Rhonda Clark, executive director of the Association for Accounting Marketing, and Christine Nelson, lead communications consultant of Ingenuity Marketing, lay out how firms should be structuring their marketing functions throughout their life cycle.
Transcription:
Dan Hood: (
Welcome to the air with the Accounting Today. I'm editor in chief Dan Hood. You know, as competition for both inside and outside the profession heats up marketing is becoming more and more crucial. Fortunately, there are pioneers and thought leaders out there who are quantifying and qualifying what firms need to do to improve it. What for many firms is kind of a great, big, uncomfortable mystery. I hear to talk about all that at Rhonda Clark. She's the executive director of the Association for Accounting Marketing, Rhonda. Thanks for joining us.
Rhonda Clark: (
Thanks for having me Dan. Glad to be here.
Dan Hood: (
Great. And we also have with us, Christine Nelson, she's the lead communications consultant at Ingenuity Marketing. Christine, thanks for joining us.
Christine Nelson: (
Thank you, Dan.
Dan Hood: (
All right, let's dive in, because you guys recently did a major compensation survey of among accounting marketing marketers, and I was curious, what are some of the key takeaways from that? Are there any big surprises in the data? Anything you were curious about Rhonda?
Rhonda Clark: (
Well, that's right Dan, we did. So we conduct, a biennial compensation survey, every other year; we've been doing it since 2010. It was originally designed, you know, to provide industry professionals and firms with information, uh, regarding salary trends. However, you know, it's evolved now to be really more of a resource to not only identify, you know, salary and benefit information, but to help firms, um, identifying strategies for attracting and developing marketing and business talent. Uh, the survey launched in January of this year, we had, you know, over 200 senior marketers and business development professionals within the accounting profession participate with approximately 92% being members of a, which was great. Uh, this was across us and Canada and the report itself was released at our annual conference in may. We, uh, had a wonderful partner, uh, in ingenuity marketing, um, with this effort and we have, uh, Christine Nelson. So Chris can talk about those surprises and key takeaways.
Dan Hood: (
Great.
Christine Nelson: (
Yes. Thanks Rhonda. Appreciate the accolades there. We really enjoyed working with AAM on this survey this year. Um, I would say in terms of surprises, key takeaways, one of the things I found interesting is that these professionals are highly experienced and highly educated. We're talking pursuit of special certifications. Some of them have achieved their MBAs, um, management skills — AAM, in fact, has got a business developer certification as well. So I see some marketers are taking advantage of that. Um, and, and yet most firms still have only four or fewer marketing professionals, these professionals, I mean, they hold the keys to the kingdom. I'm talking passcodes, I'm talking content development plans, digital ad campaigns, media connections. So these are some valuable professionals within firms today. And I think that ties into, um, the next thing that, that I would say is that they wear a lot of hats and as the profession gets more sophisticated as we'll talk more about here regarding specialization, um, it, it provides, you know, some impetus for looking into how firms can develop that team in the future.
Dan Hood: (
Excellent. Well, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that. I know coming out of the, uh, the survey you came away with sort of six, uh, major recommendations. Can you walk us through those?
Christine Nelson: (
Definitely. Um, in addition to what I said, the, the firms really wanting to take a look at the marketing team they have today and how they want to develop it. I would say that there are some opportunities to formalize salaries for marketing and business development roles. The CMOs that I spoke to prior to the survey were talking about doing just that most firms have job descriptions, but they don't formalize the salary scale. So that's something to look into, um, increasing bonus and commission options. Few marketers are incentivized to support business development, even when there isn't a specific BD role in the firm. Um, and yet they're pursuing the programming. That's going to provide those future business opportunities. Right? Another area we saw was that you should promote your key talent more frequently. Uh, one role that, uh, emerged from, uh, when we were asking firms about the different titles, uh, in their team, uh, the senior marketing associate is a good stepping stone into that managerial role within marketing teams and then adding the specialty roles. Um, maybe Rhonda, you can talk about the three most common marketing roles we still see within accounting firms.
