what we’ve learned from our mistakes.
by bruce marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
in the early days, firms reluctantly hired people they thought were professional marketers. for example, one then-big eight accounting firm hired an advertising firm executive who, it turned out, had been in ad agency production and knew nothing about marketing. another firm hired a public relations company that saw all marketing as public relations.
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editor’s note: 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 was privileged to have a long relationship with bruce w. marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. we are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.
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public relations or advertising people who didn’t know how accounting and law firms worked were hired. how could the professionals know otherwise? professional marketing and its process were new to the accountants and lawyers, and they had never hired marketers before.
at first, the newly minted marketers tried to use the same techniques used to market products. some professionals were even persuaded that people who know how to market products would know how to market professional services. they didn’t.
product marketers had been marketing for generations, but accountants had to learn it from scratch without a sound marketing tradition. there were many obstacles. there was also an intense need to clarify the role of marketing and the nature of marketers. to most professionals, after decades in which marketing was not only prohibited but was considered unprofessional and even unsavory, the marketers and their practices were accepted only reluctantly and as completely ancillary to law or accounting firm practices. the nature, training and mindset of the marketer seemed to be inimical to that of lawyers and accountants.
the professionals felt that marketing was undignified and that those who did it were themselves less than dignified. they saw marketing as hucksterism and certainly not in the professional services tradition. this, even though, the professions are the only commercial enterprise that demands the participation of the practitioners to run a marketing effort. without the input of the accountants, there’s no grist for the marketing mill.
but the worst part was the disconnect between the professionals and the marketers. this disconnect was – and to a lesser extent, still is – a significant factor in slowing the development of professional services marketing techniques. the professionals, whose only knowledge of marketing was the casually observed and often misconstrued product marketing structure, in which marketing was distinctly separate from the manufacturing process, assumed that they had nothing to do with marketing or marketers. they assumed that marketing was done by outsiders who were not part of the legal or accounting professions, and they were frequently dismissive of both the marketers and the process. this recalcitrant attitude persisted throughout the next three decades – marketing 2.0. in many ways, this attitude informed the nature of the relationship between both marketing and professional practice.
bates v. state bar of arizona started the evolution from past traditions to a new paradigm in professional services. this period of turmoil came from the beginnings of organized, professional services marketing, and the foundation for the modern firm, was professional services marketing 1.0.
but ultimately, the accountants and lawyers gradually came to understand that marketing was inevitable, if only because their competitors were doing it. because of this new competition, the accountants simply lost the option. they had to market. it was a time of learning, of accommodating, and even of acquiescing.
subsequently, the firms and the marketers came to understand which marketing techniques worked for professional services, and which didn’t. gradually, the professionals began to understand what marketing was, and how it worked to help them compete. with experience, and a refinement of techniques, this became professional services marketing 2.0.
professional services marketing 2.0
in the years following bates, both law and accounting firms began a long and difficult process of learning how to market.
lawyers and 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.
in this period, the traditional anti-marketing concepts began to erode, and the professions began to change. subtly, and barely perceptively, they began to understand that the purpose of a business enterprise, including a professional firm, is to create a customer – a client. these definitions flaunt generations of traditional anti-promotional attitudes. they said that accounting firms are merely a vehicle to bring accounting to a public that needs these services. like any business enterprise, marketing opens the channels to its customers. the professional fills these channels with professional services as needed.
it’s taken over four decades, since bates, for the processes of professional services marketing to mature and become a legitimate and integral part of professional services practice.
the evolution of this concept precipitated a 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 law and 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 academic 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 the 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 promoted service. 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 law and accounting firm marketers barely understand the nature of the practice, and the lawyers and accountants who practice 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 lawyers and accountants and most marketers who serve them – have been virtually the same as it had been since the 1980s. the problem is that in that interim period from about 1980 to now, the practices of law and 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. the article i wrote in 1980 is still current.
but now, the accountants have been and 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, and return on marketing investment has been too difficult to discern by skeptical lawyers and accountants. and tenure for marketers continues to be short, with frequent turnover. reading the resumes of any 10 marketers today is to see a catalogue of american law and accounting firms – 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 – marketing 3.0.
professional services marketing 3.0
now, we begin to enter a new phase of marketing, in which marketing is not only integrated into the practice, but actually helps shape the nature of the practice itself. this is marketing 3.0. it is characterized by marketers – professional marketers, accountants, firm managers – who fully understand the nature of accounting practice, as well as the techniques and skills of marketing professional services. these marketers often go well beyond the practices of marketing 2.0.
