Marketing Inteligence & Strategic Execution Strategy

I spoke at the Marketing the Professional Services Firm Conference today on Selling your Professional Services in Sydney.

The foundation of the presentation was the MISE Strategy (Marketing Intelligence & Strategic Execution Strategy). I was disheartened to witness so much reservation around formalising marketing initiatives within existing PSF's - not so much within the MISE Strategy, but within any formal framework. The opinion was that the work the delegates are doing is good enough, despite the challenges.

When asked what were the most significant issues facing them today, 90% of the issues raised were internal cultural factors, which I agree wholeheartedly are important to successful execution of marketing strategies.

What concerned me the most was that not one delegate raised any concerns over the current shift in the economy and how marketing practitioners can facilitate opportunities within this environment, or how do you ensure your marketing budget is secured and justified in times of economical downturns. There was nothing around digging deeper, implementing innovation or looking outside the organisation at all.

There were a series of questions asked around "how do you remove the focus on partners and make marketing a firm wide effort?", "how do you measure your brand presence?", "how do marketing and business development work together?" Terrific questions, but upon answering them through within the MISE Strategy framework, and through an interactive discussion, there was a complete block from the delegates to take on board the essential task marketing practitioners must undertake in establishing marketing gravity or developing marketing intelligence on clients, competitors, market trends and so forth.

Leaving the conference, I felt not only isolated in my opinions but also disappointed in what appeared to be an acceptable norm to not work within a marketing framework but rather, spending time reacting to internal issues was considered a satisfactory method of generating marketing initiatives, and continuing to do what has been done for years was also acceptable.

I refuse to give up on my position that PSF's must operate within current, systematic and rigorous strategic marketing strategies and frameworks. I will be preparing my presentation into a paper for this blog and developing a series of Podcasts on how PSF's can establish a formalised and measurable marketing strategy.

I look forward to sharing this with you.

Cheers,
Craig