Focus Article- Mary Yanocha and Tammy Farrell

Marketing KPIs: What Do Partners Really Want to See?

Future-focused marketers recognize the need to shift the perception of marketing as a line-item expense to an integral strategic driver of firm growth.

When marketers integrate performance metrics into every marketing initiative and tie each one to the firm’s strategic plan, firm leaders develop a deeper understanding of — and appreciation for — the value the marketing team provides to them daily.

But what metrics really matter to partners? Numbers are important, but don’t tell the whole story by themselves. Partners don’t always intuitively understand how pageviews, NPS scores or social media followers connect to the bottom line.

“Drawing clear lines from initiatives and key performance metrics to firm goals provides self-directed accountability and a more meaningful role for marketers,” said Gabriel Tevrizian, director of marketing for REDW. “Translating training events into proposals generated, wins and losses, and ultimately revenue is necessary to present the complete picture to partners.”

All About Revenue

When considering which metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) matter most to partners, those directly involving revenue win by a landslide. Whether broken down by service line, location, vertical or initiative, how they each contribute to the firm’s bottom line is the ultimate concern.

Steve McDonald, managing partner with Abdo Solutions, drove an initiative to develop a comprehensive business intelligence dashboard to visualize all the metrics used to manage the firm and its growth. He correlated data from practice management software with goal benchmarks to give Abdo’s leadership insights into its performance. His efforts provided the firm with a new revenue stream. Abdo monetized its dashboard tool and now shares it with other accounting and professional service firms that could benefit from their investment.

”Partners care about practice management metrics, period,” McDonald said. “At face value, these metrics never tell the whole story without providing narrative and context to the nuances and drivers of those numbers. Now marketing plays a wider integrated role in the business. Marketers interpret data alongside business line leaders and ideate how to address areas that may be off target. Providing the firm with multidimensional metrics helps partners visualize the revenue streams and focus their time and investments to achieve positive outcomes.”

Marketers must change the perception of partners and become more accountable for firm outcomes, Tevrizian said, adding that he helps partners digest marketing data by placing it into three buckets: lead generation, client experience and branding.

“Social media metrics on their own may be interesting, but unless they’re aggregated into a metric that grows the firm’s brand strength, it’s hard to grasp its impact,” Tevrizian said. “Once that connection’s made, there’s little room for argument about its importance.”

Leading Indicators

Eric Majchrzak, CEO of BeachFleischman, has the unique perspective of ascending to the lead role after serving as the chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief strategy officer (CSO) for his firm. He said it’s helpful when marketers track metrics used in horizontal analysis when comparing one period against another or in vertical analysis, such as when revenues from one service line are compared against another. But these KPIs alone won’t help firm leadership make strategic decisions. Traditional marketing metrics are inward-focused; they are effort-based and are lagging indicators rather than outward-focused leading indicators.

“Future firm metrics are client and technology-focused, which is a major cultural shift for accountants,” Majchrzak said. “Turnaround time and monitoring client experience are important and are factors never traditionally incorporated into a dashboard.”

As McDonald pointed out, when dashboard metrics identify available capacity in a practice, marketing can help with internal communications to promote practice offerings and educate partners throughout the firm on how best to position the service area with their client. External promotions through digital advertising and industry events can help drive demand for the service. Where other lines are at capacity, scaling back marketing efforts may be appropriate.

Go Beyond the Numbers

David Toth, director of growth with Winding River Consulting, emphasizes starting with a common vocabulary.

“Practice leaders want to see objective measures of success,” Toth said. “When each industry vertical measures traffic, conversions and content with the same data points, using KPIs to tie data to the pipeline makes sense to partners and sets the stage for more meaningful conversations about how marketers are driving revenue.”

Toth urges marketers to look beyond form submission counts by overlaying data from CRM and marketing automation platforms to reveal the full impact of marketing’s influence on the sales process.

“Connecting each form with the full buyer journey — starting with source of entry to your ecosystem, webpages viewed, webinars attended, blogs read, opportunity pursued, proposal made and initial deal signed — reveals the true value chain of marketing and business development efforts that drove the conversion of a prospect to a client,” Toth said. “Share these new business success stories with partners. They demonstrate both analytical prowess of marketing and direct contribution to revenue growth.”

Accounting and advisory firm marketers are uniquely positioned to transform their partners’ mindsets. By linking traditional marketing metrics with firms’ strategic growth KPIs and nuanced client experience feedback, marketers can help partners see their marketing investment’s true value and significant return.

Mary Yanocha, Global Tax Management. Contact at myanocha@gtmtax.com.

Tammy Farrell, Savvy White Papers. cpawriter@savvywhitepapers.com.