By Maureen Broderick and Larry Mickelberg
Broderick Associates LLC
Consultants News November 2000

Demand for consulting services has exploded, but so has the number of players and, with them, the number of marketing messages bombarding potential clients. New entrants are popping up on Wall Street (the e-consultancies); through mergers, spinoffs, and IPOs; and in the guise of venture capitalists turned consultants.

Cutting through the marketing clutter is a major challenge for both consultants and potential clients, especially in light of the fact that the market lacks definition. For example, e-business consulting alone encompasses all of the following: traditional strategy firms (McKinsey, BCG), Big Five firms (Arthur Andersen), systems integrators (Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, IBM), e-consultancies (Viant, Sapient), managed services providers (XUMA, Loudcloud), and countless others.

Everyone aims to be "consultant of choice" for long-term, big-dollar relationships. Yet fragmentation persists, with only Andersen Consulting and IBM Global Services registering significant awareness in a recent brand survey conducted by the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA). Worse, more than one-quarter of respondents to that survey could not name a single e-business provider.

It's tough out there, and it's getting tougher. Firms that don't step up and transform their marketing initiatives to meet these challenges face dramatic negative impact to the bottom line.

So what works?

Based on years of experience working in the consulting industry, Broderick Associates has identified five fundamental factors that drive successful marketing programs in this environment.

Focus: A strong focus means a strong brand identity and positioning strategy.

The first step is an internal assessment:

• What do you stand for?
• What is your expertise?
• Who are your clients and what are you selling them?

Analyze the results for patterns and trends, then shift to external assessment. What service areas or industry segments are growing fast? How competitive are they? What value can you add? Where do you want to be?

Of course, there's ample room to maneuver within a focus area as long as you maintain a line to a firm base. Strategy consultants such as McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group represent solid examples of how to focus. Although they have tackled a tremendous variety of business problems, their focus has always remained on strategy, which has helped them dominate that market.

Eminence: To cut through clutter and claim leadership, you must develop content around matters of importance to your audience.

You don't necessarily need to be the first to mine an area in order to establish eminence or thought leadership. But you do need to devote resources to developing articles, white papers, presentations and web site content - and get that material to decision-makers. It is crucial that your intellectual capital maps to your service capabilities or it won't lead to engagements. A good example of an eminence-building marketing program is Booz-Allen & Hamilton's Strategy + Business magazine, which establishes the firm as a thought leader on key issues affecting senior executives globally.

Integration: Many firms tend to allocate most marketing dollars to one activity - advertising or direct mail, for instance - and ignore the rest.

An integrated approach uses various means of "touching" prospects and coordinates those touches to reinforce one another. The mix can include advertising, public relations, direct mail, e-mail, conferences, publications, telemarketing, and joint efforts such as co-hosting executive briefings with another firm.

Our firm worked with Deloitte & Touche, including Deloitte Consulting, to launch a marketing campaign to build brand awareness and bring in business for the firm's manufacturing practice. The core of the campaign was a survey of manufacturing industry executives around the world. The campaign included a global public relations effort, initiated with an online webcast from Nasdaq headquarters, plus significant direct mail, an ad campaign in key industry publications, a series of briefings held in key cities worldwide, and a one-on-one direct sales program. The campaign generated a significant gain in brand awareness, greatly improved analyst ratings, and increased revenue for the manufacturing practice.

The allocation of dollars to the various elements in the marketing mix will vary with a firm's strategy, markets, and needs. A March 2000 ITSMA survey of companies selling services, including consulting services, revealed that by far the largest portion of the budget now goes to marketing collateral - printed material such as corporate brochures, fact sheets, white papers, and ad reprints (see pie chart on p.8). However, a strong trend toward lower spending on collateral in favor of higher spending on web-based activities is well under way. Our field experience also indicates that packaged knowledge in the form of white papers and case studies, among other forms of intellectual capital - often distributed on the web - is a rapidly growing element.

Success depends on integrated deployment of multiple marketing tools, yet too many firms see an integrated approach as too costly. The fact is that even a small budget will have greater impact if allocated to multiple activities. It's better to touch 1,000 prospects through various means than to hit 100,000 once in one medium.

Execution: The key to execution is execution.

This Gertrude Stein-like observation reflects a sad reality - many firms just don't do marketing until the pipeline is dry. What's needed is a deep commitment from management and total alignment among staff to create consistent execution. If there's no chief marketing officer, marketing has to be made someone's job.

To measure success, you measure baseline awareness or revenues in a segment, then measure it again after a year of steady effort. But to measure results, you must first execute.

Solid execution requires a realistic budget for marketing. According to the ITSMA survey of services firms, those that spent greater than 2% of revenue on marketing last year saw a 42% increase in annual revenue - dramatically higher than the 28% growth registered by firms spending less than 2% (see above graph). We recommend that our clients spend about 3% of their revenue for ongoing marketing execution, and as much as 4% to 5% when they are launching a campaign.

Adaptation: What works today probably won't work next year.

Remember reengineering? Learning organizations? Continuous innovation driven by clients, technology, and competitors represents the only "permanent" marketing strategy.

Sometimes you get lucky. As Y2K revenues evaporated, e-commerce came along. Yet even when you see it coming, there's a major transition. Riding the e-business wave takes serious adaptation after you've spent a few years changing dates in COBOL.

Steady-state is no longer an option. That makes market adaptation the linchpin in any long-term plan. For instance, although IBM has not always been fleet of foot, the company has adapted handily over the years, morphing from mainframe computers to personal computers to software to services - while not leaving any of them behind.

The payoffs

Focus creates concentrated effort. Eminence generates strong positioning. Integration builds broad awareness. Execution puts plans into action. Adaptation marks an enduring business. Together, these five fundamentals transform piecemeal marketing efforts into powerful campaigns.

Maureen Broderick is president and CEO of Broderick Associates LLC, headquartered in
Mill Valley, Calif. Larry Mickelberg, a managing director of the firm, is based in Philadelphia. Broderick Associates provides strategic marketing counsel to consulting firms and other professional services firms nationwide. For more information, visit www.broderickassociates.com.

Reprinted with permission from Consultants News © 2000, All Rights Reserved.
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About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA members include business leaders such as Accenture, BT, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing ^SM, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.