Golden Practices

What's In a Plan? Marketing Plan & Budget Development

It’s time to create your firm’s annual marketing budget. Hopefully, you’ve already read my “part 1” post, “Plan Your Marketing Budget.” This is in response to an "Ask Michelle" Q&A post.

I'm including several of our tools and approaches...

Start with a spreadsheet that has a couple columns on the left for your initiatives by various groupings (more on that below). Then you'll need a column for Timing and one for assigning Responsible Person.

To the right of that, I recommend columns for each quarter of the year or you can do months if you want to get that micro--and then create a "total" column to the right. These columns are where you'll include any anticipated expense in the periods you expect to pay them. Not all items will have related expenses.

Your spreadsheet might look like this:

Try having high level categories for the firm, overall (this will include initiatives you cannot tie to any specific industry or service area), and then for each Practice Area (can be industry or product/service) that you are actively building or promoting.

Within each of those categories, seek to include initiatives that address each of these approaches:

1. Existing Clients. Usually the most important area of focus yet, usually, little is allocated to this area.
2. Influential People/Referral Sources. Very important, and includes current clients.
3. New Business. Where people tend to allocate the most time and $, yet somewhat less critical than the first two.
4. Marketing Infrastructure. A potentially bottomless pit of marketing expenditures – make sure to do just the things you need to support the initiatives you’ll undertake, above. Most of this work should serve to convey your firm’s credibility, value, and personality. Remember, professional services are relationship businesses, and personality overshadows technical competence.
5. Research & Development. In order to stay relevant, you have to continually reinvent some aspect of what you do. I talked about this a lot in my post "Product and Service Improvement in Your Marketing Plan?"

The initiatives you’ll include in your plan won’t all have costs associated with them, but be sure to include them, their timing, and the responsible parties, anyway. This will help accountability. It will also help the marketing department have the "What comes off our plate if we shift gears and take on this unplanned work?" discussions that frequently arise.

It's easy to come up with lots of "bottomless pit" ideas, but where ROI is strongest is where specific clients, referral sources and new businesses are reached and impressed. If you're stumped for ideas, you might find the following helpful. Some specific items you might include in your plans are identified in my charts below.

The first one depicts some R&D type items you might undertake. These are best assigned by the firm's operational management group (for buy-in and accountability), but are best carried out by practice area teams flowing down to the individuals who are/should be in touch with the affected clients/prospects.

This second chart (also making available a PDF of this as the pic is somewhat small) shows a several initiatives that you might undertake at the practice area or individual practioner level. While your marketing department can do a lot of the prep and coordination, most results ultimately come down to what the practitioner does or does not do.

This is why it is so important to include practice group and individual "big picture to dos" in the firm's marketing plan. (Their detailed "to dos" can go into their individual marketing plans). It really doesn't matter whether you start with your firm level plan and drill tasks down to a practice group, then individual level, or whether you start with individual plans and stream those items upward to practice areas and then into the firm level plan.

Firms usually find one of these ways easier to begin than the other. It all depends on your firm.

Here is that PDF...Download firm_plans.pdf

Also, I'm happy to share a plan shell in Excel. It has a few ideas sprinkled in but is very generic. You would want to add additional sections for each of your practice areas.

Download sample_marketing_plan.xls

Note the Red items are DIRECT marketing and the Green items are INDIRECT marketing. If you want your plan to generate results, plan a lot more activity in the "direct" areas!

Happy Planning!

Product and Service Improvement in Your Marketing Plan?

Yes!  If you don't have an Operating Plan as part of your firm's annual Strategic Plan.

Continuing to improve what you deliver (services are products, too) and how well you deliver it meddles in your processes, systems, tools and training...clearly areas "outside" of the marketing department. Or are they?

Product quality, which products you deliver, and the finesse with which you deliver them are pretty fundamental in your ability to survive and thrive, long term. Isn't that why you are in business? 

Product development is essential to evolving with your customers. And to besting your competitors through setting yourself apart. You either want to do altogether different things than your competitors, or do the same things, but do them differently...better.

