Jason Mlicki (00:01.167)
So, Jeff, I’m going to ask you the most important question in life to open this episode. Are you prepared?

I seriously, are you prepared?

Jeff McKay (00:13.324)
Yes, I know the meaning of life.

Jason Mlicki (00:15.467)
that actually is the most important question. So I save that one to the end for anybody that’s listening because I don’t want I don’t want to give it away right away. So if you do know the meaning of life, that that’s that’s it that’s the other question. Now this question is, are you fundamentally a spender or a saver?

Jeff McKay (00:31.744)
Ooh, I’m a saver. I’m definitely a saver. Yeah. What did you think it did you think it otherwise?

Jason Mlicki (00:33.193)
okay. So so what

No, I actually didn’t. but so when you spend money on things that are frivolous or or or feel frivolous, do you d does it hurt? Is it like painful to you?

Jeff McKay (00:48.226)
Yes, I feel guilty if I spend money on frivolous things. It I’m a very pragmatic person.

Jason Mlicki (00:54.915)
Do you do you s do you feel guilty when you spend money on even things you need?

Jeff McKay (01:00.046)
Mm no, not too much. Not too not if if I need it, then I’m I’m willing to spend the money on it and buy something good. but no, I’m not a frivolous squanderer of money.

Jason Mlicki (01:16.463)
So we’re talking about budgets today. That’s why I asked the question. So maybe the existential question is is marketing a want or a need? I I always joke that marketing exists to turn needs into wants and wants into needs. And for firms, is marketing a want or a need? I think in some firms it’s it’s it’s it’s a want. They don’t really fund it. So that’s why it has no budget. And in other firms it’s a it’s a need and they invest in it.

Jeff McKay (01:28.878)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Mlicki (01:47.449)
heavily. So but what’s not get I don’t want to get too existential.

Jeff McKay (01:49.58)
That is not the question I thought. Well, you already got us to existentialism. that was not the question I was expecting from you. Is marketing a want? Or is it a need? I like that question. I would be curious. We should do a research study on just that one question.

Jason Mlicki (02:01.942)
no.

Jason Mlicki (02:16.694)
would be really interesting because you know, I I mean that when I say it. I use this a lot. Like I used to do when my kids were little, they would actually ask me to come into the elementary school and talk about marketing. And I would and what I would talk about with y with young kids is I would show them how consumer marketers turn wants into needs and needs into wants. You know, so they take things like water that is a need and they make it a want by branding it.

They take things like, you know, expensive, fancy handbags that are once and make them feel like needs. You need to have it for your identity. And that’s the magic of marketing. It’s this kind of weird juxtaposition of those two concepts that are taught to you in kindergarten and they muddle them up for the rest of your life. So again, marketing ruins everything.

Jeff McKay (02:59.701)
And how do the kids how do the kids respond to that? I I would love to see that.

Jason Mlicki (03:03.724)
they always enjoyed it. They l they love because that what the way I would do it, I would bring in like all these waters. I’d say, but here’s 20 different types of water. What’s the difference? And they were like tr trying really hard to figure it out. And then fun so eventually they would come to the realization that it’s like it’s just water. There’s nothing different. It’s just packaging, you know, or whatever. So all right. So so we’re we’re we’re talking about mm budgeting. How how should you invest your marketing budget? Not necessarily how much, but how should you invest it? At least that’s the working title.

Maybe we’ll get to how much.

Jeff McKay (03:34.231)
So is is the existential question now how much should I spend on marketing?

Jason Mlicki (03:40.328)
I yes.

Jeff McKay (03:42.517)
And it demand and it differs by how much should you spend on it if it’s a want, how much did you spend on it if it’s a need?

Jason Mlicki (03:52.141)
Well, the interesting thing about that, as I asked that question to you, I don’t know the answer. Is is if it’s a want, do you spend more? And if it’s a need or if it’s a need, do you spend more? I’m not entirely sure about that.

Jeff McKay (04:03.745)
Wow, you’re not g you’re not giving our listeners much confidence because now they’re gonna think, Well, by the time I get to the end of this podcast, I’m gonna be so damn confused. I’m not gonna know what to do.

Jason Mlicki (04:16.782)
Well, that’s just because you’re on a line. All right. So so let’s break this down. So so we’re gonna talk about how you should invest your marketing budget. where do you wanna start? Because I think where we plan to start, you might suggest we start elsewhere.

