1

Good News Being more focussed

Marketing Directors are getting respect Now believe the marketing team has sufficient authority to perform its role successfully

Are you ready for 2015 and the future? Marketing Director Benchmark

Marketing is back into growth mode Are planning to increase marketing budgets Are planning to increase marketing headcount

Delivering outstanding client service Changing client demands will be the most important factor driving change over the next five years

Approximately 4/5 will prioritise

obtaining more feedback from clients and spending more time improving client service

Demonstrating ROI

Helping to drive strategy Over ½ would like to improve the skills

of the marketing function in strategic planning

Upskilling the marketing department

Over 4/5 would like to improve the skills of

the marketing function in Key account management, project management and collaboration

Collaborating with other functions Have a plan in place to collaborate with another function on a specific project this year The most popular function s to collaborate with are HR, Technology and Strategy

72%

£

41%

58%

Challenges

Agree Disagree

46% 27% “It is easy to demonstrate the ROI (return on investment) of time and money spent on marketing within my firm”

i

5

4

3

2

1

ii

Being more strategic

99%

1st

Delivering outstanding client service1

Demonstrating ROI£2

Helping to drive strategy3

Upskilling the marketing department4

Collaborating with other functions5

Meridian West and PM Forum Marketing Benchmark 2015Top tips to overcome the challenges facing marketers

• Networks. Clients expect collaboration. Who are

the third parties and internal colleagues who can

help you drive change and do new things?

• Sharing. Proactively share useful tools and

information with clients; this helps to position the

firm as a trusted adviser.

• Firm-wide. Involve the entire firm if you want to

provide a seamless service to clients. This cannot

be achieved without collaboration.

• Impact. Position yourself as a consultant to the

business, searching out projects with a strategic

impact such as developing new propositions.

• Skills. Focus training on the technical skills needed

for data analytics and online analysis to better

measure outcomes and ROI.

• Confidence. Impart confidence among your

marketing colleagues. They have the skills and

experience to provide strategic input but may lack

the confidence to speak out.

• Knowledge. Share information about client and

industry trends. When junior fee-earners don’t

have a deep understanding of the clients they

encounter this weakens the client’s view of your

firm.

• Challenge. Marketers are well placed to challenge

business truisms and ‘pet projects’. Use your

market understanding and trusted marketing tool

box to scrutinise bad business cases.

• Time. Analyse non-chargeable fee-earner time. It

is one of the biggest costs to your firm, but is it

spent on the most effective marketing activities?

• Focus. Reassess who your clients really are. Focus

on the clients of your firm: by serving the clients’

interests you will serve the partners’ interests too.

• Goals. Establish clear goals and outcomes at the

beginning of a project that are easy to track. Use

holistic client metrics, not just campaign metrics.

• Feedback. Use a mix of third-party suppliers and

relationship partners to gather client feedback.

Use this to highlight gaps between what clients

want and what fee-earners think clients want.

• Transparency. Share client feedback insights

around the firm, celebrate success and champion a

culture of client service improvement.

• Appraisal. Incorporate client satisfaction metrics

into individual reward and performance reviews.

• Future. Financial data is easy to track but

encourages short-term thinking. Focus on forward

looking data to understand clients’ future needs.• Service. Clients notice when sound technical advice

is let down by poor project support, matter

management and mediocre client service.

• Expectations. Clients become frustrated when

gaps arise between a charismatic pitch team and

the day-to-day running of an engagement.

• Support. Equip fee-earners with information and

tools to deliver outstanding client service. Support

and inspire, don’t coerce.

• Accountability. Few firms have a dedicated board

member with responsibility for clients. Who is

accountable for the client agenda in your firm?

• Secondments. Capture and share valuable insight from secondees; too often this is not used to spot growth opportunities for the firm.

Claire Saunders, Strategy Director, PwC

Mark House, formerly Head of BD, Coutts & Co

Allan Evans, Marketing Partner, BDO

Shalini Sequeira, In-house Counsel, Argus Media Ltd.

The following top tips are taken from Meridian West’s panel discussion about the findings of the 2015

Marketing Benchmark study. The panel comprises: