what accountants are learning about marketing.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
today’s accountants understand that, unlike most other occupations, they must be active participants in the marketing process, at least as suppliers of grist for the marketing mills, and certainly as part of the ultimate selling process. read more →
and marketing drives client-centric practice, it’s ‘professional services marketing 3.0.’
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
today, we are entering a new phase of accounting marketing, in which marketing is not only integrated into the tax and accounting practice, but actually helps shape the nature of the firm itself. this is professional services marketing 3.0. it’s new. it’s different. it’s better. and it’s already winning in the marketplace. read more →
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. read more →
and why it’s not product marketing.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
the adjectives and comparisons and superlatives so common in product marketing have no place in professional services marketing.
the boast, even when there seems to be a foundation for it, rarely works. but professional services marketing can work when it’s designed to: read more →
it’s not the product marketing they teach in college.
by bruce w. marcus
author of professional services marketing 3.0
accountants have historically not been concerned with the market. they are concerned with being good accountants, and meeting their own personal needs for professionalism. they are concerned with merely getting clients. that was sufficient pre-bates, but not now, because it’s not a competitive approach in a seriously competitive environment. read more →
…as accounting firms redefine value.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
today’s modern accounting firm — and there are more of them than we think, and fewer of them than we’d like to think – is still evolving. change is the result of an evolutionary process – and evolution in a dynamic world is imperative and ongoing.
today’s modern firm is sufficiently different from those of the last century as to be almost unrecognizable to the old-timers in at least five ways: read more →
sometimes change is improvement – sometimes it isn’t. but it’s always inevitable.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
the movement to replace hourly billing with value billing is accelerating. firm mergers, consolidations, new boutique firms that bear little resemblance to the historical professional firms, new technology that makes obsolete technology that was itself only months old. it seems that observations (i don’t make predictions) that i made decades ago about the need to go outside the firm for new sources of capital to finance growth have turned out to be accurate. new accountant-and-marketer partnerships are springing up. professional services marketing 3.0 is in full swing. read more →
or is better publicity better?
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
in the early days of publicity, when it was low-down press agentry and not high-blown public relations, the idea was to get your client’s name in the paper. often. in any context. just spell it right.
how to write a release that gets attention.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
a recent business communication book says that in writing news releases, the lead paragraph should include the five w’s—who, why, what, when and where. a textbook on journalism written in the 1920s says the same thing—the five w’s. nothing has changed in more than 70 years? don’t believe it.
more professional services marketing 3.0: same game, same name, different rules | when bad things happen to good accounting marketers | when being nice to journalists is the wrong pr advice | everything you need to know about your next brochure | being social in the new world of social media | there’s a leak in my firm | what ads, the web or social media still can’t do | advertising as a marketing tool that sometimes works | eight client retention strategies for the new competitive environment | why “niche marketing” should be superseded by “total context marketing” | ten strategies for the smaller firm facing competition from larger firms | the client service team in action | ten things every firm needs to make clear firm-wide |
just read any good newspaper in the u.s., canada or great britain. and what newspapers do is what releases must do. why? because the simple release, the staple of public relations, is not simple at all. read more →
nine questions cpas need to ask before hiring a public relations agency.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
there was a time when all you needed was a roll of nickels and a phone booth, and you were in the pr game. of course, all clients expected then was that you get their names in the paper. for most of the publicity clients in those days, that was sufficient.
those days were the late 1920s and 1930s, before pr became public relations, and before we were beset with such glorious concepts as image, and positioning, and niche marketing. today, public relations is infinitely more sophisticated than that, as is the public relations client. the public relations program for any modern corporation is to its publicity ancestor as desktop publishing is to hieroglyphics. and of course, the public relations program for the professional firm is different, too. read more →
the myth of ‘spin control.’
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
every election campaign produces, among other things, media myths and bad language. during the elections of the last two decades, the language was infected by a new myth called spin control. the phrase implies that a good media relations practitioner can control the nature and texture of a story in the press – can put the right spin on it to get the journalist to tell it the spinner’s way.
in this report:
it’s just not so. for all that the myth implies, when it comes to the media, we propose — but others dispose. thus it was, and thus it always shall be, so long as we have a free press. read more →
better advice: be smart. here’s how...
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
your mother raised you to be nice to everyone, and you’ve always been taught to be nice to journalists. answer their questions. tell them everything. stop what you’re doing and cooperate. be polite.
that’s the conventional wisdom. but are there ever times to tell the press to bug off, and leave you alone? maybe. read more →
start by thinking about the client.
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
there are some basic advertising principles that are indigenous to all advertising. even in tax and accounting, you violate them at your own risk.
more professional services marketing 3.0: everything you need to know about your next brochure | being social in the new world of social media | there’s a leak in my firm | what ads, the web or social media still can’t do | advertising as a marketing tool that sometimes works | eight client retention strategies for the new competitive environment | why “niche marketing” should be superseded by “total context marketing” | ten strategies for the smaller firm facing competition from larger firms | the client service team in action | ten things every firm needs to make clear firm-wide |
today, every ad campaign, and every ad, should address the question, “what do we want readers to know, think, or feel, after reading these ads?” ads work best when you clearly understand your market, and clearly understand how your service relates to the needs of that market.
let’s break it down:
1) the foundation for the ad – nine rules on which every ad must be built.
2) writing the copy – three guidelines on the art and science of manipulating symbols and ideas to inform and persuade.
3) thirteen rules professionals already know.
4) three reasons a good ad is not about good writing.