So the Operating Plan and Marketing Plan should work in tandem and be integrated—not in isolation of one another—to support the Strategic Plan.

But, alas, most firms don't have Operating Plans at all. If yours does, be sure to include these Product Development initiatives in a category I'll refer to, here, as R&D (research & development). If your firm doesn't have an operating plan, then be sure to account for R&D in your marketing plan.

This chart shows essential top-level elements of Operating and Marketing Plans—expanded to show more details in the areas I'm referring to today. Click to Zoom.

 

Focusing on R&D is also focusing on your current clients—part of marketing.

And focusing here ensures you clarify and streamline your processes so that high-quality services are provided as effectively and efficiently as possible.

This impacts good use of personnel capacity, increases the recognition of need for training and delegating, and directly impacts the profitability of each project or job.

Profitability is one of the reasons you "do" marketing, right?

But profitability and marketing all too rarely intersect within firms...a problem worsened when segregating marketing from your operations and vice versa. See my earlier post, "Don't Separate Marketing From Strategy" for more on this.

Every critical operating or marking initiative shown in my chart needs to be interwoven into your team members' personal action items or they are likely to go undone. Placing product/service-related items in marketing plans is not unreasonable. Mentoring and people development is another area I often place into personal marketing plans.

I suppose this really turns an Individual Marketing Plan into an Individual Practice Plan and that is a-OK. Call it whatever you like. But ignore these crucial activities at your marketing's peril.

Hey, We Won an AAM-MAA Award! (Some Horn Tooting)

My associate Sue Sassmann and I spent last week out in steamy Savannah, GA at the Association for Accounting Marketing conference. We had a blast catching up with old friends and meeting new people. I did a little presentation and we exhibited to launch our new project-oriented training for marketers. Great time.

The highlight, though, was winning an AAM Marketing Achievement Award for the niche-building campaign we've worked on over the last year with Tulsa CPA firm Stanfield & O'Dell.

Part of the firm's action plan included development of a blog...truly unchartered waters (see conference theme...) for CPAs. S&O's blog for ministries was the second "industry" niche blog by CPAs and the first by a multi-partner firm. These guys are true trailblazers and their results have been quite good and swift, too.

We're pretty excited to be part of their success as you can see from this picture (that's Captain Jack Sparrow between me and Sue--she's on the right).

Some snips from our press release:

At the recommendation of Golden Marketing, Stanfield & O’Dell became the first multi-partner CPA firm to launch a sector-specific blog (theministryblog.com). Innovative approach—and demonstrated results—were noted by judges in selecting Golden’s campaign from among several outstanding entrants....

The...campaign centered on growing the CPA firm’s practice specific to Christian ministries across the United States. The campaign included not only the blog written by the firm’s practitioners for national visibility, but also promotion of the blog by mail, trade-show appearances, and trade-publication advertising.

“We’re pleased with the visibility this award brings to the value of blogging for professional service firms,” explains Michelle Golden, president of Golden Marketing, Inc.

“When a firm gets out there on the Web, and demonstrates their expertise and commitment about a specific area of practice, it underscores their commitment and credibility. It also humanizes the firm and helps to create relationships. Stanfield & O’Dell are truly earning the results they are getting from this effort—I’m very proud of their willingness to pioneer this area that is completely new for accountants.”

Golden...notes that there are only 23 blogs authored by licensed public accountants for the purpose of reaching current and prospective customers. Of these 23 blogs, only four are industry-specific rather than service focused (e.g. general accounting, tax or other services). The Ministry Blog was the second of the four to launch.

“In contrast to the legal profession, accountants have almost no presence on the Internet,” says Golden. “There are thousands of lawyers who blog and are experiencing unexpected benefits from the relationships they are creating. Accountants are far more skeptical of this medium of communication and are far behind when it comes to understanding and working with social media.

"I suspect it will be many years before we see a large number of accounting firms with blogs—just the way it took years before the need for a website was understood. It’s a shame because the playing field is wide open for firms to be first-to-market with blogs in almost every industry sector save the three that exist now: ministries, health care and construction.”