Jeff McKay (04:18.859)
Ha ha ha.

Jeff McKay (04:35.76)
let’s jump in where you want to.

Jason Mlicki (04:38.102)
All right. Well, I think that like the starting point is what goes into a budget. To to me, there’s a couple of tensions here that I see in firms. And this shows up whenever you look at benchmarks. You know, this this this topic came up in conversation with someone you and I were talking with, and with the the topic of benchmarks came up and I and I kind of made the comment that, you know, the benchmarks I see for professional services marketers and what they spend, I don’t actually ever see any firms in in

In the market spending, what the benchmark says. So I always sort of question the validity of the benchmarks. but then the yeah, the the the thing that pops up is like what is actually in the budget. So if you ask a marketer or you ask a firm leader, what do you spend on marketing? You’re not, you’re not getting an apples to apples comparison whenever you do a benchmark because different firms allocate different things to marketing.

Jeff McKay (05:13.132)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (05:31.255)
Some firms have a dedicated marketing budget and a dev dedicated biz biz dev budget. Others do not. Others they have it merged. so you know, a lot of firms, marketing is really just a glorified sales support function. So in a firm like that, the the the budget, the there is no marketing budget in actuality. The the budget that they’re describing is a sales support budget. So what are you at a high level, what what goes into a budget? So I just want to talk about that. And maybe rather than going through it in detail, we just talk about the tensions that I just pointed out.

Jeff McKay (06:01.527)
Well, if you’re listening to this podcast and you take nothing else away, take this away that budget benchmarks are absolutely worthless. and some very popular growth studies exist just to obtain that one number. And it’s just they’re absolutely worthless. And I’ll say that kind of unequivocally.

And you’ve kind of explained why, but I think even more important, it’s just the fundamentally the wrong question to ask or the wrong answer to seek is some percent of of revenue. I don’t think it’s the way to to think about it at all. I mean, there are just the realistic and tactical reasons that you just gave.

accounting categorization alone. But that’s that’s not even the the main reason for doing it. Just don’t rely on those studies ’cause they’re not getting you to the right strategic answer.

Jason Mlicki (07:14.434)
So so if they don’t get us to the right strategic answer and I’m trying to figure out how much to budget, I shouldn’t start with a benchmark. So where where should I start?

Jeff McKay (07:28.917)
What’s the business objective you’re trying to achieve and work back from from there? because marketing should be thought all right, so I’m biased, of course. I say marketing is a need, not a want. and marketing is going to help you, should be helping you achieve that strategic objective.

And I I see four strategic objectives broad base that firms should be thinking about and the investment towards that strategic objective. And it will not dictate, but it will clarify what the investment number is in the areas in which you should be in investing.

So, I mean, for me, those four areas are one, are you trying to build brand preference? Two, are you feeding future demand? So demand creation. Number three, and I think most firms think in this term, and they probably need to free their minds a little from it, and that’s lead gen. A fourth is market intelligence.

a deeper understanding and shaping of the of the markets. that’s one of those four are your objectives.

Jason Mlicki (09:05.646)
What about proposal support, Jeff? I thought that was the most important thing. so it’s funny because as you said that when I when I got into this 25 some odd years ago, when I got into the world of marketing coming out of business school, I I feel like the marketing world community that I came into was focused on brand preference and demand gen primarily. You know, it was always

Jeff McKay (09:09.494)
Ha ha ha.

Jason Mlicki (09:30.913)
Everything we did and everybody we worked with, that’s what you were talking about is how do we build a brand over time? How do we create demand for this product, this service, this practice, whatever it was? I feel like in the content era, we morphed into this lead gen machine. Somehow, someone somewhere said, lead gen is not a sales activity anymore. It’s a marketing activity, shoved it over to marketing and marketing in this movement to content and inbound and SEO was tasked with figuring out lead gen.

And I don’t know that it’s always gone well at some times. I think it’s worked great. At other times, I’m I’m not so sure. But I do feel we did that episode on the resurgence of brand and I do feel like we’re ha we’re we’re making a full circle journey here where because of the collapse of inbound and because of the collapse of SEO, lead gen will start to get pulled away from marketing again and pushed back into more of a sales function. Maybe that’s where it always belonged.