Rhonda Clark: (
Absolutely. So, you know, the most common roles that we see are the, the marketing coordinator, um, you know, the manager and the director, uh, however, you know, the survey told us, you know, as firms grow the sizes of the marketing team increases and the need for specialized roles also increase.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. What would some of those make some of those specialized roles? What might they be?
Christine Nelson: (
One of the most common ones we saw were, uh, communications coordinator. Mm-hmm communications, uh, become more sophisticated as firms grow, uh, whether internally or externally. So they need someone to manage those communications and the messaging so that the, for messaging is consistent. Definitely seeing SEO specialists, graphic design is, uh, becoming more of a specialized role with the different, um, print to digital and back and forth needs that firms have and, uh, public relations. And I wanna put a shout out obviously to public relations and communications for firms, um, especially with all the M and a happening it's so important to manage your message and to make sure that when you present the message to the media or to clients that it's consistent across all of your channels, and whoever happens to be talking about, um, different news within the firm promotions, whatever it might be. So definitely public relations and communications are a key area to look at specializing within the team.
Dan Hood: (
Cool. All right. So that's, I mean, that's, there's a, there's a lot, obviously for firms to take away from the, uh, from the results of the survey, you talk about, you know, uh, um, setting a, a framework for salaries, uh, diversifying the roles, understanding them better, all those sorts of great takeaways. Are there specific things in the, in the, uh, report that, that your members are using or ways to use it, or are they benchmarking their own salaries against this? Is there, uh, how, how do you guys, uh, when you look at this report, how do you recommend that firms use it apart from those sort of broad takeaways, which are great advice?
Rhonda Clark: (
So, you know, we, we have received a lot of feedback from, uh, members and how they're using it since it has, the report has been released and, and primarily they still are using it, you know, to negotiate salary raises as well as to, as to expand their teams. They use it for budgeting purposes. Um, also they use it to create like a, a more well defined role and a path for promotion, you know, within the firm. Um, they also use it to benchmark and to keep up to date with what's going on in the industry.
Dan Hood: (
Very cool, very cool. And, and certainly useful information, right? As I said, a lot of this for a lot of firms in particular, I'm thinking from the, from the manager perspective, but even within firms, people who do marketing at, at accounting firms for many people, this is a, a brand new area and it's kind of a mystery. It's getting more professionalized, as you say. Uh, AAM is certainly, uh, uh, played a huge role in, in helping, uh, the marketing function at a lot of firms get, get much more professional, but there's still a lot out there, uh, people out there who are just sort of figuring out on, on it as they go. So there's always great to have these kind of resources available to them. I want to, uh, to, to dive a little bit more broadly into, uh, how firms should be thinking about their marketing team, uh, you know, Christine, you mentioned that, that the average is you said four people in a, in a team, which is, uh, relatively small, depending on the size of the firm, when you think about the importance of it to building a pipeline and all that sort of stuff.
Dan Hood: (
Um, but I wanna dive more into that broad sort of thing in a few minutes, but we're gonna take a quick break.
Dan Hood: (
All right. And we're back, we're talking about all things, uh, marketing and how to build a team, build a marketing team, what it should look like and all that sort of stuff with Christine Nelson of ingenuity marketing and Ronda Clark of AAM. Um, we, we talked about, uh, uh, the, the, the takeaways, the lessons from your recent compensation survey, and there are a lot of those, the survey itself is super useful for, uh, from both sides, I think, right, for marketers looking to, uh, to negotiate better and figure out where they are professionally and all that sort of thing. But also for firms looking to hire to know, you know, what, what's a good, what's a benchmark for pricing or paying and that sort of salaries, that sort of stuff. Uh, but I wanna step back a little bit and talk about just firms, how firms should be thinking about their marketing team in general, and particularly in terms of their life cycle.