To read the full release: Download aammaa_2007_media_release.pdf

2nd CPA Industry Niche Blog Launches: Geared to Ministries

I'm excited to announce that Stanfield & O'Dell, a CPA firm based in Tulsa, Oklahoma has launched a blog tailored just for Christian Ministries addressing their operational and fiscal concerns. It's called Transparency in Ministry and is found at www.theministryblog.com. The effort was led by Becky DaVee (at right) partner and CPA who serves clients including (per the blog):

• Joyce Meyer Ministries
• Fellowship Church
• Life Changers International Church, and
• Fellowship of the Woodlands

The firm's ministry practice group has been hugely dedicated to this effort and started writing their backlog of content last summer so their blog is already chock-full of information. They are launching now with a fanfare.

I believe that Stanfield & O'Dell's blog is only the second industry niche blog produced and actively maintained by CPAs/CAs. The other is a healthcare blog produced by Reed Tinsley. If readers know of other industry specific blogs, I'd love to hear about them.

There are about two dozen blogs that are authored by CPAs/CAs about taxes, business valuations, fraud, and technology services, but these don't focus on particular industries or sectors served. In other words, they are service-based and geared to a general audience.

In the interest of full disclosure, Stanfield & O'Dell is a client of Golden Marketing.

Visit Your Clients

Surprisingly, when we urge professionals to spend more time thinking intentially and proactively about their clients (instead of just working on bringing in new biz), we are often met with looks--or even heavy sighs--that suggest, "you've got to be kidding."

As we coach professionals of all levels on their individual marketing efforts, it seems like we constantly need to emphasize the importance and benefits of spending a greater percentage of energy or effort on nurturing existing clients (versus new biz development). Existing clients should receive this heavier focus for many reasons:

1. increasing the level of service to increase the level of satisfaction/delight;
2. affect longevity in customer relationships;
3. inspire referrals from current customers; and, oh yeah,
4. increase the number of project opportunities relative to meeting customer needs--needs you won't know about or be able to help them with if you aren't TALKING with them.

I write today because I just saw Tom Collins' post over at More Partner Income discussing the results of a survey by The Remsen Group. I tend to take surveys with a grain of salt but look at these percentages reported in answer to the question:

Which of the Following Marketing Tactics Has Your Law Firm Found to be Most Effective at Generating New Revenue?

Meeting with customers AND specialization (reflected in organizational involvement) reign.

Well, now, isn't that what we've been telling you all along? :-)

Use RSS to Follow Client Industries

Make news and info come to you and enhance perception of the depth of your specialty.

You may already subscribe to blogs, but do you subscribe to "searches"? Subject search results can be amazingly informative.

Using Bloglines or another blog aggregator, search (top right of page in Bloglines) for key words related to an important client’s or prospect's industry (e.g. tool and die, over the road trucking, funeral homes, veterinary services, apparel, importing, etc).

Add the search results to "your feeds" and skim for five minutes per day--occasionally forward items of interest to your client.

Measuring Marketing Efforts

As leader of a national marketing advisory and implementation practice (Golden Marketing Inc.) I was interviewed by Association of Accounting Marketing about my thoughts on measuring marketing efforts. An excerpt of the interview was used for an article in AAM's newsletter, but here is the interview in its entirety.

What marketing programs have you chosen to measure?

Just about everything possible! As an outsourced marketer for firms, there is even more scrutiny with regard to cost/benefit for marketing dollars spent. In-house marketers face much the same pressure, though, so similar tactics can be very helpful for marketers employed within their firms.

Expectations on the part of firms can be high. (And sometimes, firms expect their marketers to market "in lieu" of the practitioners!)

But even where the marketer is in pretty full control of an initiative, it is common for marketers to over-sell the benefits of a proposed marketing initiative in order to gain the support needed to try it at all. This is dangerous but happens all the time.

Setting goals and expectations with the partners that are reasonable and realistic, and then quantifying the expected results, are critical to our company staying in business. Mastering this is just as critical to keeping ones job as an in-house marketer.

