Bruce W. Marcus, Author at CPA Trendlines

Nine Reasons That Prospects Say Yes

How to use marketing to build for the future.

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.

To put it simply, professional services marketing is a process that’s designed to bring a firm and its prospective clientele together. More than just accumulating clients, the effective marketing program helps shape and secure a practice that’s relevant to the dynamic needs of both the firm and the clients it serves. More than a collection of marketing activities, marketing is a process.

MORE: Why Is Change So Hard for Firms? | How Marketing in Accounting Has Evolved | How Marketing Evolved to 3.0 | Why Value Pricing Works | Accounting Marketing 3.0: New Rules | Accountants Don’t Sell Soap. | Why Competition Matters Most | Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm
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The process, essentially, may be perceived in four parts:

Define the market.
Define the service to meet the needs of the market.
Define the tools of marketing to be used to reach and persuade the market.
Manage the tools.

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Why Is Change So Hard for Firms?

Start with trends in your clients’ industries.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

I’m puzzled by the accounting firm that continues to function today as it did many decades ago – in so many areas, as if the world continues to be as it was decades ago.

MORE: How Marketing in Accounting Has Evolved | How Marketing Evolved to 3.0 | Why Value Pricing Works | Accounting Marketing 3.0: New Rules | Accountants Don’t Sell Soap. | Why Competition Matters Most | Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

At the same time, in the midst of all that’s changing in the professional world, I’m surprised that change in the marketing process for professional services is evolving so slowly. There are indeed exceptions, in which a handful of firms have extensive programs that are innovative, and very large staffs to execute them. These few firms have specialists in such activities as business development, media relations and so forth, but considering the vast number of accounting firms, their number is a small percentage of the professions.
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MARKETING & SALES

How Marketing in Accounting Has Evolved

From the 1.0 of Bates to putting the client first.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

We live in a dynamic world, in which constant motion of events and social and economic structures continually alter the state of many activities and circumstances. For example, the advent of the personal computer in 1981 changed the way trade and commerce were done. This altered the nature of financial structures, industrial practices and communications. But it also gave rise to new laws and new needs in accounting and finance. It created a new business environment that affected all participants in the cycles.

MORE: How Marketing Evolved to 3.0 | Why Value Pricing Works | Accounting Marketing 3.0: New Rules | Accountants Don’t Sell Soap. | Why Competition Matters Most | Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

It’s an ongoing cycle that generates new problems and needs in many disciplines, including law and accounting. New financial instruments, new laws and regulations, new technology that accelerates the pace of doing business, growing internationalism, the expanding body of knowledge in so many areas and the rapidity with which it can be organized and retrieved, new demands from client – all substantially change the demands upon lawyers and accountants, and therefore, the structures and practices that professionals must adopt to stay abreast of their own clients.
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MARKETING & SALES

How Marketing Evolved to 3.0

Change is a result; evolution is the process.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

It’s not difficult to understand, in this economic environment, why the word change looms so large in professional services dialogue. The nature of the professions, rooted as they are in history and tradition, can be fairly rigid, and resistant to innovation. But the times seem to have accelerated the need for new ideas and structures to cope with new economic and social problems and opportunities.

MORE: Why Value Pricing Works | Accounting Marketing 3.0: New Rules | Accountants Don’t Sell Soap. | Why Competition Matters Most
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

The accounting profession, even as we know it today, is practically prehistoric, and is now so bound by traditions, rules, regulations and laws that any suggestion of serious structural change is seen as a virtual assault on the professions. The codification of laws and the legal profession go back about as far, and are just as resistant to innovation. In both cases, the rigidity in the professions is designed to maintain integrity and probity, as well as efficiency in firm governance. If the nature of products allows for constant and rapid change to match changing tastes and fashions, the nature of professional services requires a measure of uniformity and predictability. But now, there are cracks appearing in the wall. The potential for conflict between the ethical rules and their protection of integrity, and the need for successful competitive marketing, can be intense.
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MARKETING & SALES

Why Value Pricing Works

And how marketing fits in.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

We’ve seen accounting and law professionals learn to work as partners with marketers. Typical proponents of this new form of marketing are accountants who have learned to think and act like marketers, accountants who have developed new kinds of accounting firms and new kinds of governance structures. It’s a system that in at least one aspect draws upon a product marketing practice – in that the marketers participate in designing aspects of accounting and law practice.

MORE: How Marketing Has Evolved | Accountants Don’t Sell Soap. | Why Competition Matters Most | Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm

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.

Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

It’s a system in which accountants relate to clients in more constructive ways, and in dialogues rather than monologues. In accounting firms in which the barriers between partners and associates who are skilled and talented have eroded, and client service teams that not only serve clients better, but function as marketing instruments, by virtue of developing better ways of demonstrating the possibilities of extended service.
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Bruce W. Marcus

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Bruce W. Marcus remains a pioneer in the modern practices of professional services marketing even after his death in 2014 at age 89. He is the author of the seminal work, Professional Services Marketing 3.0, published by CPA Trendlines. The Association for Accounting Marketing named a lifetime achievement award in his honor.

Hall of Fame: The Association for Accounting Marketing Award, named in honor of Bruce W. Marcus.

In 1951 (with a degree in Economics and Philosophy), he joined the then-Big Eight accounting firm, Peat Marwick Mitchell to establish the firm’s library, where he developed an article writing and seminar program that successfully promoted the firm’s reputation.

He has served as a public relations and marketing executive or consultant to most of the international accounting firms, and many large and small law firms.

His book, Competing For Clients (1986) was one of the first to delineate the new practices of professional services marketing, followed by more than a dozen books on professional services marketing, real estate marketing, investor relations, and international accounting standards.

His first newsletter, The Marcus Report (1986), was followed by the award-winning www.marcusletter.com in 1995 — one of the longest-running letters on marketing for lawyers and accountants.

He served on the editorial boards of several leading professional services publications, a contributor to many publications, and has been a keynote speaker at major conferences.

He taught one of the first courses in professional services marketing at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business, and lectures frequently at the Fordham University Law School.

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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.