In our last article, we discussed the first of the “Five P’s of Marketing” – positioning. Defining your positioning is the starting point for your marketing strategy and is a crucial step you must take before initiating any marketing activities. In this step, your leadership team will agree upon your firm’s mission, vision, values, core competencies, competitive differentiators, and market positioning. Once you have defined these elements, you are ready to determine the next two P’s, product and service mix and place.

Product and Service Mix
Many times, firms are content to simply offer products and services that they’ve offered for years – and often a few that clients have asked them to deliver or those that were the “pet project” of a particular partner in the firm. Unfortunately, this can result in a long list of services that may or may not be profitable and/or strategic to your firm. We recommend that you regularly evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for all of your firm’s products and services (and those you are considering) by conducting a SWOT analysis on them every year.

When examining each product and service initiative, consider the following elements and determine if they are strengths or weaknesses:

• Revenue and profitability of the service
• Number of staff who can sell and deliver that product or service
• Number of new clients you have added this year
• Ratio of new business to existing business
• Number of satisfied clients who are using the service
• Efficiency and quality of your processes in this area

Opportunities to list on your SWOTs may be a growing market inside and/or outside your existing client base, a competitor that is not as focused in this service area, or an employee with background that can be applied. Threats to consider may be an extensive list of competitors with good market presence, the economy, or activities occurring within your community that may make selling or delivering the product or service difficult.

Once you’ve conducted honest SWOT analyses for each initiative, refine the list by considering which should be placed on your firm’s “front burner” (not very many!) and which should be placed on the “back burner” for the time being. Those to invest in now will likely have a long list of strengths and opportunities in comparison to their weaknesses and threats!

Conducting this exercise each year in your marketing planning will help you prioritize your marketing dollars and activities.

Place
Next, you’ll need to choose the “place” you will sell your services, or your ideal target client communities. First, determine the ideal target client for each product or service that your firm “front burners” by defining the type (considering industry, age, cultural background, etc.) and size (by revenue, number of employees, or personal wealth) of client you’d like to seek out.

A good exercise to help you gain clarity around your target market is conducting a current client analysis. Reflect on which clients in each service area you consider to be the “ideal” and what defines them as they are likely to be the type of clients you want to attract. When you’re establishing place, you’ll also want to consider where you will find these ideal client prospects. Give thought to what trade publications they might read, conferences they might attend, and associations to which they may belong, using your existing client base as examples.

Once you’ve identified your front-burner products and services and defined your ideal target client for each and where you will find them, the next step is to determine pricing, which we’ll cover in our next marketing tip.

Jennifer Wilson is co-founder and owner of ConvergenceCoaching, LLC, a leadership and marketing consulting and coaching firm that specializes in helping CPA and IT firms achieve success. Learn more about her company at www.convergencecoaching.com.