Top Marketing Initiatives Defined - results from my survey of over 100 CPA firms

In March 2013, I surveyed 113 members of management (Managing Partners, Partners, etc.) and marketing professionals (CMOs, Director of Marketing, Marketing Mangers, etc.) at CPA firms from across the United States in order to ascertain what their top initiatives were:  some gave 3-4 main initiatives;  a couple said they had none.  The top 6 main marketing initiatives for last year were:

• Websites
• Niche-focused marketing efforts
• Branding (or Re-Branding)
• CRM
• Social Media
• Lead Generation

Some interesting insight I also obtained was around what the main obstacles were during implementation - and how (when/if ) they were overcome. Turns out the collaboration between marketing and management was the problem (i.e. communication, well-formed outcomes and interaction overall) kept things bottle necked and stifled.

So what is blatantly wrong with this picture?  Three of the top initiatives are passive marketing activities and three are active - do you know the difference?

Partners should NOT be spending their time on these passive marketing activities because these will not directly impact the bottom line - ahem, revenues, new business - at their firms. So what we need is a redefinition of the roles and responsibilities that these accounting professionals should assume in order to ensure their effectiveness at marketing.

Next up is what the number one key factor to succeeding at their CPA firm is for the partners....do you think you know what it is?

Stay tuned...