Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success, 2nd Edition

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Keys to Building a Terrible Marketing Strategy

Man, how can a guy miss what's been right in front of him all this time?

—Bizarro

Over the years, we've worked with many professional services firm leaders to build marketing plans that will work well for them. There must, however, be a secret primer out there on how to build terrible marketing strategies for professional services firms. During the past two decades, we've come across so many marketing strategies that have failed for similar reasons that we figure everyone must be in the know and we have simply been left out of the loop.

After much research to find the source, the secret codex still eludes us. So we feel compelled to seize this moment for posterity and codify the process of building terrible marketing strategies.

Here it goes . . .

Build the Strategy from the Top Down

Question: In a ham and eggs breakfast, what's the difference between the pig and the chicken?

Answer: The chicken was compliant, but the pig was committed.

Nothing turns off partners, division leaders, and other leadership types more than being handed a strategy and told to “make it happen.” Force-feed the strategies from on high, and you're likely to get compliance but rarely commitment. Practice leaders may take the strategy and run with it, perhaps even put a bit of effort and sweat into it, yet they can—and frequently do—walk away at the first sign of trouble.

Without going through the process of crafting the strategies and tactics themselves—brainstorming ...