Dan Hood: (
We mentioned that that four number of four people, obviously for very small firms, they don't need four people. Uh, but, but a lot of don't know when to start having some kind of marketing function, whether it's somebody spending half the time, you know, halftime worker, a part-time worker, when that becomes full-time. And I was curious if you have any sense of the life cycle, uh, for accounting firms, you know, at what point should they be expanding their team? Maybe we could start for saying, you know, when should they start thinking about hiring a full-time marketing professional? Are there benchmarks for growing beyond that? You know, what size firm needs, what size of marketing, uh, uh, professional. I realize that's a very long introduction to, to a question, but it's a big question, I think, for a lot of firms and ones that don't, that they're not very clear about, Rhonda, maybe you could, could start unraveling some of this riddle.
Rhonda Clark: (
Sure, absolutely. Dan, um, I think it's when they come to that point when the firm is financially capable, of course, and, and you want to keep pace with your competitors, uh, but you don't have the resources you need in house to do that. Effectively, maybe firm leaders are doing the work, or you're working with some outsourced agencies, but it's becoming, it's becoming too complex or unproductive or outsourcing has become even more expensive than having, you know, an in-house employee and as firms specific needs and processes become more critical. The dedication of a fulltime professional is just much more effective.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. All now maybe we can go beyond that. All right. That gives us a sense of when, when you gotta start thinking about bringing somebody on full time, how do we get up to four? How do, when do we get to that, that magic number? And then obviously we were saying, that's an average, it's not a magic number, but you know, at what point do you start saying, wow, I really need a team, uh, to go beyond just the one person to handle all the work that was previously done by partners or outsourced or ad hoc. Um, how do you know when you, you need to start building up a, uh, a core team that can really function across the whole firm?
Christine Nelson: (
That's a good question, Dan. Uh, what we saw from the survey results is that as firms are in that 80 plus personnel size mm-hmm , um, you will typically still see one to four marketers on average, and they're wearing a lot of hats at that point. In in fact, uh, it becomes as they grow, they look at new target, the marketing director, or a manager perhaps will start looking at their budget and making recommendations to add perhaps an SEO specialist or, uh, social media specialist to take some things off their plate. Um, but as you look at that 200 plus firm, 200 to 300 plus that's when we start to see the ramp up of additional managerial functions, these tend to be firms that, um, have wider market reach. They might have multiple offices, they might be dealing with multiple niche practice areas and need more specialization in their marketing and business development approach.
Christine Nelson: (
And that's when this survey can really come in handy because they can look and see the list of common specialties that could be added to the team, right? Maybe the next promotional step for that manager to, to director, or maybe the director moves into a communications role because that's their sweet spot. And then they build in some coordinators, um, to come in underneath that. And then of course, yeah, in combination with the outsourcing, um, groups that they're comfortable using, whether it's graphic design or if it's their web development people, whatever that might be. So the CMOs we interviewed prior to the survey, they were really looking at that in terms of how do we build our dream team to match the growth goals of the firm.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. Interesting. And now it's one of the things that's interesting is that, uh, I talk about, you know, having that the, the, the survey, just having the results that show the different titles, right. Gives them gives, can give, uh, the people who are looking at this, whether that's the chief marketing officer, uh, looking to build their team, or whether it's the, the firm leadership looking to build, uh, a team that will have a, a CMO on it is, uh, just being aware of what's what can be done as opposed to, you know, of them won't have any ID idea, particularly on the, the leadership, the firm leadership level, just won't know what you can do in marketing. And I'm curious Ronda, maybe can tell me a little bit about this, or maybe if you see any of this from your, from your members, do you find that most often it's the CMO who's pushing to get a build bigger team? Or is it the, the firm leadership saying, Hey, you know what, we've reached a point where let's empower our CMO to build something bigger, or is it really the CMOs gotta sort of gotta, uh, fight their own fight kind of thing?
