The marketing strategies of most professional advisers leave much to be desired. 

For a long time the terms "professional services" and "marketing" were as oil and water.  The traditional professions, such as law and accountancy, did not advertise, and those who aspired to professional status followed suit.  Members of the Management Consultancies Association were forbidden to advertise and even when the barriers came down, firms such as the Big Six found themselves culturally at odds with the new world of marketing.  Indeed, the main yardstick used to assess their performance in this area is simply how far they have come from this standing start. 

A recent survey covers the whole spectrum of professional advisers, including lawyers, bankers, "two-thirds of the UK's top 25 accountancy practices" and an unspecified number of management and IT consultants. 

Although the report finds that accountancy firms (including their consulting practices) were the top performers, the top-line results are not impressive.  The survey identifies 10 marketing practices as critical, but finds that only two of the 100 respondents do all 10.  At 4 per cent, the percentage of revenue spent on marketing is below that of other service sector firms, but it is the direction of that spend that is more worrying: 

The most disturbing finding was the lack of attention firms pay to their existing clients.  Despite their importance - 89 per cent of firms reported that more than half their annual revenue comes from existing clients - most firms direct the majority of their marketing effort towards new clients.  Few firms engage in activities which are likely to enhance their chances of retaining the client, let alone improve revenue and profit streams. 

So less than 20 per cent measure client satisfaction, and only 41 per cent had service plans for their clients. 

The survey suggest that marketing is still a relatively novel activity for professional firms, and is still not well understood: The sector has only begun to embrace marketing in the last 10 years or so ... in their initial enthusiasm to meet this challenge, many firms borrowed techniques from the consumer sector which in most instances are totally inappropriate for business-to-business marketing. 

Another symptom is the semi-detached life led by marketeers within firms - the head of marketing sat on the board or management committee in less than half of the firms, and in many cases senior marketing staff report to a marketing partner instead of the head of practice.  Not only that but the loose structure of professional firms means that in half of the firms (and three quarters of accountancy practices) more than 50 per cent of the marketing staff don't even report to the senior marketing professional. 

The profile that emerges of the "senior marketing professional" from the survey is instructive.  Average age 39, recruited from outside the firm and responsible for a team of 13 and a budget of £2m, this person is unlikely to stay more than three years.  He or she is extremely unlikely to have an equity stake in the firm: only 22 per cent had achieved this overall, dropping to 8 per cent in partnerships. 
 

The report recommends attention in 10 areas: 

appointing a marketing professional on the board; 
developing a marketing plan; 
creating a marketing positioning statement or set of brand values; 
commissioning regular market research; 
regular reviews of the firm's competitive position; 
producing client service plans; 
measuring client satisfaction levels; 
managing new business activity centrally; 
linking staff rewards to involvement in marketing; 
making marketing training available to all professional staff.