What is digital marketing in professional services?

Everyone’s talking about digital marketing. Turning data and online activity into sales. Driving traffic to a website to sell a product or service. What does this mean for professional services? Is it worth spending valuable time and money on developing digital marketing capabilities? In traditional accounting, legal and engineering firms can we really turn our online activities into actual leads? The short answer is yes. It might seem illusive in the professional services world, but it can be done.

There is definitely incentive to do it. Hinge Marketing’s research shows that “firms that generate 40% or more of their leads online grow 4 times faster.” Marketing online is cheaper and can be more targeted.

In professional services, the digital marketing strategy is all about content marketing. Actually, we already do content marketing, we just call it thought leadership. We have the content; we just need to optimize it to drive traffic to the website. We need to use, and test, the best keywords for search engines like Google to find our content. There are various tools available to create and test content for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Then, once visitors are on the site, we need to meet them where they are in the buying cycle and provide more relevant content to engage them and move them further down the sales funnel.

A few things to consider when developing your digital marketing strategy:

  1. First, you need systems in place to record the online activity. The idea is to track and measure as much information as possible. You want to be recording website traffic and trends, through website analytics, as well as the interaction, activity and identifying information for every individual user who interacts with your website. There are various systems that will do this. Once you’re capturing user details, although they may be anonymous at the start, you can then work towards capturing their contact details, so you can either market further to them, or contact them directly, depending where they are in the buying cycle.
  2. You need to have a plan, which includes a content management plan, to identify the areas of service you want to be known for and found online for. These would normally correspond to your practice development areas, already identified in your overall marketing plan. You would normally have key spokespeople or ‘visible experts’ or ‘thought leaders’. These are the people generally writing or initiating the content. Your optimized keywords will be identified through this plan. Then, from the plan, you can work out which channels are going to be the most useful, including social media platforms, organic search, paid search, and other websites for referrals etc.
  3. Once you have a process in place to ‘amplify’ your content through the relevant channels, you can then start to measure the traffic being driven back to the website. Depending on activity by users, the website can deliver personalized content and send the user to particular pages and content on your website. At this point, you’ll want to capture personal information, by providing a form for the user to fill in before they can download the content. You can also provide forms for users to fill in to receive more information about your services or request someone to contact them. You can then ‘score’ your leads and decide what marketing you would like to deliver to them. If you have a marketing automation system you can begin to send relevant emails to them. Google re-marketing is also an option.

It’s important to map the visitor journey and be concise and measured about the content a visitor receives. Based on their activity on the site, you can start to map where they are in the buying cycle. In professional services, our lead times can be quite long – sometimes months or even years – so it’s crucial to nurture the lead along the way. The visitor might not be ready to talk to anyone yet, but might be happy to receive thought leadership, if it’s relevant and useful.

You can, and should, turn your social media and other online activities into real and valuable leads. There is really no point spending time and effort on social media if you’re not using it to drive traffic to your website and capturing actionable leads. Online brand building is only worthwhile if you can turn the brand engagement into billable client engagements.

The Ringmaster not the Juggler

female ringmaster , leaves the circus

I was listening to a radio interview the other day. I can’t even remember now who the celebrity was. All I remember is the female announcer asking the female celebrity about her “growing brood” and how she manages to “juggle work and family”. Her answer was she has a lot of help, but that’s not the point. You hear the term ‘juggle’ a whole lot, in relation to women and careers, and frankly, I’m over it.

Juggling suggests that it takes some skill to keep all the ‘balls’ in the air – great – but it also implies that you could drop any one (or all) of said balls at anytime. Meaning that you are only marginally in control. Someone could throw you a new ball that you aren’t prepared for and they all come crashing down.

I think this metaphor, whenever it started being used, has had its day. It’s part of the rhetoric that is keeping female leaders from reaching their full potential. Language is extremely powerful and if we continue to talk about our lives in terms of juggling all the aspects of it, we’ll continue to believe our lives are about this balancing act and not about living our fullest and most rewarding life – all important elements of it included.