Rhonda Clark: (
I think it primarily comes from the CMO. Um, I think, you know, they, they understand what's going on within the department. They have such a, a great role in, uh, working across all across the departments, you know, within the firm. And I think they're, they can easily identify, uh, you know, when it's time to, um, when it's time to expand their team.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. Excellent. All right. Well, we talked about what, uh, sort of, um, the timeline of the teams when you might be growing, how you might be growing sizes, you know, $8,200, the levels you might be doing, maybe we talk about some of the work they'll be doing at those levels. Um, and, and, and, and maybe we'll break it down. We'll just say, you know, when, when it's time to go to one person know full-time person, what, what should you expect them to be doing for your firm? Uh, or what do you want them to be achieving for your firm? And then at the next level, where do you, you know, how do you take it to the next level when you build a team of, of one to four people, what will they be doing new? And then obviously once you get big, we can dive a little bit into that, but it's such a huge pool of, you mentioned a lot of 'em in terms of, uh, you know, for mergers, that's a thing you're not gonna find right. At a very small firm. You may find it only at a bigger firm, but, uh, there's a lot of marketing, uh, uh, uh, that needs to go around that. So let's start with, with, at the, the low end, if you're just, you're just hiring your first, uh, full-time marketing person, uh, Chris, what, what would you be looking for them to do?
Christine Nelson: (
Um, and that's another great question. And I think we will still be seeing those solo small firms emerging. This always happens in industry, right? As firms get big, then you've got these partners breaking off, they wanna do their own things. So I think we will see that trend in the next five to 10 years of some of those solo small firms. And so this is a great question to share, um, some ideas as to who should that person be that they hire and what should they focus on. And I would say that frankly, you're going to be wanting some type of a marketing coordinator who has an aptitude for the digital world since a lot of our marketing and business development is moving in that direction. And so whether that's someone who understands social media, digital advertising, um, content marketing, where you are drawing traffic to your website to capture leads, um, analytics being, I know that there are a lot of programs now within marketing at colleges and universities, where they're specializing in digital analytics, because that's really how you measure the results of your campaigns.
Christine Nelson: (
So I, I would see someone very savvy with the digital space at the same time. It's hard to find someone who's great in the digital space, but also a great communicator. So they're still gonna be looking for that unicorn, so to speak. Right, right. They're great with writing, editing, you know, getting the content out there that makes sense and, and is, you know, whether it's technical or if it's firm based information, and then also knowing how to spread it across those channels and then monitor how it's, how it's doing the performance. So I think you'll still see with those small firms, they will need some outsourced help, as well as having that internal, um, point of contact. Who's managing it all.
Rhonda Clark: (
I, I agree with Christine, I think, you know, for the marketing coordinator role, uh, you know, they primarily, they manage the firm's social media accounts, they coordinate firm events and seminars. They maintain the website, they're tracking the marketing and business development activities and leads and maintaining that mailing list. You know, they may create marketing materials, but they're primarily responsible for maintaining them. And, and of course they exist with the external communications and perform the market research, all of those types of activity.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. And that's like you say, that's, even before you start writing stuff right. To, to Christine's point, uh, you know, you get that content producer role, but really it's. So a lot of that is that coordination and, and, uh, uh, digital savvy online savvy, making sure that, uh, that you can take materials out to the broader world in the best possible way. Uh, and then you can work on figuring out what those materials are a little later. Um, but obviously clearly the message is hire two people when you start right. Get your content producer and your, your person with all the, the administrative and, uh, um, uh, digital savvy that you need. All right. So, uh, um, let's say what's the next step when you've, you've got, you've got, uh, uh, whether you call it a marketing coordinator or a marketing manager, um, they've got, you know, they've got you out on all your social media they're so, and, and they're, they're handling your website, content production, bringing people, uh, to you through your website and all those sorts of things, handling events, as you say, uh, they're doing all those things and they're hugely successful.
Dan Hood: (
And so you grow enormously. What's the next step where you say they are so successful, they've grown us so much that now we need to expand their team when and what, what, what would that expansion look like?
