29.6 Managing the marketing process

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that, in an increasingly competitive environment, effective marketing has become one of the key success factors in professional firms. Therefore it is not enough to state a few principles of marketing, hoping that all staff members will apply them. The marketing process has to be managed by the firm’s top management, not as a separate function, but as a process and an approach that is fully integrated with everything the firm does

– staff development and promotion, partner and staff compensation, organization and supervision of operations, quality improvement efforts, and so on. Marketing strategy is the central point of the firm’s corporate strategy.

Marketing audit

An established consulting firm that seeks to improve its marketing should start by reviewing and assessing its current marketing practices. A marketing audit is a useful diagnostic approach for this purpose. It can be a totally selfdiagnostic exercise if the firm feels capable of examining the various aspects of its own marketing, including public relations and the effect of advertising. If not, specialists in the marketing of professional services or in public relations can assist. They may be useful, for example, for interviewing clients and collecting information from other external sources in order to provide unbiased information for comparison and benchmarking.

Generally speaking, the audit would:

–examine the past and current business promotion and marketing practices (organization, information base, strategy, techniques, activities, budgets and costs) and assess their contribution to the development of the firm;