Here’s what you’re looking for: Bruce W. Marcus

MARKETING & SALES

A Real-World Approach for the Smaller Firm

The myth of “niche marketing.”

By Bruce W. Marcus

There is much ado, these days, about niche marketing and target marketing and using mailing lists and knowledge management.

How does it all come together to make sense for the smaller accounting firm, particularly when there’s a limited marketing budget, and a limited opportunity to reach out to the marketplace?

More for CPA Trendlines PRO members: Who’s Better at Marketing? • Lawyers or CPAs? • Even a Random Disaster Can Be Controlled with Risk Management • Managing Risk in Client Relations • Your Clients Love You? What If You’re Wrong? • The Three Degrees of Risk • Four Essential Habits for Building Client Trust • The Nine Hallmarks of a Marketing Culture • The Four Cornerstones to Building A Marketing Culture • Getting the Client is Only Half the Battle • Practice Development: It’s Not Rocket Science • Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm •

In this report:

  • The limited value of “niche” marketing
  • Six key variables to evaluate
  • The role of target marketing
  • The role of sales
  • The fusion that creates Total Context Marketing
  • 15 steps to success in integrating and balancing marketing strategies

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MARKETING & SALES

Do Accounting Firms Really Want an ‘Image’?

It’s a hollow view.

By Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

Some years ago, in a remarkably successful marketing move, a graphic designer specializing in logos, letterheads and the like came up with the concept of the corporate image. A brilliant concept, but more mirage than image.

Now one of the most successful operations in the marketing business, this company has managed to persuade its clients that corporate image is the key to corporate success. Image, it seems, is the magic elixir. At many thousands of dollars a dose.

More for PRO members: The Three Degrees of Risk • Four Essential Habits for Building Client Trust • The Nine Hallmarks of a Marketing Culture • The Four Cornerstones to Building A Marketing Culture • Getting the Client is Only Half the Battle • Practice Development: It’s Not Rocket Science • Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm • What Accounting Firms Need to Learn from Personal Financial Planning Specialists  •  The Delicate Art of Positioning Your Firm in the Mind of the Prospect   •   Who’s Better at Marketing? • Lawyers or CPAs? • Even a Random Disaster Can Be Controlled with Risk Management • Managing Risk in Client Relations • Your Clients Love You? What If You’re Wrong? •

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LEADERSHIP

Can You Hear Me Now?

Eight reasons why accounting firms need to work on internal communications first.

By Bruce W. Marcus

A terrific definition of chaos is when a client asks two different people in your firm the same question – and gets two different and conflicting answers.

More for PRO members: Managing Knowledge as a Growth and Management Tool • The Secret Formula for Getting New Clients • What We’ve Learned Since Accounting Marketing Was Legalized • Do Accounting Firms Really Want an ‘Image’? • What Accounting Firms Need to Learn from Personal Financial Planning Specialists • The Delicate Art of Positioning Your Firm in the Mind of the Prospect

Another form of it is when there’s a crisis, and the press calls and gets somebody on the phone who hasn’t been briefed – but who answers the questions anyway. There’s real horror for you. READ MORE →

MARKETING & SALES

Your Clients Love You? What If You’re Wrong?

A short discourse on random and statistical risk.

By Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

Risks are different in context and magnitude. A good mathematician can often statistically quantify the boundaries of risk, such as telling you that one in every hundred people will slip in the bathtub and break a bone, but that depersonalizes it and tells you nothing to help you avoid it. And that’s only halfway to understanding it.

More for CPA Trendlines PRO members:   The Three Degrees of Risk  • Four Essential Habits for Building Client Trust   •  The Nine Hallmarks of a Marketing Culture  •  The Four Cornerstones to Building A Marketing Culture   •   Getting the Client is Only Half the Battle  • Practice Development: It’s Not Rocket Science  •  Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm  •

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MARKETING & SALES

Managing Knowledge as a Marketing and Management Tool

What do we really know when we say we know?

by Bruce W. Marcus

The road to knowledge management, now well-traveled, seems to end with the science of acquiring and retrieving data. The end of that road, which was built mostly by the brilliance of computer scientists, stops where a clear understanding of the meaning of useful knowledge begins.

More for CPA Trendlines PRO members: • The Secret Formula for Getting New Clients • What We’ve Learned Since Accounting Marketing Was Legalized • Do Accounting Firms Really Want an ‘Image’? • What Accounting Firms Need to Learn from Personal Financial Planning Specialists • The Delicate Art of Positioning Your Firm in the Mind of the Prospect • Even a Random Disaster Can Be Controlled with Risk Management •

But with the growth of knowledge management as a discipline in many aspects of professional practice, some definitions may help forge a new direction for knowledge management that not only move the subject to a new realm of discovery, but may help find ways to make knowledge more useful as a management and marketing tool. We now seem to know a lot about gathering data, and are learning to turn data into knowledge. Knowledge must now be adapted to work for the firm, and especially for the firm’s leaders. READ MORE →