Jeff McKay (10:31.521)
Yeah, I I agree. there were some good things that came out of the inbound phenomenon. I think it brought a marketing discipline that was lacking in professional services. so it gave it some some rigor, but it subsumed, I think, the more important dimensions of of marketing.

and eroded the quality of the branding, the positioning of of firms. So I think your observation is an astute one. where it settles, I don’t know. I I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. but what’s the right right mix, I think, is a strategic question that firms need to be asking themselves.

Jason Mlicki (11:28.716)
Yeah. I I do like your four objectives a lot, by the way. I mean I I it you know, it’s funny when we set this episode up, I didn’t bring those out and you brought out, and I’m glad you did, because you know when you’re trying to figure out what you’re spending on, it’s a function of what you’re trying to accomplish. And if you’re trying to accomplish lead gen, what you’re spending on looks a lot different than if you’re trying to build brand preference. And how much you’re spending is going to fluctuate as well. So

Jeff McKay (11:52.631)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Mlicki (11:57.133)
You know, what’s probably most painful about this is I I just want a number, Jeff. Can you just give me a number? Seven percent. Just just just throw a number at me. That’d be a lot easier. But

Jeff McKay (12:07.081)
If it would be a lot easier, but let’s let’s say you’re a ten million dollar firm and we say ten percent, that’s a million dollars. All right, now what?

You you still have to answer the fundamental allocation question with that. Yeah. Yeah. And I would argue, and I maybe this is arrogant of me as a a marketer, and and I believe this played out over my career. A firm is going to make that strategic decision about what’s the number.

Jason Mlicki (12:24.254)
What are you gonna do with it? Yeah. What are you gonna do with

Jeff McKay (12:48.053)
You have to work with the number at some point. and I’ve had marketing teams that if you gave us $250,000 versus a million, I would still say we’re gonna outmarket you. We’re gonna outperform you. because that was the confidence I wanted to instill in my teams that.

We’d outwork, we’d outsmart other other firms who were spending just frivolously. that we could be better. Now, granted, there is a number of critical mass associated with that, but it’s not the number. It’s just not the number.

Jason Mlicki (13:39.564)
Well let’s let’s talk a little bit about if benchmarks are the wrong way, then what’s the right way?

Jeff McKay (13:51.596)
Do you just ask me that question? Give me the answer to that that question. Well, it we’ve laid out what the the first thing is. What are you trying to achieve? And I think those goals differ by where you are as a firm. Not just size, but mindset.

Jason Mlicki (13:53.324)
No, right, absolutely. Absolutely.

Jeff McKay (14:21.133)
Jeff McKay (14:25.193)
And the economic realities of a firm. There are firms, and maybe this is stage of development. Maybe that’s the best way to think about it. Not size, but stage of development would dictate what your marketing mix is. and I don’t know, maybe does it make sense to talk about what we are considering marketing and what marketing mix is?

Jason Mlicki (14:55.854)
Sure. Yeah.

Jeff McKay (14:59.073)
Well when you think of marketing mix, what do you think of?

Jason Mlicki (15:04.29)
Well, when you say marketing mix, I I guess I go to maybe really I always kind of split it into into content mix and marketing mix. So content mix might be the mix of thought leadership content and marketing content that you as a firm need to generate, inclusive of what you might invest in research and writing and design and video and audio editing and everything along those lines, right?

And there’s the the work of building a point of view and articulating it and bringing it into the market in a in an interesting, compelling, and way. And then the mark down the I see kind of the marketing mix is sort of downstream from that frequently, where it’s okay, how do we get that message into the right into the into the right people at the right time? And that’s then looking at are we going into an event? Are we are we doing

Jeff McKay (15:58.765)
Hello.

Jason Mlicki (16:02.178)
that’s trying to get speaking slots at third party events? Are we hosting our own events? Are we going to put ad money behind this? are we going to work with a PR partner to get article placements or earn media opportunities? so I I I tend to like to split those two apart because there’s an investment that needs to be made in what you are going to say. And there’s an investment that needs to be made in where you say

Jason Mlicki (16:34.286)
So that’s what I see of as marketing mix and content mix, is how I think about it. Now, full disclosure, I I don’t think that’s the totality of the budget, right? There’s other stuff that that probably goes needs to go into a budget as well. So I you can’t just look at those in isolation and say, Well, we’ve we’ve identified the budget, right? so

Jeff McKay (16:56.535)
So you think of marketing in terms of

content and marketing channels. So

Jason Mlicki (17:06.668)
Yeah, it’s it’s message and channels, message and medium, right?

