law and consulting firm marketing

Given reductions in marketing budgets, fierce completion for new business, and new marketing technologies that make it easier than ever before to take clients from your competitors (or to have clients taken from you), CPA, law and consulting firm marketing efforts need to be re-engineered around new rules that are laser focused on delivering ROI.

In a previous posting (“Marketing as an investment”) I talked about the change in mindset that’s necessary for beginning the process of getting more ROI from marketing and business development. Today, I want to discuss Rule 2: demand accountability from everyone – marketers, business developers, managing partners, shareholders and subject matter experts.

The fundamental that’s at that heart of this rule is that ROI from marketing and business development requires all hands on deck, working in a coordinated fashion, to: (1)  leverage more results from traditional 1:1 marketing, (2)  create inbound marketing programs to capture the “eyeballs” of people looking for a solution to their pain,(3) develop lead generation campaigns, and to (4) capture, track and convert leads to engagements.

It’s impossible to achieve accountability without goals, a defined set of metrics, and the tools and processes to measure progress and achievement. The royalty of these metrics is sales and number of new clients, but there are many, many more marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are critical for assessing whether you’re achieving ROI. While there are some fundamental KPIs, each firm may want to focus on a specific set. The process of driving accountability starts with defining those KPIs that are most relevant to your firm.

For example, firms might consider using a sales funnel to measure conversion rates from suspects to leads to engagements for any given lead generation strategy, like a webinar. At a deeper level of sophistication, using new marketing technologies,  it’s possible to even assess the contribution of any specific outbound marketing tactic, like an e-mail blast or even Twitter, to determine their impact on driving leads into the sales conversion funnel. (Keep the good, fix the ugly, get rid of the bad. ROI anyone?)

New rules for professional services marketing require new responsibilities from the stakeholders in the firm responsible for marketing and business development. Here’s a brief overview those new roles and responsibilities for your consideration:

Managing partners: demand accountability, oversee the strategic growth goals of the firm, and get engaged in understanding and using the new KPIs of marketing in order to sharpen the focus of your investment in marketing and business development

Marketers: put the infrastructure in place and take responsibility for developing and executing targeted lead generation campaigns where you can precisely measure the ROI from the investment in firm resources and direct/OOP costs of the campaign. You also need to play a key role in lead nurturing as “one and done” marketing is a waste of time and money.

Business developers and rainmakers: once a lead is captured, the ball’s going to be (mostly) in your hands, and you’ll likely play the key role in moving through the steps and “touches” necessary for converting that lead to an engagement. Your efforts will be measured and assessed along the way, so think conversion!

Partners/shareholders – first, do not stop the successful, traditional 1:1 marketing/business development efforts that are responsible for a significant portion of your new business success. Like your managing partner, you’ll want to get involved with marketing metrics at the niche level, so you can understand how to best complement your 1:1 initiatives with new inbound marketing approaches that will grow the top line for your niche

Subject matter experts: Your responsibility is thought leadership and playing a key role in bringing that thought leadership through executions like whitepapers, blogs, videos, and host of other tools that will not only serve as the centerpiece of lead generation campaigns, but will also serve to promote your personal brand. One of the categories of ROI is “ROP” – Return on Personal Brand.

With goals, metrics and processes and tools in place to measure the ROI from your firm’s investment in marketing and business development, you’ll have the infrastructure in place to track accountability to results. Perhaps this is a harsh light that will expose weaknesses in your marketing and business development efforts, but  it’s likely that it will also expose what you’re doing right.

That’s what we need to build upon in order to get the top line growth you’re seeking, especially at the niche level.