Author: Gill

Many professional service firms have bemoaned the shifting landscape that Google and wider advancements in technology have brought about – namely, the intensifying competition for firms as access to services and suppliers becomes easier for clients. As the ‘home’ of information, Google countered the traditional perceptions of the professional services marketplace by presenting people with more choice than ever when it comes to service providers. Historically, renowned experts were once best-kept secrets, but over the past 10 years Google has brought visibility and choice and shows the market is saturated with suppliers and people have been able to cast the…

Digital has changed the face of professional services marketing. The battle for business is increasingly being played out on the digital field. Clients and prospects now routinely turn to online channels as part of their supplier selection process. As stakeholders’ online expectations and behaviours shift, what does this mean for professional service client acquisition? Before digital In the pre-digital landscape, the purchasing journey for professional service firms’ prospective clients was, relatively speaking, straightforward. The process started with a problem or need that the prospect was seeking to address. They approached the firm and the firm’s professionals were on hand and…

Competition for best talent is just as fierce as the competition for business. The situation is particularly acute in professional services, where people are – excuse the cliché – a firm’s “number one asset”. And where firms scramble to attract lateral hires with the promise of new work and an extended client base. Cue ’employer branding’. We’re seeing HR departments responding to the challenges of attracting best talent and the need to ‘stand out’ by articulating the employee experience as a point of differentiation. Firms are realising the importance of ‘softer’ criteria for potential employees in choosing one firm over another. So beyond the…

A professional services firms reputation. Intangible? Nebulous? Incalculable? Why bother? Do firms actively manage their corporate reputation? Every organisation has a reputation, whether they proactively manage it or not! Our stance is: manage your reputation properly, and you can leverage it to differentiate and achieve a competitive advantage. What do we mean by ‘corporate reputation’? Corporate reputation is the totality of perceptions of a firm held by a range of stakeholders. It’s a product of an organisation’s behaviour, communications and symbols, and should be considered in the context of an organisation’s corporate objectives. Importantly, it has the potential to be…

Given its impact on clients’ purchasing behaviour, word of mouth continues to be the principal generator of work for professional service firms. Firms have historically tried to leverage WOM predominantly through ‘thought leadership’ marketing; providing viewpoints, clarity to ambiguous problems, and solutions through offline ‘content’ such as newsletters, white papers and articles. Sharing knowledge with their audiences to create demand, generate leads and maintain contact with existing clients between instructions. That is, until target audiences moved online; changing the way they talk, share opinions and consume information. WOM expanded its reach across the multitude of channels opened up by the…

One of the most prevalent challenges for law and accountancy firms today is to get their messages out in the marketplace. But since the explosion of communications channels from the traditional to online, gaining visible traction has become more difficult than ever. Larger law and accountancy firms may enjoy the support of PR, digital agencies and internal marketing teams to help them ‘be seen’, but a lot of smaller and even large regionals don’t have this type of resource to call on, yet they still need to generate visibility. These firms have to work with what they have. Gaining visibility…