Rhonda Clark: (
Well, you know, I think depending on the size of the firm, Dan, I mean, they could, uh, you know, they could grow into a marketing manager or a Mar or a director role, you know, um, that manager, you know, if they were growing, it's a smaller firm and they're growing into that manager role, you know, they really become, they're be becoming more strategic they're now they're kind of developing the annual marketing plans, those campaigns, the sponsorships, they're really writing the collateral. They're working with thought leadership. Uh, you know, they're leading the execution of the plans. Um, they're managing the marketing department team, the outsource vendors, contractors managing the firm's brand budget. Now, if it's, if it's a bigger, you know, if it's a bigger firm and they're moving into that director role, um, they're really becoming more strategic, you know, developing the practices mid to long term goals, uh, creating service line marketing strategy, they draft the growth plan and the budget oversee all the marketing activities and campaigns they're working with in-house teams, um, they're monitoring competition and competitive trends, coaching practice leaders, and support of their business development goals, you know, so that that's even, so that could be a director or a CMO just again, depending on the firm size, Christine, have anything, any thoughts on that?
Christine Nelson: (
Yeah. My, my thoughts around that is, is marketing and business development. They they're so closely related now within accounting firms. And in the past, you would have your partners who were the seller doers. They were doing the client service, but also trying to bring business into the firm. And I think they're finding that if they have some business development, um, tie in through their marketing team, that just accelerates their success, and you wanna find the right people, obviously who will work closely together and handle the marketing side, which is the visibility of the firm for future business, but then the business development, which is getting the leads in the door. And so I would say once you've got a great director of marketing, either you send them to school to get their MBA and, you know, build them into that business development specialist who can then be that CMO and the future, or that growth, um, chief growth officer, or you, um, bring in someone who can, uh, relate really well to partners and also help the marketing team succeed and be that liaison.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. Now there's obviously a role for, for marketing, uh, uh, as, as part of the Strat strategic, uh, the set of strategy for a firm, right? We talk about that. We've seen a lot of times we've seen chief marketing officers becoming partners at firms, uh, and joining this sort of the leadership team in the sense of they're helping set the direction, not just of, of the business development plan or the marketing plan, but of the strategic direction of the firm as a whole. Right. And, and when is that, uh, what point do you think that happens? I mean, obviously theory can happen right away, as soon as soon as you hire a firm, a full-time person, maybe they should be involved in your, uh, in your, uh, strategy setting sessions. Um, but what point do you really think they should be playing on the same level as the, the leadership of the firm? Or is it really, is it all the way through,
Christine Nelson: (
I mean, if you want to, uh, set that coordinator up for success, yes. You keep them involved in all of the business goals of the firm and help them understand what they're doing, you know, how that ties into the success of the firm. Um, but I would say, as Rhonda mentioned, you know, once they hit that director role, they're very proactive in having their own department and setting budgets and setting the marketing plan and being at the leadership table to help the leaders understand the strategic initiatives with marketing that will support their business development goals. And we wanna see those managers and directors at the table, obviously they've fought long and hard for decades to be invited to the table and to be part of those discussions. And now we're seeing that reality, you know, with 20% of the firms surveyed in this survey, um, are now CMOs.
Christine Nelson: (
They have ownership, stake, some of them in the firm. Right. And that's awesome. And I think a lesson that we can take from that is we have people right now in the industry who have an average tenure of what is it, Rhonda? 10 plus years. Yes, yes. 10 on average years, mm-hmm, , that's right. That's a lot of, um, institutional knowledge that could be walking out the door in the next 10 to 15 years. And so the reason we really wanted to talk about this with you and all of your listeners, Dan, is that there's a need for some succession planning as much as there is for developing the team. And so we don't, we don't wanna miss the fact that if you're not constantly looking at how you're developing your team, and then you've got that director, right. That director of communications, whoever it might be walking out the door because it's time for them to take the next step in their life or career. Um, they're taking all that knowledge with them and then you're losing on your competitive position.
Dan Hood: (
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great point because I started mention that, oh, it's still a great big mystery to a lot of accounting firms. It's less so than it was, but there was a time as you say, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, even where there really wasn't a solid base of accounting specific marketing information. There may have been people who knew a lot about marketing who came into the profession, but they weren't specifically knowledgeable about accounting. And now I should say that's been for a decade or more, uh there's there's cadre of people who are, who know exactly what they're doing, know how it works within the, within the accounting field specifically. Uh, and it would be a shame for, for any firm to lose them. On the other hand, maybe it's other firm's chance to, uh, to, to hire, to snatch 'em up and, uh, spread the expertise around a little bit.
