Download - Benchmark infographic and top tips (2)
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: