Seven Marketing Activities that Drive Professional Services Firm Growth

A large number of tactical options falls under the marketing umbrella and a strategic professional services marketer must know how develop a grown-centered planning process to identify and deploy the most sensible array of tactics. The marketer should also be ready to have clear benchmarks for growth as a deliverable for their employer or client.

The list of seven activities below serves as a framework for growth-driven marketing and will benefit any firm that makes the necessary investments. Feel free to comment below if I've left anything important out.

1. Have the right skills and resources on your team

Many skills are needed to drive an effective marketing program. Your organization won't need them all. But you should have basic content development and design talents available (in-house or outsourced), and organizational, communication and strategic management skills.

Some skills are considered "soft" such as conversational or networking skills. I'm not a fan of this description since it implies they are somehow less important than technical skills. Building relationships with referral sources and potential clients is essential for any business. If we must, skills like these can be considered technical interpersonal skills, but really, why bother going down the technical vs. soft skills rabbit hole at all?

Also, make sure you have the resources you need to succeed. This means having the above-mentioned skills but also the resource of time. Especially if you work at a professional services firm whose leaders may not have a background in marketing, it is important to articulate all the behind-the-scenes work that takes time and supports the effective "visible" side of marketing, and why it is important to the business. Industry benchmarking data, such as the bi-annual Hinge/Association for Accounting Marketing budget benchmark survey, identify marketing team sizes at no-, low-growth and higher-growth firms, serving up a compelling argument for building a marketing team that gives the time you need to accelerate your growth potential.

It doesn't make much sense to have an understaffed team that has all the necessary skills if the team is always just rushing to get work done, not allowing you to take advantage of those talents.

2. Build a strategy

Strategic planning is essential for any organization and its marketing team. Before implementing a marketing program, management must choose what the business wishes to accomplish. The defined goals should be documented in a strategic plan; documentation is important since it offers a foundation for every team member to recognize and act according to those desired accomplishments. The lack of a written plan leaves strategy to the nebulous world of conversations held in passing between random team members, which inevitably leads to miscommunication, misunderstanding and a serious organizational disconnect. It can be hard work to define, in very specific terms, what the best organizational goals should be. But the hard work of defining these goals and writing them down is necessary and provides the foundation for the business' marketing team to develop its own strategy to help the business achieve its strategic goals.

3. Know your firm's business

Marketers at professional services organizations are often perceived as the "other" people and can often be considered administrative in nature, rather than professional. Which, of course, is not the case. At least it SHOULDN'T be the case. Any marketer who begins chatting with one of their partners about click-through rates and a content strategy is likely to lead to a bleary-eyed response and, potentially, earn a little less respect.

It's not easy to get to know the business of your firm and management team when you're trying to stay on top of your job and stay current with marketing as well. But learning about the industries in which your firm operates (consider perusing industry reports from a group such as IBISWorld) and demonstrating an awareness of the challenges faced by your clients and your partners increases the likelihood your management team will respect your involvement and be more open to collaboration...if they believe you understand their challenges and are actively willing to work with them to solve those problems.

4. Develop digital marketing experience.

Like marketing in general, digital marketing covers an array of skills and knowledge including website management, social media, search engine optimization, digital advertising, webinars and data capture and management. While many of these critical skills can be outsourced, the in-house marketer knows they all serve a purpose if deployed correctly, which is lead generation and sales conversion. Your job is to determine where your target audience can be found online and build messaging and engagement strategies to drive their interest in your services or industries. There's no place to hide for an accountant who says they don't spend time on LinkedIn only to find that this is where prospective clients or referral sources are spending time.

Capturing a lead's email address through an online training registration or a white paper download provides enough information about the individual to follow up and begin engaging.

And sales is really your goal, after all. We are well past (or should be anyway) the time when the numbers of likes, followers and comments are acceptable success metrics. Driving interest in your brand through online engagement and sales conversion is the purpose of setting up a very deliberate digital marketing strategy.

5. Build marketing plans with tactics

This is where the rubber meets the road for marketing professionals and where you have an opportunity to shine. At any given moment, as mentioned above, there are dozens of marketing tactics you can implement for your firm. But building a plan that incorporates tactics means understanding your business goals and developing a plan to pursue them including by identifying your desired target audience, figuring out where and how to reach them (see point 4 above) and crafting compelling messages that create sales opportunities for client engagements.

Your team's technical skills will come in handy at this point since, whether the tactics include blog writing, video development, social media management or something else, they need to be done professionally and in a manner that is irresistible and drives buying behaviors.

I used to work with a public relations firm that established what they called tactical action plans (TAPs). I'm not sure why the phrase stuck with me, but it did - because a TAP captures the essence of a strategic plan that has reached its implementation by deploying intentional tactics aimed at potential buyers.

6. Build a professional network

Referrals are one of the strongest sources of new business opportunities. When you build a trustworthy network of professionals who serve clients similar to yours, you should notice the benefits immediately. Are all your industries and service lines well served with a professional network? It is usually the more extroverted professionals who will proactively cultivate other professionals to build their network. But the less social accountants may need a marketer's assistance in organizing meet-and-greets, coffees or lunches where introductions and potentially valuable conversations can serve as relationship-building opportunities.

Too many first-time introductions, however, die into nothingness soon thereafter. A marketer must also make sure his very busy professionals check in with their referrals from time to time - through follow-up in-person meetings or even scheduling a short Zoom or Teams call. Once they put the effort in to become known liked and trusted by industry colleagues, our professionals will hopefully begin to see a lucrative stream of opportunities coming their way. Of course reciprocity is the name of the game so encourage your team members to send referrals out whenever possible to increase the likelihood that they, too, will receive some opportunities.

7. Establish Growth benchmarks

Although growth benchmarks appear last on this list, that doesn't mean they're the least important. In fact, they are the most important action and appear here because they represent the end station for all marketing. How has your firm grown as a result of your marketing activities? How many clients have you gained? How much new revenue? Have you focused on services within a long-term profitable market? (Ah, the topic of another article.) Not every growth benchmark is financial but financial benchmarks are the most important for business.

Before launching a marketing program in pursuit of the firm's strategic goals, it will be important to decide how you plan to benchmark success. Work with your partners and other management team members to determine what you will measure at the end of your marketing campaigns to determine whether you have been successful or not.

No one wants to fall short of their desired growth outcomes, of course. But falling short does let you reflect on the marketing decisions you made and let you pivot the next time toward new strategies that will be more successful.

Do you think the above-mentioned marketing activities are the right ones professional services firms should invest in to maximize growth opportunities? Leave a comment below.

#growth #marketingstrategy #professionalservicesfirms #growthstrategies

Are you a small or mid-sized professional services firm struggling to drive marketing strategies among potential clients to achieve growth rather than uncertainty? My weekly Marketing Strategies 4 Growth newsletter shares insights gained from nearly 20 years of marketing expertise at two mid-sized accounting and advisory firms. I specialize in tackling problems that firms and their partner groups face with effective marketing and communication strategies to get things unstuck and back on course.

Also, click here to pick up a complimentary cheat sheet entitled "6 Steps to Writing Digital Content That Converts".

Joe Kovacs, APR ([email protected])