Recently I attended the Boston chapter meeting of the PM Forum....


The topic was using the Internet to market a professional services firm. One of the session's speakers, Paul Dunay, the Director of Global Field Marketing for BearingPoint who also writes his own blog, made a comment that I found simply astounding. And unbelievably, his comments appeared to resonate with most of the audience.
In so many words, he said that professionals -- and by association, their firms' marketing directors -- should be extremely careful before they embark upon creating a blog, because blogging takes up too much time. He suggested that professional firms should pursue podcasting instead, because blogs are such a big commitment for producing intellectual capital and content.
As he made his remarks, one could almost feel the marketers in the audience heaving a sigh of relief. I heard one of them saying (it have been Dunay himself) that undertaking a blog is like diving into a black hole and never emerging.
While I think the black hole analogy is an overstatement, Dunay spoke the truth, and I always appreciate the truth. I admit it: blogging does require a carve-out of my time and a commitment to thoughtful articulation of my intellectual capital. I've actually scheduled my times to blog like appointments on a calendar.
But before professional services marketers sigh, "Thank goodness I don't have to explore anything further about blogging," hang on a moment! Yes, it's critical for professional service firms to allocate their marketing resources as smartly as possible. Yes, podcasting might be less of a time commitment for busy professionals. Yes, podcasting might be equal to blogging as a tool to build a firm's visibility.
But therein lies the conundrum.
Shouldn't professional firm marketers be eager for their firms' fee-earners to engage in market-focused activities that grow their intellectual capital? I remember the days when I was a professional service firm senior marketer, expected to undertake awareness-building activities when I knew, with painful clarity, that my firm's intellectual capital was at best dusty. Since I opened my own firm 10 years ago, I've seen it again and again with my clients: professional service firms that market their experience base (think podcasting here), while neglecting to build cutting-edge intellectual capital.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying podcasts (or Internet videos) are a terrible marketing idea. They're not. Although I haven't yet, I intend to employ these channels in my own firm's marketing program.
But the truth is that blogging .... a regular, interactive exchange of knowledge and insight in a living, breathing medium -- requires a professional to stretch intellectually, and to think in context to the intellectual capital of his or her professional counterparts and to his or her own value proposition within the marketplace.
Intellectual capital cannot be a myth cloaked in smoke and mirrors, or dressed up on one-way podcasts or Internet videos. True intellectual capital must grow. True intellectual capital is a huge factor in the eventual success and marketplace survival of any professional service firm. (Of course, I am tempted to go off on a tangent about how important it is for a firm's leaders to reward their practitioners for developing new expertise, but that's for another post.)
Do podcasts push professional service firms to grow their expertise? Certainly not the way Dunay portrayed them, and this is what bothered me. But he is probably right: professional service firms and their marketers will be very tempted to take the easier route, and this is perhaps understandable, given the realities of time and tight resources.
But I predict it won't be long before clients can discern which firms and practitioners have really committed to creating and showcasing new intellectual capital. Podcasting and internet video, now such hot new distribution channels, could be in danger of becoming the next promotion vehicle that clients begin to call "clutter."
I hope those professional firm marketers, so relieved that podcasts will be easier to implement, won't forget this potential pitfall.
Ah, those darn clients. They always eventually figure out where the real value is.


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The Myth of Intellectual Capital

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Suzanne Lowe is founder of Expertise Marketing, LLC and author of The Integration Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos – Once and For All – in Professional Service Firms and Marketplace Masters: How Professional Services Firms Compete to Win. She blogs at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix and her own blog, the Expertise Marketplace.

Before founding Expertise Marketing in 1996, Ms. Lowe spent more than a decade leading the marketing programs for top-tier management consulting and business-to-business organizations. Before that, she spent more than a decade managing and implementing strategies for political candidates and organizations.

She spearheads the only widely disseminated research initiative on strategic marketing perceptions, practices and performance of professional service firms around the globe.

In addition, Suzanne Lowe has written or been quoted in nearly 100 articles on the topic of professional services marketing strategy. Her work has appeared in the a rel="nofollow" href="https://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/hbr/hbr_home.jhtml">Harvard
Business Review, BusinessWeek.com, CMO Magazine, Harvard
Management Update
, and scores of profession-specific magazines and journals, including MarketTrends, Marketer, Marketing the Law Firm, Accounting Today, Engineering, Consultants News, Structure, Journal of Law Office Economics and Management, The Practicing CPA, Environmental Design and Construction, Massachusetts High Tech, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, and the Legal Marketing Association’s Strategy. She is a contributor to the second edition of the book Marketing
Professional Services
, by Kotler, Hayes and Bloom. She has also been instrumental in the development, writing and publication of five books and nearly 50 articles and book chapters for her consulting clients.

Suzanne speaks regularly around the world to leading trade associations, industry groups and in-house firm audiences. Her work has also been presented internationally, most recently at the American Marketing Association's annual Frontiers in Services conference. She facilitates a Roundtable of Chief Marketing Officers from some of the world's largest and most prestigious professional service firms. She has guest-lectured at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and designs and delivers customized executive education programs in marketing for professional service executives.

She advises the leaders of professional service firms, from small start-up practices to large global organizations.

Ms. Lowe received a B.A. from Duke University.