Top Marketing Resources and Tools for Professional Services and Consulting Firms
Elevate your firm's marketing strategy, stay ahead of industry trends, and build a legacy brand.Podcast
LISTEN to the Only Professional Services Podcast Addressing “The BS of PS”
Rattle and Pedal, hosted by Jeff McKay and Jason Mlicki, offers divergent thinking on growing professional services firms. Be prepared for an unorthodox exchange on life in professional services.
Jeff McKay
CEO, Prudent Pedal
Jason Mlicki
Principal, Rattleback
LATEST EPISODES:
- Building a Leaner, Smarter Marketing Organization for the AI Era with Bri Jones
How do you build a marketing team for the AI era? Stitch VP of Marketing Bri Jones shares how a lean team, business context, generalists, […]
- The Future of the Marketing Organization: What Should Firms Build Now?
What should the marketing organization of 2030 look like? Jeff and Jason launch a research series exploring how AI, talent, client […]
- Why Every Professional Services Firm Needs a Better Story with Stephen Steers
Why do some firms stand out while others blend into the crowd? Stephen Steers joins us to explore how storytelling builds trust, […]
Prudent Guides and White Papers
A smarter strategy for firms that refuse to coast
This 45-page white paper outlines the Prudent Pedal Growth Framework and helps you diagnose where your firm may be stuck—and what to do about it.
The BS of PS
Your guide to overcoming the roadblocks to growth and legacy in the wonderfully dysfunctional world of professional services.
Growth in professional services is essential. It provides scale, opportunity, strategic options, and wealth. But, pursuing growth for growth sake is the mindset of a cancer cell and it can cost a firm its soul.
Is your marketing organization being left behind?
Learn 10 steps you can take to improve marketing performance and deliver the strategic impact needed to grow in today’s competitive world.
Build the Marketing Function that is Right for Your Firm
All firms have different strategies, talent, budgets, and goals. Don’t build a function the way some benchmark says you should.
Build it so it achieves YOUR firm’s strategic objectives.
Are You Allocating Marketing Investments to be Fair or to Drive Growth?
You can’t do both.
This is your guide to a more intelligent and effective way to allocate your precious marketing dollars.
Win the budget battle by being smarter and more strategic—not by being a squeaky wheel.
As a marketing leader, I have helped rebrand some of the world’s top consulting firms. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes along the way.
The 20 Biggest Brand Mistakes Firms Make (and How to Avoid Them) is written for firm leaders to help you avoid mistakes professional services service firms repeatedly make with one of their most precious assets.
You’ve Stopped Growing and Redesigning Your Logo Isn’t Going to Fix It
The capability, service or consulting model that built your brand becomes commoditized, trite or simply out of fashion. All firms reach this place. What distinguishes professional services firms from others is how they see, interpret and transcend what is happening.
Here’s how to get growing again.
Is your firm leaving growth potential on the table?
Learn 10 indicators that your firm may not be realizing its full growth potential and the steps you can take to improve its performance.
Sometimes a simple conversation is the quickest route to an answer
Schedule a free, no obligation, 30-minute consultation.
Infographics
There are two Marketing Schools of Thought in Professional Services.
The one your firm has chosen is delivering your current results. Did you choose the right school?
If you’re a practice leader or partner, one of your primary goals is hitting your number.
Improve your chances of hitting it by not asking Marketing to do these 20 things that waste time and resources. Free them up so they can get to more demanding, and more valuable, work.
29 More Demanding and Valuable To-Dos Once You’ve Stopped Doing Stupid Sh*t.
This is the sister to our “Stupid Sh*t Marketing Should NOT Do” infographic, one of our most popular downloads for both marketers AND practice leaders.
Do you want to grow faster, be more profitable, and differentiate your company?
Then, identify your ideal client. Identifying an ideal client is the fundamental building block of a profitable, growing business. Some firms wait until they have stopped growing and need to painfully retrench. Others do it when they are king of the hill and have the luxury of excessive demand.
Take the single action that has the greatest impact on your firm
Prudent firms live by a different code.
While “What is our Why? is an important question, prudent firms ask themselves more vital questions.
Strategic Marketing Tools
Marketing Capabilities Gap Assessment 2.0
You can’t build a high-performance marketing machine without knowing your starting point. This simple, powerful tool allows you to quickly, cost-effectively create a heat map of your firm’s growth capabilities.
Matrix Madness Harmonizer™
There exists no more powerful and dangerous organizational structure than a matrix. Properly managed, it unleashes innovation, collaboration, client-centricity, and high-performance teamwork. Mismanaged, it is the sand–pebbles, rocks, and boulders–in the gears of the machine. This tool helps you unleash the power of the matrix.
Sales Pipeline Calculator
It’s difficult for marketing to hit a nebulous “lead” target. This intuitive tool allows you to pinpoint the number of prospects, leads, and opportunities that Sales and Marketing need to drive to surpass your growth goal.
Growth Gut Check
Self-score your firm’s readiness to grow in 11 critical growth areas.
Popular Articles
12 Steps to Transform Professional Services Marketing
Professional services marketing is like no other.
Professionals services firms market complex, intangible solutions to what are big, public, and potentially embarrassing problems. The solutions are bought by the most sophisticated c-level buyers at top companies around the globe. And, professionals must operate from Byzantine, matrixed systems in one of the most political and contentious ownerships structures, a partnership.
How Much Should a Professional Services Firm Spend on Marketing?
This is one of the most popular questions asked among practice leaders and marketers in professional services. An agency colleague told me recently that the correct answer from most marketers is always “more.” Yet, most partners and busines…
Stupid Sh*t Professional Services Marketing Should Not Do
If you’re a practice leader or partner, you’ve probably received your sales “number” for this year. Your primary goal is hitting it. If you want your marketing team to improve your chances of hitting it, then stop asking them to do stupid s…
When Your Market Shifts and Kills Your Strategy
How do you know when your market is shifting? It is a fundamental question that should be asked in most firms much more often than it is. Signs that your market is shifting include slowing sales, a remix of your service revenue, declining profitability, changing buyer...
What is Marketing’s Role?: 2 Schools of Thought on Professional Services Marketing
What is Marketing's Role in Your Firm? Every year about this time cyclists ramp up an enduring argument. If you are a cyclist, you know where I am going; it's the great base-building debate. There are two schools of thought. The first is traditional, laid-back,...
Prudent Decision-Making for Leaders
St. Ignatius of Loyola said, “Prudence has two eyes, one that foresees what one has to do, the other that examines afterword what one has done.” Ignatius, was the founder of the Jesuits, an order of Catholic priests. He was born in 1491, of a family of minor nobility...
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Schedule a free, no obligation, 30-minute consultation.