If you’re considering a move in 2019, or are working towards a well-earned promotion, then it’s essential to know what your current or potential employer might be looking for in their marketing team. The most in demand skillsets across professional services are changing from the more traditional, to client-centric, commercial and technical marketing specialisms.
Having an awareness of what these skillsets are can make all the difference when interviewing, writing your CV or speaking to your line manager. You can tailor the conversation to the relevant areas of your professional experience and capabilities so that the needs of the business are met. So what are the areas our clients are looking for? There are three front-runners.
Account based marketing
As the march for firms to cut through the noise and differentiate themselves in a highly competitive marketplace continues, it’s no surprise that at the B2B marketing awards this year the winners didn’t produce thought leadership reports… BCLP were recognised for their creative, targeted and original campaign focusing on a hard-to-reach, sensitive audience – divorced high net worth individuals in Asia. Their budget was small, but the results were hugely impressive, a 1400% return on investment.
Read more about this interesting campaign here, but the main take-away for marketers is that professional services firms are increasingly being much more targeted. They are adopting key account strategies and it’s proving much more successful than traditional methods. The client journey and experience in central, it’s been long held as pivotal in B2C marketing, and B2B is now catching up.
What does this mean for your next role or promotion? Demonstrate client focus. All marketing activities must come back to the client, and business leaders will want to be shown how marketing is achieving this. We’ve seen huge investment in this area, indeed some firms choose to bring in external consultants to develop and implement client-focused strategies. Marketers that are already focusing their strategies in this area are certainly the most successful in their career goals.
Automation is here
Marketing automation is here to stay. Across all sectors businesses are reaping the rewards of adopting new technologies, both in terms of efficiency and customer focus. Within professional services, the take-up has been slower, but it’s now very much on the radar of all larger organisations and others are following suit.
CRM and automation products such as Marketo and HubSpot are hugely successful businesses, Marketo was bought in 2016 for £1.8billion and HubSpot published revenue figures for 2017 of £375.6million – to say business is booming is an understatement. For B2B organisations the market is just as buoyant, Oracle bought Eloqua in 2012 for £810million and has developed the platform specifically for B2B marketing automation. All of this is compelling evidence that marketing automation will be, and probably already is, central to all marketing activities.
Professional services marketers need to keep up with this movement. Our clients often tell us that their existing marketing teams simply don’t have the expertise to utilise this form of software and even though they are investing in marketing automation, they’re not getting the most out of the systems.
Generalist marketing managers need to have MarTech experience. If a professional can implement and manage automation technologies and build the resulting efficiencies into campaigns, they become a hugely desirable candidate.
Bid management
After a relatively quiet year for bids roles in 2018, cradle to grave bid management is back with a bang in 2019. Firms are investing heavily in innovative procurement solutions and value added services, such as dedicated client service teams and on-site account managers to pursue opportunities and win critical bids. We are seeing firms grow both service and sector aligned bid functions alongside central centres of excellence.
Firms are looking for ever more creative and commercial bid management to articulate their proposition and elevate them above the competition.
What are the specific skills of an accomplished bid manager? They span strong project management, the ability to write commercially and deliver compelling sales narratives, and above all, showcasing the stakeholder engagement trait that can sometimes be challenging to articulate in interview.
With this newly revived focus on bid management, salaries are also on the rise. Management roles now sit comfortably between the £60,000 and £90,000 mark.
It’s no surprise that in a lot of the larger professional service firms, a high percentage of the BD director community have come from a bid management background. For those not yet at manager level, but who have the opportunity to pick up the odd RFP or PPQ, it’s time to get stuck into the next bid that lands on your desk, it could pay dividends for your future career.
What does this mean for professional services marketers?
The need to stay current is relevant now more than ever. With the huge developments in technology being embraced across industries, clients want a marketer that can adapt and keep up, if not stay ahead of the competition. Some forward-thinking professional services firms are already looking outside of their own sector for their next marketing recruit. This can be a successful strategy in bringing in specific expertise, such as IT skills. Professional services marketers must bring to the fore their experience that fits with this new dawn and be aware of the shifts in the sector and gaps in expertise when recruiting their teams.
David Price leads tml Partners’ professional services practice. He and the team are partnering with a diverse range of UK and internationally based clients, ranging from specialist boutiques through to the pre-eminent global brands across legal, accountancy, commercial real estate and management consultancy. tml Partners specialise in permanent and interim appointments across marketing, business development and corporate communications, in addition to supporting clients with market benchmarking and talent mapping consultancy projects.