Christine Nelson: (
Well, and I know there are marketers in, in accounting marketing who have come from other industries, and that also brings great context. I just think we don't want to lose them once we get them, right.
Dan Hood: (
Yeah. Well, and this is true for all across the accounting profession, in everything, not just marketing, but, but in every aspect, uh, the whole profession needs to sort of step up its retention game and realize that, you know, while they may be thinking, oh, my tax people owe my audit people, I gotta hold onto them, but it's just as important to hold onto, uh, to your marketing experts because otherwise your, uh, your tax and audit experts won't have anything to do. Cause I won't be clients coming in. Um, very cool. All right. Well, we could go, I mean, obviously there's a lot more, uh, in the, in the survey to dive into a lot more, we could talk about, uh, uh, the role of marketing and the profession that's going forward, but, uh, unfortunately coming close to the time. So I'm gonna give you both a chance, any final thoughts, any final advice, uh, you would give firms as they look at, uh, their marketing structure, their marketing, uh, function, what they, uh, you know, anything they should be thinking about, maybe takeaways from the survey or anything like that. Christine, I'll give you a chance to, to go first.
Christine Nelson: (
Okay. Thanks, Dan. I, I think we want to make sure that people understand that this is a compensation survey. And so what we know the CMOs and the directors love is that it's giving them actual dollar figures or salaries for certain positions within their team. Um, top perks and benefits that they can offer to be more competitive, um, and attract the right talent and keep them, I mean, everything from childcare reimbursement to pet insurance, I mean, we saw some, some great ideas in there for perks and benefits to be a little bit different with your, your, um, offer once you're talking to these people. So we wanna definitely encourage people to, uh, purchase the report and, and get that national as well as some regional data, um, around salaries and benefits and titles that they can consider for their team.
Dan Hood: (
All right. That's great. So it's looks like, so the, uh, it's definitely worth taking a look at the, uh, at the survey and I'm assuming that's available on, uh, the AAM website, accountingmarketing.org. Is that right?
Rhonda Clark: (
That's correct. Dan.
Dan Hood: (
Excellent. All right, Rhonda, uh, I wanna give you, uh, last looks, if there's any final advice, any final thoughts you would have for people as they look at their marketing function.
Rhonda Clark: (
You know, I think it's really important for those firms who may not have hired that professional yet to, to really, you know, if you are financially able to do that, um, it is really critical when you have specific needs and, and processes, uh, that you wanna have in place. You wanna be competitive. It is, it is, it is incredibly critical. And I think by hiring that full-time professional, you know, it's really going to drive your firm forward. And I think the, also the thing I would, you know, wanna mention too, is, you know, related to that succession planning, um, you know, you wanna keep, you don't want that knowledge gap to happen, right? So I would really encourage firms to assess your marketing team for leadership transition, you know, in the next five to 10 years, identify those high potential leaders and create their personal development track for future retention and leadership continuity, um, and just, you know, address the budgetary considerations for current and future marketing and business development leaders with formalized compensation and ownership, stakes are appropriate. So, uh, just, just a few things there.
Dan Hood: (
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is the stuff that firms should be doing, uh, with, they're already thinking about doing, as I said, with their technical, uh, staff, they should be, uh, thinking about it as well with their, with their marketing. Cause it's a hugely important role for firms as mentioned tremendous competition out there, uh, a lot of business up for grabs, uh, but you gotta be in a position to, uh, to get in front of it. And that's what marketing's all about. All right. Uh, Rhonda Clark of AAM and Christine Nelson of Ingenuity Marketing. Thank you so much for joining us.
Rhonda Clark: (
Thank you, Dan.
Christine Nelson: (
Thanks Dan. It's a great, great to do this.
Dan Hood: (
Yeah. Thank you for, thank you for coming on board and thank you all for listening. This episode of on the air was produced by accounting today with audio production by Wen-Wyst Jeanmary. Review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accountingtoday.com. Thanks again to our guests. And thank you for listening.