I prefer to think of myself as a ringmaster. I manage all the different aspects of my life with (practiced) control. Organised chaos. Like a juggler, the ringmaster has to learn these skills, and it’s not without the help of partners, family and friends. My husband and I are both ringmasters. I’m just changing the metaphor for my life, so I’m not limiting myself to ‘juggling’ imaginary balls. I’m ‘ringmastering’. Yes, it’s a word. I looked it up.

The work of a ringmaster; the action of directing or managing something as, or in the manner of, a ringmaster.

I’m directing and managing and enjoying the thrill of the circus as I go. Let’s not limit female leaders to the role of a juggler. Women are capable of directing the multiple aspects of their lives with skill, agility, flexibility and flair. If we continue to talk about balancing and juggling we will continue to make women feel like the different aspects of their lives are somehow precarious, uncertain, insecure, and risky.

I want women to feel like every part of their full lives is meaningful, rewarding and completely manageable. In the circus of life, let’s not denigrate women to the role of the juggler, let’s recognise and celebrate them in their rightful role of the ringmaster.

Employee engagement = Brand engagement


According to Wikipedia “Customer engagement (CE) is an effect, a reaction, a connection, a response and/or an experience of customers with one another, with a company or a brand”. The key word is “connection”. It’s all about connection. You want your clients or customers to connect with your brand. In B2B, and also in B2C, you need your customers to connect with your people in order for them to connect with the brand. It doesn’t matter if the connection is made in person, via social media, or just through reading your content. The human element is always there.

So, if humans count, and customers want meaningful, authentic connections with the people within your organisation, then you need your employees to be authentic and genuinely care about the interactions they’re having. The only way this will happen is if your employees are engaged. They need to feel engaged with the work they are doing day-to-day. The more engaged they are, the more effort they will apply to the work you would like them to do (including interacting with customers). This also applies to non-customer facing staff. Whatever job they have to do within the organisation will ultimately affect the product or service, regardless of what that is.

Published studies like the Aberdeen Group’s EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: PAVING THE WAY TO HAPPY CUSTOMERS go a long way to demonstrating the direct correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. In the report they state,

Engaged employees positively influence the buying behaviors of customers, leading to higher customer loyalty and profitable growth.

Aberdeen concludes through the research, linking employee engagement measures with customer satisfaction levels, that,

Companies with formal employee engagement programs are indeed enjoying the fruits of their labor in fostering an environment where employees are motivated to satisfy clients.

When we take this a step further and connect customer satisfaction with brand engagement, we conclude that employee engagement is intrinsically linked to brand engagement. Satisfied, happy, engaged employees equals satisfied, happy, engaged customers. So, you can have a direct and positive affect on your brand by implementing a formal employee engagement program.

When developing a formal employee engagement program, here are a few things to consider:

Better employee satisfaction surveys

When conducting staff satisfaction surveys, or employee engagement surveys, companies often don’t ask the right questions. Surveys should be asking meaningful questions linked to drivers of engagement. They should be measuring the employee’s level of trust in management, satisfaction with their job role, and things like connection to the vision of the organisation. Surveys should be conducted frequently, annually, quarterly, or even monthly, and can be large annual surveys, covering everything, or quick snapshots in particular areas of focus. The outcomes should be quickly publicised within the organisation and areas of improvement acted upon as soon as possible, or investigated further.

It must come from the top

Even the most sophisticated engagement program will fail without the support of a company’s senior leaders. Leadership is a significant driver of employee engagement and therefore the company’s culture. Employees look to the senior leaders for guidance, so it’s crucial that leaders actively support these initiatives.

It’s all about trust

The key to a positive corporate culture is trust. Employees need to trust the leadership team and, equally, leaders need to trust employees to do the best job they can do. Employees need enough space to determine the best way to complete a task within a reasonable amount of time. The default position should be trust first, unless someone does something to lose that trust. Employees shouldn’t have to earn trust. If they are qualified, and satisfied all of the recruitment criteria, they should be allowed to get on with doing the job they were hired to do.