We measure specific sales/marketing campaigns (mail, phone), all practice area growth initiatives, individual coaching results, sales of ancillary services, referral source activities, surveys, etc

Other projects taken on by marketing are measured against their time line and budgetary expectations as would be expected in any corporate environment with regard to accountability by a department: Web/brochure development, timely PR activities, proposal development, procedural development, internal consulting, practice area support and leadership, and other various functions.

How do you measure results?

Highly Effective Marketing Strategy Can Cost Almost Nothing

I've been sitting on this post for awhile. It's quite good:

I have this new marketing strategy that costs next to nothing and:

• Will bring you a substantial increase in search engine traffic
• Will greatly enhance your ability to communicate with your market
• Will increase your odds of being interviewed by the media
• Will allow you (or someone you designate) to instantly post news updates to your web site
• Willl guarantee that your web site has fresh reasons for people to come back
• Will allow you to be seen as a thought leader in your industry and
• Will give you a tool to help cement strategic partner relationships

Above are the words of John Jantsch in his Duct Tape Marketing post: "I'm Just Going to Stop Using the 'B' Word."

He's talking about blogging, of course. A powerful marketing weapon tool many firms (from massive firms to sole practitioners) are curious but tentative about--a problem compounded by the silly name. 

So, forget the name, and familiarize yourself with the tool.

Quick!  Before your competitors do it.

"Would You Like Fries With That?" Follow-up

This post won't make lots of sense to those who weren't at the AAM Conference last Friday attending the "Would You Like Fries With That? Upselling Strategies for the CPA Firm" session that Mike Platt and I presented. (Recordings are available through AAM or I can provide more info and handout copies if you email me.)

In the session, our attendees did some brainstorming on the new concept we introduced and the following items are the results of their brainstorms.

I'll post more about what the session contained in the near future, but for the sake of getting this information to participants quickly as promised, read on for the compiled info...

Choosing an Industry Niche

When an accounting firm establishes any formal niche, thoughtfully measuring your foothold in various industries and considering the reception you'll have within them can mean the difference between success or failure.

Take an Inventory

The importance of completing a full inventory cannot be overemphasized.

Inventory the clients you have in or related to the industry as well as your referral sources and potential referral sources, associations or other networking and skill building opportunities, and--most importantly--assess the industry's current needs (look BEYOND accounting needs, identify as many as possible), economic situation & outlook, price sensitivity issues, and other players in the market meeting those needs.

Then inventory your internal resources, services to offer, experiences to cite, etc., and see how complete a picture your firm can paint. Where there are blanks, consider alliances for filling them and determine anyone you can collaborate with to do so (lawyers, bonding agents, software companies, etc).

Choose the Right Industry

Picking an niche area that is likely to be responsive to you as you establish a foothold is important unless you have unlimited resources and patience.  I'll pick on the construction industry to illustrate my point. I've found in many markets that the construction industry can be particularly tough to break into, and contractors can be less than desirable clients to keep, for several reasons.

1. learning curve: prospects often need to be educated that they have a need
2. fee sensitivity: when they buy things like audits that aren't "required" they do so somewhat grudgingly because they cost a lot and the companies often don't feel strongly in favor of the benefits over the cost - it can be like pulling teeth to get payments and cost justification can get old
3. sophistication of accounting systems and processes: let's face it, contractors usually aren't the most organized business people (and I'm married to one so I can say that with some authority) so, while this potentially creates a lot of work for the accountant, it is not work the client is usually pleased to pay good money for and many don't have a great respect for smooth bookkeeping so frustration can mount that the problems you will fix as the accountant will recur over and over again
4. competition is fierce with many CPA firms, large and small, vying for the same pool of prospective clients!

With all of the above issues, I am still baffled as to why so many accounting firms desire to penetrate this market! Maybe the need in the construction industry is so huge and there are enough "great" companies out there to make up for the flakier ones. Maybe CPAs just like a challenge!

Before deciding which niche to pursue, consider the perils of each vertical market before jumping in. Don't start with the toughest markets to penetrate. There's probably some lower-hanging fruit that is more ripe for the picking...and tastier, too.