How Marketing Personnel Keep Their Jobs
Marc Rosenberg, CPARecently, a marketing expert shared with me an astounding statistic: The average tenure of a marketing director or coordinator at a CPA firm is 18 months. 18 months!
Not one to passively accept such a stunning fact, I convened a series of roundtable group with 14 CPA firm marketers. They were with firms ranging in size from $2.5M to $15M. Ten of the 14 had been with their firms for less than a year.
Following is the group’s consensus as to how MDs can succeed in their roles.
- Manage expectations. Marketing people are rarely hired to directly bring in clients, but this is what partners commonly expect of them. MDs should make sure the firm understands the difference between marketing and selling.
- MDs should report to MPs. Not to a committee, not to a firm administrator, but to the leader of the firm. MDs need the MP to be their champion.
- MDs should position themselves as strategists, not just tacticians. The MD should have a seat at any meeting (retreats, partner meetings, etc.) when strategic planning is on the agenda.
- Deliver what you say you will deliver. Partners want follow-through and tangible results.
- Get clarification of how you will be evaluated. Show me people in any job where it’s not crystal clear what they will be evaluated against, and I’ll show you short-timers.
- Intra-firm communication. With vehicles such as newsletters or the firm intranet, show how marketing helped bring in a client.
- Spend most of your time with the firm’s practice development champions. Every firm has partners who simply don’t buy into marketing. Don’t waste your time with them.
- Social media. Get the firm into it. Show them how social media can benefit the firm.
- Understand the CPA business, how firms make money and become profitable.
Conclusion
Here is my plea to MP’s: Your MD’s should know: (1) What the firm’s strategic plan is, (2) What the firm’s revenues are, month by month and how it compares to the prior year, (3) What the firm’s annual marketing budget is and (4) What the MD will be evaluated on.
“Firm governance” is a term relatively new to the CPA firm lexicon. This term refers to a structure to run the firm properly. Gone are the days when MPs tend to admin matters in their spare time. Today’s MP position is recognized as a true CEO. (Though this doesn’t mean it has to be a full-time job). As such, the MP needs support from experts in critical areas such as admin, HR, IT and…marketing. CPA Firm Management & Governance is a must-read for partners who want to run their firms like a real business.
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Marc, I’m not aware of any hard statistics regarding the tenure of CPA firm marketing professionals. I’d love to know the source. My unscientific stat is four years. For more CPA firm marketer success factors check out http://capstonemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Four-Factors-of-Successful-Accounting-Firm-Marketers.pdf.
I’ve had several people question the accuracy of the 19 month average tenure of marketing directors since I’ve been referring to it. It does seem incredible. But I must say, ever since I heard this statistic a year or so ago, when I meet a marketing director or talk to a MP who refers to the firm’s MD, I ask how long the MD has been on board, and the responses I get are consistent with the 19 months. The source of this statistic is CPA Leadership Institute. They actually did a survey in 2006 of MPs, marketing personnel and consultants, which resulted in an average tenure of only 13 months.
Like many statistics, the devil is in the details. I’m quite sure that if one breaks down MDs by (a) size of firm (say under and over $10M) and the extent of the MD’s background and qualifications (perhaps measured by annual salary and years of CPA industry marketing experience, differences in average tenure between the two groups would be substantial.
Specifically, I’ve observed that a substantial number of firms under $10M often hire marketing directors or coordinators that are young, inexperienced with the CPA firm industry, paid $65,000 or less, or all three attributes. I’m quite sure that this group would have a much higher turnover rate than more experienced, higher level professionals at larger firms. Remember, the ratio of multi-partner firms between $2-10M to under $10M is roughly 20 to 1. This will skew averages considerably.
Marc, I have to admit this shocks me. 18 mos. was the average tenure 15 years ago. Interesting you found it still to be true today with the folks you spoke with. Are there just a handful of us that have been in their positions for over 15 years? It seems to me that there are more, but maybe the short tenures balance it out. I would be interested in hearing more.
My response to the previous comment addresses many of your thoughts. Firms with annual revenue in excess of $10M tend to have more highly experienced, highly compensated people in the Marketing Director position than the general CPA firm population. Typically members of the AAM (Association for Accounting Marketing), MDs at this level are undoubtedly of longer tenure than less experienced people at smaller firms.
I too believe the devil is in the details. First, this study is nearly 10 years old. I believe this number has moved up in the past decade. I, by no means, think it has moved by years, but definitely by many months.
Also, you reference smaller firms with marketing directors. Common in these firms are leaders assigning administrative assistants or new college grads to marketing roles – even giving some the ED title – when they have no to little experience in the field of marketing let alone professional services marketing. No wonder they don’t stay for the long-term. Today, marketing is not about ordering trinkets and planning networking events. Both the partners and the marketing staff have to realize that and agree here. When they do, partners often realize they don’t have the right marketer and the marketers recognize they are in over their heads. Most often though, this consensus is never found and the marketer leaves out of frustration from wanting to achieve more.
When properly utilized, marketing and practice growth is a strategic business function that is helping firms drive top-line revenue. There have been three firms in the past six month that have reached out to me as they hire their first marketer. The role of the marketer is one of the first things I discuss with them. Just hiring a person and giving them a MD title, doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you are looking for. You can’t compare that individual to an MD at a top 50 firm and expect similar results.
The problem is too many partners think marketing is something a monkey can do (a real quote I recently heard from a partner). They also think marketing is one-size-fits all when, in reality, it too is a specialized discipline… market strategy, market research and analysis, digital marketing, PR, sales support, social media, digital marketing, content marketing and so on. Until we are able to change this mindset and get partners to see the value of marketing and give marketing a seat at the table, average tenure will never be as high as it should. Accounting marketing is a rewarding profession for those of us lucky to find firms that support and empower us.