Ultimately, your engaged employees will deliver exceptional service to your customers, which, in turn, creates brand engagement and brand loyalty, so it’s worth spending time and money on developing and implementing employee engagement strategies and initiatives. A formal employee engagement program can create brand engagement and lead to increased company performance.

How leadership can increase brand engagement

People Brand

Companies spend a huge amount of time and money on building a strong brand, but often fail to recognise their most valuable brand ambassadors, their people. Building a strong brand, regardless of the industry you’re in, requires a strong connection between the employee’s sense of purpose at the organisation and the brand aspirations of that organisation.

Employee Engagement = Brand Engagement

The equation is simple. A great corporate culture with engaged, connected employees equals a great corporate brand. Even luxury consumer goods brands have people at their core. It’s never just about the product. They generally have a founder or a founding family who cared, and continue to care, deeply about the quality of the product and have created the brand as a lifelong passion. The generally have a story to tell and their employees like being part of their journey.

Organisations with great corporate brands do these five things well:

1. They have a clear brand, vision and values

2. Have employees who enthusiastically deliver what the brand promises

3. Make sure that all activities are aligned to the brand including recruitment, induction, training, communication, reward and recognition, processes and culture

4. Leaders and managers ‘live the brand’ through their behaviour – it’s not just rhetoric

5. They measure brand awareness, understanding and delivery, internally and externally.

The key to all of this is leadership. Leaders who inspire their employees to care about the organisation’s future. Leaders who draw a direct line between the employee’s day-to-day role and the vision of the organisation. These leaders are inspiring the employee to give the organisation their very best. This translates into effort and care with client/customer service, diligent, accurate and efficient administration, care for other employees, and a more energised and innovative corporate culture.

Applied Personal Branding

One of the most common (and most damaging) branding misconceptions is that the personal brand and the corporate brand compete (rather than cooperate). William Aruda says:

Nothing could be further from the truth. The most successful companies help employees understand their personal brands, capitalizing on the integration of these individual traits with the broader corporate objectives. It’s called applied personal branding, and it’s a powerfully simple strategy. It’s based on the principle of personal plus corporate, not personal vs. corporate. When employees are clear about who they are and what makes them exceptional (a process that you can easily implement by promoting self discovery), and they have been educated with an understanding of the corporate brand objectives, they can apply their unique skills and expertise to activate the corporate goals. Think consistency, not conformity, and you’re following the lucrative path of Southwest Airlines and Apple’s Genius Bar. A consistent brand does not emerge from conformist employees. Each individual needs to determine how he or she can deliver on the corporate brand promise in a way that’s authentic, leveraging the corporate identity with what ignites them and makes them exceptional.

I call this CheerLEADING™. Developing internal cheerleaders to be your brand evangelists. This development of the employee’s personal brand can, and should, be done alongside the development of the corporate brand. They are one and the same. Your internal advocates create external advocates and, in turn, create an engaging brand.

Social media plays a huge role in all of this today. Look out for future posts on this.


Leading with Empathy: Why do we Still not Believe?

Leading with Empathy: Why do we Still not Believe?


A lot of people when they hear the word “empathy” in a business context still think of it as soft, somehow lacking authority and conviction. That leaders who have empathy for the people they lead aren’t making the difficult decisions or commanding the appropriate respect.

We now have conclusive evidence this is not the case.



Seppala goes on to cite studies by Jonathan Haidt at New York University Stern School of Business:


So, with these and many more studies, there is no reason to still be skeptical of empathy as a trait of a great leader.

Tony Norton, in his article Why the empathetic leader is the best leader, talks about Simon Sinek in his best-selling book on team-building.

Empathy—the ability to recognize and share other people’s feelings—is the most important instrument in a leader’s toolbox, Sinek believes. It can be expressed in the simple words, “Is everything OK?”

It’s what effective leaders ask an employee, instead of commanding “Clean out your desk” when he or she starts slacking off. It’s what you ask a client when a once-harmonious relationship gets rocky. “I really believe in quiet confrontation,” Sinek says. “If you had a good working relationship with someone and it’s suddenly gone sour, I believe in saying something like, ‘When we started we were both so excited, and it’s become really difficult now. Are you OK? What’s changed?’ ”


I have no doubt that empathy will become further recognised as one of the traits of a truly great leader. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the list goes on and on. As we recognise true leaders in history, and analyse what makes them great, we’ll come to understand the importance of empathy.

