How Professional Services Firms Can Evaluate Marketing Budgets

As firms divvy up budgets for next year, I thought it a good time to share a framework that firms and practices to evaluate and prioritize marketing programs before money starts flying around. 

What is Marketing?

My wife says that I tilt at windmills when I try to convince the professional services world that Marketing is strategic and more than making things pretty. Alliance partners and business leaders say they have the “strategic stuff” covered. My marketing peers wonder why I expend so much energy and political capital fighting an undefeatable foe.  After all, it’s easier to just ride a horse in the direction it is going.

In the immortal words of John McClane in the movie Die Hard, “Yipee ki yay,…!”

5 Steps to Get Buyer’s Journey Mapping Back On Track

Well, we’ve reached the point where Marketing has ruined a good thing once again. We did it to social media, buyer personas, podcasting, marketing automation, Christmas, Easter, and Memorial Day. What have we ruined this time? We’ve managed to ruin the critical,...

How to Get Strategic Marketing Done in a Professional Services Firm

I received an email from a talented, self-described Young Turk marketer named Cannon. He was frustrated, exhausted, and struggling to overcome several onerous Sales and Marketing impediments at his firm. He wanted to know how to get strategic Marketing done in a...

Lead Nurturing: Professional Services Marketing Priority

Content marketing and its supporting platforms represent a fundamental shift in professional services marketing from a traditional “branding” focus to a new priority: lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects...

Prudent Guides and White Papers

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.

Growing professional services firm

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.

Podcast

LISTEN to the Only 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.

LATEST EPISODES:

Infographics

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.

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?

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.

thumbnail of 10 Questions Prudent Firms Ask Infographic

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 Readiness Self-Assessment

Self-score your firm’s effectiveness in 11 critical growth areas.

professional services marketing assessment

Popular Articles

Presentations

Building the OPTIMAL Marketing Organization

There is no perfect marketing structure, but there is an optimal structure for your strategy, firm culture, and desired level of investment. This presentation recorded at the  Association of Accounting Marketing: Summit 2018 helps you think through the 5 Tough Questions you must answer before building your marketing organization.

Talk with the prudent thinker about your firm.

Schedule a free, no obligation, 30-minute consultation.

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