Neglected and misunderstood

As a subject matter expert you may sometimes feel fed up with your marketing department.

They don’t seem to listen, when you’re asking them for help. Nor do they understand the ins and outs of your services, the value you’re creating for your clients, and what your market looks like.

Now, I don’t think you can blame them.

In a typical professional service firm, new services sometimes seem to pop up overnight. I remember vividly that we we’re simultaneously trying to bring a couple of hundred services to market when I was at Deloitte.

Even with a big marketing and comms team, that’s impossible.

Professional service firms need to decide what to focus their time and efforts on. No wonder, a lot of professional service marketers are mainly doing brand marketing; developing and maintaining a strong brand and reputation.

This makes a lot of sense, as a firm’s brand and reputation drive a positive feedback loop. One that leads to attention, an interest in your services, and – when delivered successfully – an even stronger brand.

However, this doesn’t change the fact that you may sometimes feel neglected or misunderstood. Which – quite frankly – sucks.

About time you have a (30 minute) conversation with your marketing and business development colleagues.

Here are a few points to address. Preferably in the same order as listed below:

1. Tell them you get it. A strong brand and reputation play an important role in bringing services to market. Compliment them on a recent branding effort you really liked.
   
2. Also tell them you need more. A strong brand alone won’t sell any more services. You additionally need a deep understanding of the market, which you have. Just like relationships with key players. And trust you’ve cultivated at your clients.
   
3. Talk to your marketing team about your business objectives. Be explicit about what you’d like to achieve and by when. Don’t be vague. Use business metrics, such as number of assignments and related revenue.
   
4. Educate them on your service and your ideal client. What value are you promising your clients? And what does your ideal client look like? If, at this stage, you yourself are not 100% clear, ask your marketing colleagues for help. Together you should be able to improve your value proposition and ideal client profile.
   
5. Ask them how they would measure achieving your objectives. What KPIs do they suggest? What measuring tools can they provide?
   
6. Ask for available budget, marketing and BD resources (i.e. hours and skills from the MBD team), existing processes, and marcom channels.
   
7. And finally, discuss how to ensure alignment with the firm’s brand marketing efforts.

Maybe you could collaboratively fill out the Marketing Strategy Canvas. A canvas I designed to help you make all the required strategic and tactical marketing decisions when bringing a service to market.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for reading Nudge #031, sent to busy subject matter experts on September 3, 2024.