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The curse ' and challenge ' of marketing is that it's at the apex of competition, which depends for its success on being ahead of the curve. Competing requires attracting the target audience's attention, generating excitement, enforcing credibility, and, in the case of professional services, building a context and an opportunity for selling. And it's all got to be done better than the competitors are doing it. Then it has a better chance to get to the bottom line ' which is the ultimate goal and value of marketing.
There is no firm in business today that isn't inundated regularly by requests for contributions, whether they are for charitable, community or political causes. For the community-minded firm, the requests can be overwhelming, as is the feeling that you do indeed want to help the organization requesting your help. But how can you serve your community ' and frequently, your firm ' without hurting your own firm's budget and community relations? You can say yes'
It's been suggested by several readers that our orientation toward professional services marketing, as opposed to product marketing, is a prejudice. Admittedly, it's at least a bias against a pervasive academic view that the techniques of marketing a product apply equally to marketing a professional service. And indeed, the most successful professional services marketers tend to look to other professional services firms for answers and the best ideas, as well as for validation of their own ideas and processes. Still, it would be foolish to automatically preclude any idea that's been forged in a marketplace of ideas. In a rational world, we take ideas from any reasonable place, accept the good ones, and eliminate the ones that are bad or not applicable. That means that are things to be learned by professional services marketers from the Toyotas and Microsofts and Dells of the world.
Every so often, the question of certification of professional services marketers emerges. Is certification ' testing marketers to attest to their skills and competence ' the way to go for those of us who market professional services for lawyers or accountants?