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MANAGEMENT

Internal Communications Are Underrated

Ten categories of information your firm needs to manage … and how to make it happen.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines 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.

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: Manage Knowledge as a Marketing Tool | How to Put Target Marketing into Context | Everyone in Your Firm Is Marketing | Professional Services Marketing Requires Flexibility | How to Set Marketing Objectives | Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm
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Another form of it is when there’s a crisis, and the media calls and gets somebody on the phone who hasn’t been briefed – but who answers the questions anyway. There’s real horror for you.

A managing partner bemoans the fact that his or her clear and well-defined vision of the firm has become so diluted by the time it gets transmitted down the line that there’s cause to wonder if everybody is working for the same firm.
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MARKETING & SALES

Manage Knowledge as a Marketing Tool

Young businessman thinking, software icons in thought cloud

What do we know when we say know?

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines 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.

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: How to Put Target Marketing into Context | Four Things Better Than a Company Song | Let’s Lose the Word ‘Image’ | The Risk In Not Understanding Risk | What Your Marketing Program Can and Can’t Do | Nine Reasons That Prospects Say Yes | How Marketing Evolved to 3.0 | Accountants Don’t Sell Soap. | Why Competition Matters Most
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

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 marketers.
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MARKETING & SALES

How to Put Target Marketing into Context

three people meeting, "strategy" written behind them

Combine the best parts of two approaches.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines 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.

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 or law firm, particularly when there’s a limited marketing budget, and a limited opportunity to reach out to the marketplace?

MORE: How to Build a Marketing Culture | Professional Services Marketing Requires Flexibility | How to Set Marketing Objectives | Accounting Marketing 3.0: New Rules | Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Niche marketing is a valid concept, but unfortunately, it is inflated and distorted by suppliers of niche marketing materials. Marketing niche marketing material doesn’t make the concept any less valid, although certainly, a distinction should be made between the products of different suppliers. Some are clearly better and more relevant than others.

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MARKETING & SALES

Four Things Better Than a Company Song

woman and man in office high-fiving and giving thumbs up

How to nurture motivation.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines 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.

At Microsoft, they worry about motivation. When everybody who holds any kind of a responsible job is making more money than any of them ever dreamed they would, and when they’re in an industry that would pay anything to hire them away, how do you motivate people? How do you get them to stay, and to produce at the high levels demanded by Microsoft and other high-tech companies?

MORE: Secret Marketing Formula: Get One Client at a Time | Everyone in Your Firm Is Marketing | Accountants vs. Lawyers: Who Wins the Marketing Battle? | Professional Services Marketing Requires Flexibility | How to Set Marketing Objectives | How Marketing in Accounting Has Evolved | Accounting Marketing 3.0: New Rules | Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Two ways. First, Microsoft appeals to what creative people crave most – the opportunity to do great work, and then recognition for it by seeing it used. Then they build a culture and a business to sustain that creativity. Second, they hire the right people. They hire only those people who are motivated by what they have to offer. And it works. It’s one of the things that makes Microsoft a great and successful company.
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MARKETING & SALES

Secret Marketing Formula: Get One Client at a Time

Three arrows in center of bull's-eye

Think of reputation-building and name recognition as pre-selling.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines 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.

Here’s a little secret about professional services marketing.

It always comes down to selling the individual clients – one by one.

MORE: Everyone in Your Firm Is Marketing | Let’s Lose the Word ‘Image’ | The Risk In Not Understanding Risk | What Your Marketing Program Can and Can’t Do | Nine Reasons That Prospects Say Yes | How Marketing Evolved to 3.0
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

You can talk about strategies, and image, and niche marketing and branding. You can talk about articles, and brochures, and media releases and seminars. But it always comes down to selling the individual clients – one by one.

Well … if you’re going to have to do that anyway, why not start with target marketing to begin with?
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