old-fashioned accounting marketing dies slowly in a painful journey to a new era.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
in the years following bates, accounting firms began a long and difficult process of learning how to market.
accountants were still so steeped in the no-commercialization ethic that they tried to resist any form of marketing. they couldn’t, because other firms had started doing it, and were winning clients.
it was in this period that the traditional concepts of anti-marketing began to erode, and the professions began to change. subtly, and barely perceptively, they began to understand that the purpose of a business enterprise was, simply, creating a client. these notions flaunted generations of traditional anti-promotional attitudes. they said, essentially, that accounting firms were merely a vehicle to bring accounting to a public that needs these services. but, like any business enterprise, marketing opens channels to customers. the accountant fills these channels with services as needed.
it’s taken almost four decades, for the processes of professional services marketing to mature, and to become a legitimate and integral part of professional services practice.
it was the evolution of this concept that precipitated change to meet the needs of reaching the prospective client.
learning to market
in this second phase of marketing – professional services marketing 2.0 – we learned to better understand the profound distinctness and uniqueness of marketing a professional service. we learned to adapt the traditional tools of product marketing to the unique uses of those tools, mechanics, and strategies in professional services marketing. we learned, slowly, a new body of marketing techniques and new ways to use traditional marketing practices.
as the marketing techniques were refined, and the number of accounting firm marketers increased, the marketing techniques became a catalog of practices that constituted a litany – a compendium of universal professional services marketing practices. with no formal training structures in professional services marketing, and with universities teaching only product marketing, marketers had to learn from one another.
with few professional-services college courses, but input from often clueless professionals, marketers had to learn from one another, which, with few exceptions, did little to refine or develop new techniques. these marketing mechanics became institutionalized, with some refinement, embellishment, and experience, but, unfortunately, little subsequent innovation.
the standard practices were then imposed on accounting firms, virtually by rote. there were, of course, exceptions, and brilliant and original executions of standard and universal practices, but they were indeed exceptions. the problem was that with thousands of marketers all doing the same things, competing was often diluted.
in most accounting firm marketing, we take what’s given to us from the practice, and impose marketing techniques on the firm and its services. traditionally there is little or no input by marketers to help shape the service being promoted. this results in marketing by rote, where ultimate marketing performance is driven by factors not entirely within the control of the marketers. i’ve long called this the melancholy baby syndrome – the piano player who’ll play melancholy baby no matter what you really want to hear.
too many accounting firm marketers barely understood the nature of the practice, and the accountants who practiced it. granted, accounting itself is at the base of accounting firm practice – but the ways in which that service can be described and delivered function with some latitude. with the same limited tools available to all firms, with the same inhibitions imposed on all marketers, the tools to compete are as limited as if all artists had to paint only in black and white.
in 1980, in what was probably the first post-bates article on marketing 2.0, i wrote on marketing an accounting firm for the virginia society of accountants. revisiting that article today i’m stunned to see that to a large degree virtually every word is not only still relevant today, but that little has been added to the basics outlined in the article. this, despite the rapid and vast proliferation of professional services marketers, and the extensive introduction and use of new technology. yes, there have been refinements and embellishments, and even some ingenious and imaginative use of marketing techniques. but the techniques – and most significantly, the relationship between most accountants and most marketers who serve them, have been virtually the same as in the 1980s.
the problem is that from about 1980 to now, the practices of accounting – techniques, governance, client relationships – have changed substantially, as have the economy and the markets for these services, but the techniques of marketing professional services have remained static.
but now, accountants are becoming more sophisticated. the nature of the market for their services is changing, as is the nature of professional services practices. marketing 2.0 has been losing its grip. tenure for marketers continues to be short, with frequent turnover. reading the resumes of any ten marketers today is to see a game of musical chairs.
but still, there have been exceptions – and they sowed the seeds of the next generation of marketing to serve the changing needs of the marketplace – professional services marketing 3.0.