What if we were to tell you that, in many ways, High Growth firms are not skilled marketers? Would that shock you?
In a narrow but meaningful sense, it’s absolutely true. Today’s high-flying professional services firms are not experts in many—and perhaps most—of the marketing techniques they use.
Then what’s their secret? How do they generate 41% growth and 25% profitability on average year after year?
The answer is simple. The best performing firms are really good at one thing: recognizing where they are strong and where they fall short. If they don’t have the expertise to deliver a marketing technique at the highest level, they seek out someone who does. They outsource those skills.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Most firms—even yours—outsource marketing tasks. So how is this different?
First of all, High Growth firms outsource marketing skills 23% more often than their slower growing counterparts. They understand that it’s easier and less expensive to hire outside consultants to handle specialized marketing tasks.
Second, they are also less likely to ask already overburdened marketing staff to learn (or half-learn) a new skill. It’s very tempting, after all, to save money by keeping less technical skills like writing content or even graphic design in-house. But saving money often comes at a price—lower performance, inconsistency and less engagement.
Third, High Growth firms are choosy about their outside marketing specialists. They seek out consultants who are true experts in their fields, have worked in the firm’s industry and use the latest, most-powerful tools. They recognize that when you hire the best specialists you usually get superior results, and in less time.
What Marketing Skills Do They Outsource?
When it comes to what skills they are most likely to outsource, this year’s High Growth Study provides some answers.
In the chart above, we see that website improvements are the function these firms outsource most frequently. Since web development requires a great deal of technical expertise, this should come at no surprise. In our experience, this is because high-performing firms understand the critical role their website plays in every stage of the marketing funnel—from attracting new prospects to nurturing them to closing the sale.
Graphic design, in second place, plays an important role in creating a premium visual impression. By investing in top design talent, these firms are able to build a visual brand that supports the leadership position they aspire to attain.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a skill that many ordinary firms either attempt to keep in house or don’t do at all. High Growth firms, however, outsource SEO and recognize it to be a powerful factor in driving visibility, engagement and digital leads.
While shooting video is easier and cheaper than ever—everyone has a decent video camera on their phone—producing high-quality video requires a whole different category of equipment, a lot of experience and significant technical know-how.
Podcast production rounds out the top five. Most often, firms outsource production, editing, and distribution management. Podcasting has been a popular channel for years, but it has now entered the professional services sphere, highlighting one of the significant gaps between High Growth firms and their slower-growing peers on this chart.
Now, we opened this article with a controversial statement. We said that High Growth firms aren’t skilled marketers. And that’s true when it comes to many individual marketing skills. But of course, these firms are much better than average marketers in the ways that count. They have figured out what works and what’s a waste of time in marketing. They are well differentiated and excel at messaging. They understand what their buyers want and how much they are willing to pay.
And they know when they have reached the limit of their competence—relying on outsourcing to deliver the specialized skills they need to outcompete the overburdened, jack-of-all-trades marketers at competing firms. Outsourcing makes financial sense, too. It allows them to buy only the time or services they need.
