Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

Avoid marketing department churn

In this video, I describe my view that marketing departmental structures in professional service firms can be categorized along a continuum.

  

On one end of the structural continuum is the never-changing, very hierarchical organizational model. In this framework, marketers are stove-piped into narrow functional responsibilities. They become stuck in roles that don’t afford new opportunities for learning or avenues for leadership advancement. These marketers will have to leave their firms in order to grow. The professional service firm using this model risks the possibility of falling behind more nimble competitors.

On the other end of the continuum is the highly fluid, shared leadership model. Here, marketers change roles every few years, as leaders pursue the potential benefits of collaboration and decentralization. Also in this model, marketers are typically reassigned to new reporting relationships as the firm selects new leaders. These reorganizations can feel to marketers like unnecessary churn. In these cases, professional service firms also risk taking their eye off the marketplace.

A better model is the one in the middle. Give marketers several years to gain a solid competency in a well-framed area of expertise. Marketers, staring from their base of knowledge, can be asked to shadow other functional areas to capture insights and build creative new solutions. The firm might also offer outside professional development avenues where marketers can gain new skills through exposure to other professional firms’ -- and other sectors’ -- best practices. @SmithSchool.

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Stereotypes are no longer acceptable!

In my video this week, I describe the study findings about workplace gender bias cited in a December 6, 2014 New York Times article by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg (“When talking about bias backfires”). The article offers fascinating insights for professional services marketing.

 

“. . . new research suggests that, if we’re not careful, making people aware of bias can backfire, leading them to discriminate more rather than less.” Sandberg and Grant write, “When we communicate that a vast majority of people hold some biases, we need to make sure we are not legitimizing prejudice . . . Instead, we need to communicate that these biases are undesirable and unacceptable.” 

These points offer critical lessons for the function of professional services marketing. Professional services marketers in some cases legitimize a number of outmoded stereotypes when they talk about the biases held about the function. (I’m not even going to write them down. If you’re reading this post, you know what they are!)

But the old stereotypes are actually no longer even true. They are certainly no longer desirable.

I call on professional service marketers to be explicit about their disapproval of the old biases about professional services marketing. Instead, you must talk about the organizational benefits of overcoming outmoded perceptions.

“We want to see this [insert stereotype] vanish, and we know you do, too.”

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Friendship-Based Integration Is Not Enough

My new video highlights the continuing challenges of integrating marketing and sales (business development) in the professional services arena. Since publishing my book The Integration Imperative, there has been much progress to integrate these functions. And I'm pleased that the critical topic of integrating marketing and selling is addressed by the 2014-2015 Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI). #SmithSchool

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But professional service firms over-rely on a culture-based Friendship Model of integrating marketing, sales and other functions. The Friendship Model is based on collegiality: one person asks a colleague to help jointly solve a business problem. This kind of collaboration does have merit! Many professional firms appropriately support collaboration as part of their performance evaluations. By itself, though, the Friendship Model of integrating marketing and selling cannot create sustainable market share gains, cannot alone build the “right” revenues, and may not offer the clients substantive value.

Why? Because it’s too informal. Friends are too often pulled away by competing priorities, by lack of accountability and by simply being assigned elsewhere or leaving their role. By only relying on a cultural solution, professional service firms miss out on competing as effectively as they could. The Friendship Model doesn't do enough to harness people formally to work together toward a common goal.

Professional- and B2B-service firms should add structure to break down marketing and selling silos.

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The Return of Market Intelligence

The topic of this 90-second video is “the return of market intelligence” in the professional services arena, from two perspectives.

 

First, market research is making a comeback from its previously low status in the marketing functional portfolio. Increasingly, senior marketing leaders are asking their mid-level marketing managers to do research as a springboard for marketing campaigns. Also, more professional service firms are undertaking strategic planning activities that include competitive intelligence, economic forecasting and trends analysis. Tomorrow's successful professional service firms will use market intelligence to compete effectively. Tomorrow's successful professional service marketers must possess market research skills!

The second perspective on “the return of market intelligence” is about its ROI (return on investment). In her book Marketplace Masters, Lowe summarized her findings that professional service firms which formally budgeted for market research reported two to five times greater effectiveness (than those that didn't formally budget for market research) in delivering client service, offering value-added services to clients, and other areas of competitive effectiveness.  

“Looking Out” means pursuing research on clients, competitors and markets that are outside of a professional company’s internal confines to detect market shifts and opportunities. It means taking a clear-eyed look at what is ahead, gaining new intelligence about the marketplace, and creating a reliable sounding board against which to evaluate new opportunities or threats.

Firms that employ market research will enjoy a loyal and growing client base.

Look out!

