Dear Colleague:
In our latest newsletter, you will learn how some professional services firms emerged from the recession in much better shape than others. In addition, we introduce our upcoming research on account-based marketing and invite you to share your insights on how this practice is being used in your organization.
New Insights: Lessons from the Recession
In April 2009, Alterra Group surveyed 105 professional services marketing and business development leaders from the United States and abroad to understand how the 2008-2009 recession had affected them.
Nearly half of the respondents to our survey expected to generate less revenue in 2009 compared with 2008. As goes revenue, so go budgets: 53 percent said their budgets had shrunk in the past six months to a year, 26 percent said their budget was the same, and 22 percent said their budgets had grown.
Our analysis revealed that companies that have increased or maintained revenue through the recession (leaders) had spread their resources more evenly across lead generation, branding, thought leadership, and new product introductions in 2008 than those that have lost revenue (laggards). For example,
in 2008 leaders gave an average priority rating of 3.8 out of 5 to lead generation, versus 3.3 for branding and thought leadership and 2.8 for supporting new product introductions. In contrast, during the same time period laggards were more heavily focused on leads (4.1) and branding (4.1) at the expense of thought leadership (3.3) and new products (2.4).
In addition, in 2009 laggards continue to deploy marketing strategies that lack the best practices of leaders. More specifically, they say building the brand is 19 percent less important now (versus 4 percent more important for leaders), and new product introductions are 22 percent more important (versus 11 percent less important for leaders). Laggards also say that thought leadership is not any more important today than it was in 2008, while leaders think it is 3 percent more important.
We believe leaders have had more success because their approach more consistently supports the complete process of marketing professional services: Build awareness, create relationships, and find opportunities.
Indeed, our research shows that when times are tough, clients choose providers that can best demonstrate deep expertise solving the business problems they face. This expertise must be proven over time—via compelling case studies and research- or experienced-based POVs—not simply proclaimed in sales literature and ads.
Click here to read the full white paper.
New Research: Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on winning, retaining and growing specific clients by targeting them with highly-customized marketing content and campaigns.
Alterra Group believes that ABM is on the rise due to a variety of factors, such as increasing adoption of social media and Web 2.0, its higher perceived ROI as compared to more conventional “mass” marketing activities, and increased pressure on marketers to quickly generate incremental revenue.
We are currently kicking off research to verify the increasing importance of ABM, explore the reasons for it, and identify the key challenges, success factors and benefits of the ABM approach. An important component of this research will be in-depth case studies on professional services marketers who have made ABM a key part of their marketing mix. If you are interested in participating in this case study research,
please contact Susan Buddenbaum.
About Alterra Group
Alterra Group helps professional services organizations address their thought leadership marketing challenges by developing unique points of view, articulating those points of view in a variety of publications, and building powerful marketing campaigns around the content in those publications to get points of view in the hands of current and prospective clients. |