Jeff McKay (17:09.995)
Yeah, yeah. And and then, you know, that would kind of be the programs that you’re going to run.

So you you that’s a very traditional kind of perspective on

on professional services marketing, I would think. it’s interesting because when I think about it, I’m thinking about product development as well. market intelligence. Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (17:41.955)
Well, time out, time out though, time out. You asked me the question of marketing makes so that that to me is not product product development. Yeah, that should be part of marketing, but that’s not what was that wasn’t the question. So like I I mean, like that’s I’m not disagreeing, but you you you y you asked me a different question than that, I think. So

Jeff McKay (18:00.302)
I don’t think so. I think we have fundamental different starting points there. That’s interesting. so

And we hadn’t even touched on that. about what what investments do you make in product development? And is that part of of marketing or is it not? so I think listeners are probably kind of getting a feel for the complexity of this, right? In our discussion as two experts in this space, we have fundamentally different perspectives about what’s going in, what’s going

not or not in, and what is marketing responsible for or not responsible for? and I think that that leads to part of the confusion.

Jason Mlicki (18:53.806)
I mean, in my experience, most firms don’t really look to marketing for assistance on product development. I think they should. In fact, I I made that joke about when I came out of business school. I mean, really, if I wanted to really rewire that, I would tell you that what you’re taught in business school is that product development is the domain of marketing. That is the fundamental job of marketing. But in my experience and practice in the world, that’s very rarely the case.

Jeff McKay (19:00.748)
Yes.

Jeff McKay (19:24.469)
And the irony of that, that well, it’s good and it’s bad. the irony of that, and I just had a conversation with a very talented marketer who’s in the throes of commercialization, right? The CEO has said we need to begin commercializing these solutions more effectively. And when it’s left to the line, they always produce.

Jason Mlicki (19:24.47)
And I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It’s just, you know, reality.

Jason Mlicki (19:29.996)
Yeah, exactly.

Jeff McKay (19:53.614)
things that are not market focused at all. And I think there’s a fundamental flaw in that. And we’re we’re we’re getting off on a tangent here. I want to bring us bring us back, but I feel like the marketing spend that a firm has is a tax

If you will, on the lack of strategic clarity. If you do, or if you’re not clear about what you’re trying to achieve, what business objective and what marketing’s involvement is in that, you’re going to be paying a premium investment in order to try to accomplish an unclear goal. so for all this rambling that we’re going through, I think.

That’s the kind of essence that is really important to take away is you have to start with the strategic clarity in order to get to what the investment is is going to be. so we we got off on a real tangent there and it’s all your fault.

Jason Mlicki (21:11.55)
Yeah.

Jeff McKay (21:14.157)
So, so I’m I’m gonna pull us back. I’m kidding. That was all my fault. You’ve just got my my brain racing again as you kind of outlined these things. So let’s let’s give some structure to this so that people can actually start to think about how they’re gonna allocate the monies that they have for growth. Because that’s essentially what they want.

Jason Mlicki (21:14.338)
Like.

Jason Mlicki (21:41.835)
Yeah. I yeah. I I honestly I I think I for this discussion, I would set aside product development and say like that let’s not talk about that as part of the marketing budget right now. I think if you if product development is part of your marketing domain, then absolutely that needs to have its isolated budget because that’s a real that’s a very different thing than sort of getting the message of the firm and its value proposition into the into the hands of key decision makers and and you know.

building brand preference or driving demand or whatever whatever your your s your core strategic objective is. so I you know, I

Jeff McKay (22:23.213)
Can I propose something? Let’s let’s talk about what type of firm or what stage of development a firm is and what a marketing mix using your kind of definition of marketing mix would look like to give a rough outline for how firms should be thinking about this. I think that might be useful for people.

Jason Mlicki (22:24.643)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (22:47.658)
okay. lead us. Yeah, lead us down that path. So so start with so y maybe you know, two firms. So so so firm one is is early in its journey. it’s trying to figure out its product market fit, perhaps, trying to determine which which segments are its best segments. I I I don’t know where are you going?

Jeff McKay (22:50.003)
Or do you have another idea?