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Managing outsourced service provider relationships

In this video, I discuss the opportunities and challenges facing mid-level professional services marketers as they manage outsourced service providers for their enterprises. For many mid-level marketers, leading a project with an outside agency is their first chance to steer an initiative on their own. The stakes are high.  

  

Many mid-level professional services marketers find – sometimes the hard way, through mistakes and underperformance -- that these opportunities come with pitfalls. Senior executives have certain expectations. The outside agencies or outsourced service providers, with their own technical or creative capabilities, have their own expectations. Mid-level marketers are at the crux of this triangle, and must deftly pivot between both sides. They must help set – and re-set -- the scope of the project. They must communicate, communicate, and communicate again, as they drive the project to a positive outcome. Disappointments are not only possible, but all too common.

Instead of learning the hard way – on the job – about how best to manage these agency relationships, wouldn’t it be better if mid-level professional services marketers had a chance to learn about these and other issues BEFORE they begin managing a project for their company? That’s what the Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI) is offering currently to 21 marketers from around the world.

What's next in marketing technology for professional services

In my newest video, I discuss digital marketing, which will be one of the modules at the 2014-15 Professional Services Leadership Initiative at the Robert H. Smith School of Business.  

 

Professional service marketers have made significant strides in four areas of marketing technology. First, they have embraced social media channels for thought leadership distribution and brand visibility. Second, they have incorporated marketing automation tools that improve connections between their firms and targeted prospects and clients. Third, they have led their enterprises to optimize internal and external data, and to make data-oriented marketing decisions toward a competitive advantage. Fourth, they have improved their prowess with analytics and ROI metrics.

What’s next on the professional services marketing technology horizon? First, Predictive segmentation, in which marketers will be able to connect the dots between messages, service offerings, and clients -- predicting those leads that will have the highest likelihood to buy. Second, technology-enabled crowdsourcing, which has the potential to profoundly affect service portfolio management and innovation. Third is artificial intelligence, which underpins predictive segmentation and crowdsourcing (and probably more!).  

The beneficiary of these marketing technology advances? The professional services client – and beyond that, society. 

How mid-level marketers can provide new value

Suzanne Lowe highlights a popular topic for the Action Learning Projects at the 2014-15 Professional Services Leadership Initiative at the Robert H. Smith School of Business: integrating marketing and sales.

 

Why do marketing and selling disconnects exist between these functions at professional service firms? Part of the reason is that they work at different ends of the business development pipeline.

In many traditional professional services marketing jobs, marketers work at the “beginning” of the pipeline -- defining and building awareness with targeted prospects and clients. (These traditions are changing, however!) Sellers traditionally work at the other end of the pipeline -- acquiring, retaining or building share of wallet with the prospects and clients.

No wonder silos crop up!

To help erase these marketing and selling silos, Lowe suggests marketers and sellers should work to increase their understanding of each other’s tools, processes and, most importantly, motivation.

Three trends in 2014 for professional services branding

One of the modules in our upcoming November 2014 Professional Services Leadership Initiative will be Global Branding. Check out my newest video about three trends I observe about professional services branding for 2014.

 

The first trend is the way brands are impacted by technology. Increasingly, professional service firms must manage the consistency between the digital and in-person manifestations of their brands. Plus, they must manage this consistency across an array of digital channels, including web, mobile and numerous social media.

The second trend is brand globalization, in which professional enterprises must manage their brand identities across varied cultures, languages, and geographies. Global brand management is also complicated when professional firms merge with or acquire other enterprises. This situation brings up issues regarding brand architecture, and naming, too!

The third trend relates to professional service marketing leaders’ growing interest in determining the brand’s value to the enterprise.

Pricing strategy in professional services marketing

My new video addresses the increasing importance of pricing strategy in the professional services arena. The tradition -- prices being developed by a handful of professional service partners -- no longer affords an effective competitive advantage. That’s why mid-level marketers considered the Pricing Strategy module to be one of the most valuable subjects offered in the first cohort of the Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI) at the Smith School of Business.

Effective pricing is fundamental to the business success of a professional enterprise. Marketers have a unique understanding of the client’s perception of value and the always-shifting global marketplace. They should understand pricing models in order to become key partners in the creation of a professional service firm’s growth strategies.

  

 

 

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Mid-level marketers learn about The Client Experience

Mid-level marketers learn about The Client Experience

In this new 90-second video, I'll describe one of the curriculum offerings for the November 2014 cohort of the Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI) -- the client experience.

I've highlighted some of the skills growth areas about the client experience that professional service leaders want their mid-level marketers to understand. These areas include: researching and mapping the client experience (digitally and in-person); designing a unique client experience that aligns with the firm’s differentiation, positioning and branding strategies; and delivering the experience consistently across channels.