there is a new generation of accountants who, unlike their predecessors during marketing 2.0, fully understand that marketing is as much part of the practice as billing and other financial controls. even the process of the growing field of knowledge management, long considered primarily technical for acquiring and managing internal data as a management function, is now beginning to include marketing data as integral to managing a firm. and why not? no professional firm exists without its clients.
where once project management was taken for granted, there is now a more sophisticated approach to it, as part of a growing firm management professionalism needed to improve productivity.
the older generation felt that bates, and the competition it introduced, was the death knell of the professions. quite the opposite, it turned out, has proven to be true. competition has sharpened the practice, and helped introduce new services that better serve both the firms and the clients. the changes, when compared to the firms of the pre-bates era, are phenomenal. it has led to more streamlined firm management and service structures, benefiting both the firm and its clients.
it’s a new partnership between the professionals, who are imbued with a true understanding of the meaning of marketing to a contemporary practice and their inevitable role in it, and marketers who fully understand the markets and services, and the personalities of accountants and lawyers.
if the marketers of marketing 2.0 better understood the craft and tools of marketing professional services, the marketers of 3.0 better understand the practice of law or accounting, including each profession’s disciplines, fundamental characteristics and tasks in the actual practice of law or accounting, as well as the distinctive personality traits of lawyers and accountants. at the same time, the professionals of 2.0 now better understand the principles and practices of marketing – professional services marketing 3.0.
ultimately, marketing 3.0 is impelled by several factors …
- today’s lawyers and accountants understand that, unlike most other occupations, they must be active participants in the process, at least as suppliers of grist for the marketing mills, and certainly as part of the ultimate selling process. what’s more significant is that they begin to see the professionalism in marketing, and particularly the selling aspect of it. says halloran & sage’s chief operating officer david urbanik, “successful business development in a law firm also requires a third dimension – business risk and financial analyses.” this, he says, is particularly significant in such areas as fee negotiation, and in helping to design business solutions.
- with the new configurations of law firms evolving, both lawyers and accountants and the marketers who serve them have greater reason to work more closely. says david urbanik, “case management systems and well defined communication protocols that ensure consistency of approach and fee arrangements that give a high degree of certainty as to the costs of services rendered can often be the deciding factor in retaining legal services. thus, the truth of the old adage, ‘clients do not hire law firms, they hire lawyers’ may be fading. in more and more markets, they actually do hire law firms. the consistency of approach and certainty of cost that clients are seeking may not be that far from the consistency expected by the purchaser of the tube of toothpaste. – something to think about.” true, but on the other hand, most people still hire skills, whether they perceive them in individual lawyers or in entire firms.
- today’s marketers and professionals are both beginning to have a better understanding of the markets themselves, and the industries in which clients function. they know the difference between understanding the elements of a market versus simply segmenting mailing lists. they are more conversant with the techniques of fathoming market needs, and designing not only marketing programs, but firm structures to better meet those needs. they better understand how to shape services to meet client demands and needs.
- because of their ability to understand consumers, product marketers not only feed market information back to their companies, they also are significant contributors to the design and development of new products. with a few exceptions, this has rarely been the practice under 2.0. under 3.0, more and more marketers will participate in designing new services for clients, as well as the programs to market those services. in fact, marketers are increasingly responsible for understanding the market and feeding market information back to the firm.
- this new generation of lawyers and accountants better understands their clients’ businesses and industries. this results in improved client service and relationships, and therefore better practice of law and accounting.
- an increased focus on selling, both by the professionals and the marketers, has produced a new generation of specialists. while selling has always been part of the marketing process, competition has bred a new focus on its importance and skills, to the point that the specialists are trained practitioners of what is now called, appropriately, practice development. the thoughtful marketing consultant, suzanne lowe, made extensive inroads into the art and craft of the process in her book, “the integration imperative: erasing marketing business development silos – once and for all – in professional service firms.”
- in many respects, the practices of law and accounting intertwine. for example, estate planning draws upon both law and accounting practices. while we seem to be light years away from the two professions physically merging under one banner, they often serve overlapping constituencies. the marketer of 3.0 will have a profound understanding of both practices.
marketing 2.0 evolved as marketing for accountants and lawyers matured, and the marketing practices we use today became standard and somewhat sophisticated – if not universally so.
except now, marketing 3.0 is emerging.
it is evolving – and gives us a better clue to the future of the profession than all the prognostication of the self-proclaimed seers.
if the professionals of marketing 2.0 misconceived marketing and marketers, the professionals of marketing 3.0 now begin to see themselves as partners with marketers – active, contributing partners. what had been an us-them relationship is becoming a professional/marketer partnership.