In the business world, leaders need to have emotional intelligence and the ability to truly listen and hear what their employees are telling them. True leaders in business will think about how management decisions will affect their employees, they’ll clearly communicate the changes, and will minimise any adverse effects.

When employees feel their leaders truly hear them, and understand where they’re coming from, they’ll feel more comfortable and trust that leaders ‘have their back’ and are making the right decisions for the organisation. This leads to more engaged, happier employees who are more productive.

I’m a believer.

Building a B2B Brand: Why Culture is Critical


Strong brands are built over time. These days, we are much more conscious of brand equity, so we are able to plan for, and intentionally create, a brand identity, a brand’s voice and perceived value in the market.

Most dictionary definitions of “Brand” go something like this:


– a particular kind or type of something

– a mark that is burned into the skin of an animal (such as a cow) to show who owns the animal.*

In fact the last definition is where the word “brand” comes from. A brand is so much more than that. A brand is the reason why people will queue for hours for the next iPhone and it goes far beyond the product itself. The quality of the product does have an impact, but it is more about what you perceive that product to say about you.

In a professional services environment, a brand is an implied promise (to existing and prospective clients) that the level of quality people have come to expect from a brand will continue with future purchases of the same brand. If you’re selling a service, you’re selling the skills and the knowledge of your employees to clients. What if prospective clients have had no experience with your brand at all? You need to create the desire to experience your brand.

It begins with your culture. Capturing the hearts and minds of your employees and activating a purpose. Your purpose is the defining reason for existing that extends beyond the bottom line and provides necessary meaning to all who interact with the brand.

The history of accounting is thousands of years old and can be traced to ancient civilizations, but the oldest continuously functioning accounting firm can be traced to Josiah Wade in 1780 in Bristol, England, who specialised in auditing the accounting of merchants. The company became Tribe, Clark and Company in 1871 and finally merged with Deloitte in 1969.

Deloitte is an excellent example of where brand is synonymous with culture.

Deloitte considers its 195,000 skilled professionals to be actively shaping its brand. The professional services providers are the brand. In Deloitte, B2B is viewed as P2P — people to people — and Deloitte member firm professionals offer personal knowledge, insights, and experience. Training is provided worldwide to educate Deloitte professionals about the importance and function of the brand.

In September 2008, Deloitte Belgium welcomed its newest class of recent graduates and held a special event at which they met some of their new colleagues and were introduced to the firm. The introduction was most notable for its conclusion: at the end of the day, each of the newcomers received keys to their very own Deloitte-branded Mini Cooper car. Following the screening of a promotional film featuring hundreds of the cars touring the streets of Brussels (shot from a helicopter) and group participation in a safe-driving course, the new hires departed with a new car and a new appreciation for the organization they had joined. The initiative was rolled out in 2008, but juniors who start at Deloitte Belgium still receive a Mini and color the streets of Belgium.**

Deloitte recognises that people are the driving force behind the interaction with all relevant audiences. They use communication to lead to connectivity, to lead to brand awareness, to lead to brand experience, to lead to brand loyalty.**

Culture can be deliberately influenced. There are many ways to positively influence employee engagement and have a positive effect on the firm’s culture. Employee benefits, such as Deloitte’s cars, are only a small part of the overall cultural picture. If your people are engaged and united in an authentic, genuine purpose they will work hard, achieve shared goals, and deliver the best possible service to your clients.

**Designing B2B Brands: Lessons from Deloitte and 195,000 brand managers, Carlos Martínez Onaindía & Brian Resnick.

Tell your magical brand story


If you are asked to describe your organisation to someone, in 2-3 sentences, how do you go? How will your employees respond when asked to do the same?

