Building a marketing function that can withstand change
A new partner arrives…
A new sponsoring partner takes over responsibility for the function. They are ambitious and want to make their mark, so they conduct a strategic review….
Professional services firms are structurally unstable environments for marketing. Leadership, and even fundamentals like go-to-market approaches change regularly. Some firms lead by sector, some by service line, some by theme, and most cycle between them as leadership changes and strategy shifts.
These debates are a normal feature of how ambitious firms think about growth. Its unrealistic to expect it not to happen. But what happens to marketing each time the cycle repeats?
Each time the structure changes, the marketing activity aligned to the previous approach loses its footing. The review concludes, new priorities get set, and the campaigns that were being planned lose their momentum. Budget gets redirected, and the team reorganises around the new structure. The audience you were building, the presence you were starting to establish and the learning that was accumulating all gets caught in the disruption.
Given these dynamics, I’ve been pondering whether it is possible to ever build a marketing function that can stay stable long enough to demonstrate real ROI. I think the answer could be to build a marketing function that is designed to cope first and foremost with these stresses.
The campaigns model
Most marketing functions in professional services are built around campaigns. A campaign is designed around a specific objective, runs for a defined period, and ends. The learning from it tends to stay with whoever ran it. Budgets get spread thinly across multiple campaigns, each optimising for its own metrics and goals. The setup overhead is significant with research, brief, design, approvals all required to get to the execution and then it launches (and often fizzles).
When a new partner arrives and wants to change things, a campaign-based marketing function has very little to defend, because there is no overarching system. There is just a set of activities that were aligned to the previous priorities.
Building a programme-based platform
When most professional services marketers hear the word "platform”, they think brand platform. Visual identity. Tone of voice guidelines. The creative infrastructure that makes the firm look consistent across everything it produces. A marketing platform built as a cohesive system from the start is a different proposition. It’s a structured set of programmes that act as connected parts of a larger whole. Each programme is built for the channel it lives in, which means the format, the audience and the data all accumulate over time. Each iteration builds on the last. Because the programmes are designed together around a shared positioning, they reinforce each other.
A platform like this would sit above the go-to-market structure. It is able to serve whichever approach is in place, because its job is to build the consistent presence and recognisable identity that makes everything else work harder. When the go-to-market debate restarts (and it will!) a platform approach like this can continue to work.
This approach would also change the planning process in a practical way. If the marketing programmes exist and their purpose is clear, the annual planning conversation shifts from what we will do next year to how do we direct what we have toward this year’s priorities. It is faster to market.
Rowing against the tide
If the argument for organising around marketing programmes sounds correct, the obvious question is why more firms have not made this shift. I think it requires more than good design. It requires governance, clear decision rights, and a willingness to hold the line. You are investing for the long term, which is often not an easy sell in a professional services context.
I’ve had a couple of scenarios in my career where, as a brand leader, I had set up a platform for our brand. The ambition to build something truly integrated was there. But, partly because the platform was launched as a brand play first and partly because it was launched with marketing campaigns running alongside it, it became one more thing competing for attention and resource. The integration that should have been designed in from the start wasn’t there, and the platform didn’t get given the time to deliver what it could have.
Another major challenge - partners will always want to direct resources toward their own area. They are accountable for results and they want the tools to deliver them. A platform approach asks them to accept that not every programme is theirs to redirect, that not every channel needs to convert directly, and that some activity is serving the system rather than their specific pipeline.
So this is not an easy sell and it requires leadership to understand that the change takes time. Selling that vision requires a marketing leader who can define how the system works and defend it. But a platform that is clearly explained and properly governed will be much harder to disrupt once it is established.
An opportunity that favours the agile
For larger established firms, making this shift is undeniably difficult. The partners are often attached to their existing marketing activity, habits are entrenched and there is usually a mix of programmes and campaigns already competing for the client's attention. Unpicking that takes time, a clear mandate and a stable environment in which to make the shift.
Mid-sized professional services firms are in a different position as they often have less infrastructure to unpick. The opportunity to build a marketing function with well-defined programmes and a shared understanding of how each part contributes to the whole is much more achievable.
The firms that take that opportunity seriously will find the go-to-market debates less disruptive, the planning process less exhausting, and the review conversation considerably easier. Because they built something that keeps working while everything else is changing.
Pivot Brand and Marketing works with leaders in professional services firms who are building or rebuilding their marketing function. If the thinking in this blog resonates, take a look at how we work or get in touch at hello@pivot-marketing.co.uk.