Advising your clients on marketing planning. By Nigel Temple
If you find yourself discussing marketing with a client, you could begin by asking them whether they have a written marketing plan. The marketing plan should be separate from their business plan. It should include the following sections.
Firstly, there should be a management summary. This provides an overview of the marketing plan and what they feel the marketing function should deliver. Suggest that they think in terms of building a well known and sought after brand. It is important to include sales targets for the year ahead and the number of customers needed in order to hit that target.
Continued...
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It's the right thing to do...
It makes sense. Its the right thing to do. Every business book tells you the same thing. Yet, I have NEVER seen a company actually doing it. The closest I have come to seeing this were documents generated around specific events - e.g. an important seminar/marketing event.
Case in point. Do you have a busines plan and marketing plan for your firm? Any firm you deal with? Any of your clients?
My short sighted advice is - do specific documents around specific challenges:
Doc 1. What are we about? Hybrid vision/branding exercise
Doc 2. What are our offerings/solutions about (same as 1 but for each product/service offering)
Doc 3. May be for example how to gain more market share / how to attract investors / how to sell more
This seems less daunting and more focused around what the perceived issue is they are trying to address.
Anton Verster [mailto:antonv@lifequest.co.za]
Lessons so far
This is a really good article for clients and accountants. At the end of the day marketing is an investment everything else is a cost.
Having worked in the field of marketing accountancy firms for the last five years I've picked up a few things that may help:
The importance of sales training
If you want to capture and maximise the return on your marketing investment it's worth assessing your sales skills and taking some professional training.
Do you know how to open a meeting and motivate the client to give you their buying strategy? Can you eligantly develop the conversation and build value to the close? Do you have an effective strategy for objections and can you prevent clients changing their mind and staying with their current accountant after you've gone back to the office?
I've been asked a lot about this from working with over 200 firms and I'm considering setting up a free online resource for accountants. Would this be of interest?
Methodology
Having seen so many people approaching marketing with an outdated approach that doesn't work any more. Permission Based Marketing is vital in all cross selling and lead generation activities.
Preparation
When I was a marketing director of a £1m practice we brought in a marketing expert to advise clients, just like the artcile says. One of the things I learned from him was to produce all the collateral like adverts, letters, leaflets campaigns, so they are ready to go before kicking off the marketing.
I wonder if accountants here would like to see an example...this could be a kick start to pulling their marketing planning into shape?
Sales and Marketing Management
Based on the Balance Sheet ScoreCard and AVNs One Page Plan I've developed a management system and I've called it The "Q" Report. This tracks the quantity and quality of the sales and marketing function. It's vital this is ready BEFORE any money is invested.
There's a real opportunity for accountants in the field of marketing. Not necessarily in the implementation but in the management. This is becaise so many business and marketers don't measure and qualitify the marketing function and we're good with numbers.
I'm courious, would a one-day workshop on this be of interest to reader? Or maybe a home study program when over six weeks all this is covered online? Maybe a mix of the two?
resources for online reputation management
My small business has had a good experience using a business search directory called BView (www.bview.co.uk) which has enabled me to take control of my profile and actively seek reviews from my customers. This enables me to stay on the competitive edge through an open dialogue I can have with my customers. The more reviews I get the higher I am ranked within my industry on BView. I also get good google opitmisation from this. So far it has been a useful tool. I believe there may be other tools out there such as Yelp.com but this is specific to US.
We, generally, as Accountants, need to get better at marketing
Yes, Bob from "More", that would be interesting.