In some ways, branding can learn from the science of Anthropology. One of the primary ways we make sense of our world is through story telling. Stories are the way relate to each other and the way we make sense of who we are and what our place in the world is. Stories are shared in every culture as a means of education, entertainment, cultural preservation, and instilling moral values.

The same is ultimately true of brands. Brands are the stories that unite us in a common purpose, within the organisation, and connect us with the people we serve on the outside. Brand stories give meaning to who we are, what we do and why we do it.

The stories we tell inside our organisation, to our employees, shape the way they feel about the organisation and therefore shape the way they interact with clients and customers. The organisation’s brand stories become a key driver of employee engagement and a key driver of the business. If an organisation has a long history or a history steeped in tradition, this forms part of the brand story. Conversely, if a business is relatively young, but has experienced success early, this too will influence the story.

I encourage leaders to be very strategic about the creation and telling of the brand story. Think about the impact of various events along the way. If the organisation has won an award, or a number of awards, it’s just as important to keep celebrating internally, as much as it is to promote it externally. If employees feel proud of where they work, they pass on this positivity to clients and customers. Leaders can be very strategic about the words they choose, as well as how and when they choose to relay the brand story. It should start before the recruitment process. Employer branding becomes part of your overall brand strategy, so potential recruits know some of the story before they apply for a position. Then, when they do apply, they learn more of the story through the recruitment process and even more when they begin employment.

The brand story is continually evolving and, as the organisation grows, more chapters are added. Leaders should take every opportunity to reinforce the brand story and provide positive connections to it. Marketers and internal communication professionals should place the brand story, and the creation of brand loyalty via the story, at the top of their list of priorities. Brand stories should be created by skilled communications specialists and delivered via internal communications channels. Leaders deliver consistent messages (i.e. the same story) as part of the overall communications plan.

Disney is probably the best example of an organisation consistently telling its brand story, over many many years and with deliberate authenticity. Disney has developed its brand essence over the years and delivering a ‘magical’ experience is ingrained in their culture. They also continue to tell the story of Walt Disney and his mantra “We create happiness by providing the finest in family entertainment.” In fact, Walt Disney’s take on defining a company culture was based entirely around creating a genuine shared purpose that people would be proud to support*.

Create some of your own magic, by creating, refining and consistently telling your positive brand story, inside and out. You will create a culture within your organisation that will not only last, but become the very thing that leads to brand loyalty in your clients or customers. Engaged employees, working with a shared purpose, created and supported by the brand story, will provide a positive experience for clients and customers again and again and again.

*Source: “How Disney Creates Magical Experiences (and a 70% Return Rate)”, Gregory Ciotti. http://www.helpscout.net/blog/disney-customer-experience/

Internal cheerLEADING™

How do your employees become brand ambassadors? How do they speak the language of the business at every single touch point, in unison, naturally and comfortably, believing in what they’re saying? How do they “live and breathe it” and feel passionate about it. In short, you need to develop a team of internal cheerleaders. Cheering for the organisation and cheering for the brand. They need to love what they do and be happy to tell everyone about it.

There are many different ways to engage employees, but the trick is aligning brand messages. The best way to do this is to create an internal culture which is synonymous with the external brand. Google do this extremely well. Google is the number one cited organisation for corporate culture. Google employees are called “Googlers” and being an employee means being “Googley”. This infographic illustrates their philosophy.

Infographic: Corporate Culture Mindset via HumanResourcaMBA.net

At Google, culture is guided from the top. The leadership team drive the internal employee initiatives. If they don’t believe it will add to being ‘googley’, and achieve results, they don’t do it. They also have a very solid foundation of trust. Trust in employees, trust in leadership and trust in the culture. Of course innovation is key and employees are encouraged to fail and try again.

