In an era of consumerism and malpractice suits, professionals are no longer on a pedestal. These developments are pushing numerous professional service firms into the marketing arena. Professionals of all types now aggressively use marketing tools. For example, many newspapers, magazines, and Yellow Pages directories are filled with advertisements for lawyers, dentists, optometrists, and accountants. At the same time, storefront legal, dental, and tax-preparation clinics have become accepted as part of the suburban shopping center scene. They are finding that marketing concepts and approaches employed by organizations selling toothpaste, cereal, and other tangible products, or even other types of services, are not readily transferred to professional services. Indeed, marketing such services is different. This article reviews seven marketing challenges that confront professional providers more frequently and affect them more intensely than they do the marketers of goods and nonprofessional services. Strict ethical and legal constraints. The first five challenges must do mainly with the selection of marketing strategies and tactics. The last two challenges primarily affect how such firms organize and staff for marketing.
While constraints on marketing have loosened enormously of late, there are still a host of ethical and legal restraints that require careful attention. They are enforced by national, state, and local professional societies, certification boards, government agencies, and other bodies. Marketers of goods and commercial services are mostly free to sugar-coat, soup up, or scale down their offerings to please customers, if they obey health and safety regulations. How far to go to please clients and patients is a question that professionals will likely face more often as competition intensifies.
As the managing partner of a medium-sized CPA firm remarked, “Ethics are only for people who have enough clients. Unlike a big consumer product company that is suddenly discovered to be marketing a dangerous product, a professional service firm cannot simply drop the harmful product and wait for the storm to pass. The professional organization that is guilty of providing unethical or even illegal forms of “customer satisfaction” may face problems. Smaller localized firms may become targets of bad-mouthing by opportunistic competitors or by angry ex-clients or ex-patients. The professional service firm can take several steps to ensure that its marketing activities stay within ethical and legal boundaries. An explanation of how and why services are being performed in certain ways can help to limit inappropriate requests and to build trust and avoid misunderstandings between practitioners and the people they serve. As author Norman Cousins recently remarked to a group of medical school graduates, Doctors who spend more time with their patients may have to spend less money on malpractice insurance policies. Some CPA firms are increasingly refusing to work with clients whose companies face serious financial difficulties.
Professional services are what economists sometimes call “credence” goods, in that purchasers must place great faith in those who sell the services. Even if they recognize their need for help, they may entertain wrong ideas about what the service should cost and what the professional can reasonably be expected to do for them. Even when customers can find out what they need to know, they may still lack the technical skills necessary to assess how important in terms of performance it is for professionals to have certain credentials, experience levels, or pieces of equipment . Moreover, uncertainty often continues after the service has been rendered, since laymen are generally unable to determine whether a case was pleaded properly, an audit done thoroughly, a building designed safely, or a surgical procedure handled competently. The widespread buyer uncertainty is a basic marketing issue for providers of professional services. Such services must emphasize education rather than persuasion in their marketing. When they should seek professional services. How to communicate their concerns, desires, or other issues to professionals. Teaching these things to prospective and current customers will reduce buyer uncertainty while increasing buyer loyalty.
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