A few things Google does:


  • Engineers are ½ of the organization. Engineers like to “do cool things.” After one year, an engineer can bid to work on anything they want to. “Popular projects” get more bids, less popular ones don’t. Project leads have to learn to sell/pitch their ideas to appeal to engineers.
  • “Innovation from Everywhere.” Innovation is expected at Google, in every segment of the business. You can use 20% of your time on anything – people vote and pledge their 20% time to projects that are seen as promising or cool. It’s “a license to pursue your dreams” says Marissa Mayer. “If I don’t have a good 20% project yet, I need one. It could negatively impact on my review.” Half the new products and features launched by Google are said to come from work done under the 20% rule.
  • Google is constantly building “dog food teams” – the groups who work to make all products better.
  • Google products are always in Beta. It is a Silicon Valley punch line that Google products stay in beta forever. Mistakes are celebrated. There was a product launch in 2009 that didn’t catch on – a big failure, externally and internally. That product launch team was celebrated, given a bonus, AND given a Founder’s Award (prestigious). Eventually that workstream rolled into what is now Google Plus.
  • TGIF – every Friday, Larry and Sergey stand on a stage and answer ANY question. People log on and ask and then vote on the questions they most want answered. They go through the screen and take every one on, candidly. It is common to hear someone say “I think you made a mistake with _______.” And they will come back with “Here’s why we did it.”
  • “Hiring is the most process-driven thing we do.” (Shannon Deegan, VP of HR). They have 2 million applications for 500 jobs. The screening process is rigorous – they will leave a role open a year if they don’t find the right fit.
  • All people decisions at Google (in fact, all decisions period) are based on data and analytics. Google VP Marissa Meyer once said “If a Google employee is meeting with Larry and Sergey to talk about users’ needs, they’d better come with more than their own conclusions – they had better come with data. Their immediate question will be “How many people did you test?””
  • Nooglers (new to Google) are given lots of on-boarding support. They are taught early on:
    • It’s fun to work here – have fun.
    • Think big and take risks.
    • If it’s broken, fix it or find someone who can.
    • Invent solutions not yet thought possible.
  • One of the most-asked questions at Google: “Wouldn’t it be cool if…..”
  • We take employee surveys very seriously. There is a 90%+ response rate (very high compared to most large organizations) and most people elect to reveal their identity, although they don’t have to. Recent changes from surveys:
    • Make it easier to find a mentor
    • Simplify internal mobility (transfer) process by making it transparent and user friendly
    • Provide more tools to help Googlers define, articulate, and plan for career development
    • Reduce bias during performance reviews
    • How closely does employee perception of the value of benefits, match reality?
    • Is employee networking valuable to the organization?
  • Create internal agility by putting in place only as much structure as absolutely necessary. Managers are RESOURCES not bosses. They work FOR the team.
  • Give people the tools to make innovation easy: New computers every 18 months. Also, lots of server space, 24 hour help desk, Radio Shack on-site.
  • Peer bonuses – anyone can log on and give someone a $200 peer bonus, no approval needed. (the person just cannot be in your direct team.) We have never seen it abused.
  • Everyone at every level gets stock on the day they start, which vests at one year.
  • Teams are responsible for the culture globally – all offices watch the Larry & Sergey TGIF chat on video and are accountable to create an office that “feels Googley.”*

I love these best practices, but what can we learn from them and actually implement in our own organisations? On top of trust, other key elements include staff benefits, rewards and recognition, bonuses, responsibility and accountability, on-boarding support, leadership, communication, and a flat organisational structure.

At the core of it all though are Google’s values or what they call ‘being googley’. I think this is the real key. Their values are ingrained, intrinsic to the organisation. It’s an expected way to behave. You don’t get a job there unless you behave this way and you certainly don’t keep your job if your behaviour is anything but ‘googley’. The meaning of being ‘googley’ is well communicated and staff can articulate it. It’s what makes Google Google.

I think you have to start with your core values. How you want your people to behave. Every single person in the organisation needs to subscribe to your core values and be engaged with them.

I think if we concentrate on defining ‘googley’ for our own organisation and focus on being ‘that’ everyday, through everything we do, we can build a team of internal cheerLEADERS™ and build an organisation achieving real success.

*Source: “THE REAL SECRET OF GOOGLE’S CORPORATE CULTURE” corporateculturepros.com.


Subscribe to Jacqui’s Mailing List

By signing up you are agreeing to receive awesome marketing content.
If you change your mind you can unsubscribe via the link in the emails.