Jeff McKay (23:13.933)
You you just you just said product market fix after you had said that marketing should have nothing to do with product development and

Jason Mlicki (23:24.618)
Well, no, that’s not what I was saying. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m I’m basically trying to lead down the path of your market intel example, where it’s like in a lot of early firms, that’s what they’re trying to figure out is market intelligence, is they’re trying to figure out d do people resonate with this message or that message or this offering or that offering. you know.

Jeff McKay (23:45.858)
Yeah. So let me let me position this right. I think there are like four stages a firm could be in. and that would dictate kind of the marketing mix. So let me start with the first one. And we see a lot of firms in in this stage, I call it the survival phase, where they are just hand to mouth. and we’ve talked about these types of firms.

Jason Mlicki (23:53.143)
Okay.

Jeff McKay (24:12.991)
Recently, when we were talking about point of view and thought leadership and and things like that, they’re founder led. The founders out there selling. They have unpredictable revenue, their their pipeline is up and down, they’re living in feast and famine. They’re not hyper specialized because they haven’t made the strategic decision. They’re hand to mouth, whatever comes in is fine.

And chances are they probably don’t have dedicated marketing resources, or if they do, they have kind of a junior one that is just a gopher and doing whatever they’re doing. does that sound like a typical type of firm that exists in this space to you?

Jason Mlicki (25:00.942)
Yeah, I by I would argue they have no marketing budget and so there’s no discussion to be had though, right?

Jeff McKay (25:06.987)
Yeah. Yeah, well, but they have to deliver growth. They have the strategic objective of growth. So they’ve got to be out in the market. Isn’t that marketing? Somebody has to do the marketing, even if they don’t have a dedicated marketer or marketing budget. There is a tax, as I said, on that lack of strategic clarity and investment. You’re you’re gonna pay for it one way or another.

but I think firms like this, the mix is relatively straightforward. It’s gonna be the majority on on lead gen, but the lead gen is gonna follow fall on the founder and the the line people with outreach and networking referrals.

you know, attending events, maybe having your own events, I don’t know. But they’re generally gonna come through, you know, partner relationships in old school selling. They’re bird dogging leads.

Straightforward. And then the the other area of

Jason Mlicki (26:22.702)
Okay, so you’re saying that’s part of the marketing budget?

Jeff McKay (26:27.147)
Yeah, I I I think there is no difference between business development and marketing in a survival firm. They’re just out there trying to to surface whatever they can, however they can. So from a sales enablement perspective, sales support, as you said, I I think this is another area where they start to invest, whether it’s outsource or somebody within the firm, allocate some money towards case studies.

proposal support, whether that’s a proposal writer or not. they’re gonna have a website, whether they support it themselves or not, they’re gonna have to allocate that cost for that. And they’re probably gonna have some kind of CRM. Does that technology go under marketing or not? But you’re gonna need it to to track what’s going on. And maybe, maybe they start to dabble

in what you say of starting to create some content, some thought leadership, some POV pieces, there has to be money allocated to those. So I think when you’re in survival mode, the majority of your investment’s gonna be in lead gen and sales enablement.

Jason Mlicki (27:50.222)
Okay. What’s what’s your next of the of the four?

Jeff McKay (27:55.438)
I would call this one stable firm. They’ve reached some level of stability. They’re not feast or or famine. you know, maybe they’ve hit you know six or seven figures in revenue. they’re starting to kind of specialize, they’re getting their footing, they’re starting to see where the product market fit as you said, is taking

taking hold. And now they may have more than just a founder Rainmaker. but they’re starting to have a more formal sales capability. There’s some stability to it.

Jason Mlicki (28:42.798)
Okay. And where is the where do you think the investment shifts there?

Jeff McKay (28:43.885)
Okay.

Jeff McKay (28:47.533)
So I think you start to pull back from the lead gen. it’s not so much hand to mouth. I don’t know, a third of your budget goes to lead gen as you get more stable. And now you start to build brand preference. So more on the thought leadership.

more demonstration of that expertise that you talked about.

Jeff McKay (29:25.953)
I think now you have the space to breathe and you have a little more revenue to invest in more formal and higher quality thought leadership. so you begin to differentiate yourself.

Jason Mlicki (29:46.318)
Okay. Where do we go from stable?

Jeff McKay (29:50.422)
well I think in in stable there’s other investments that you start to make. You still have to maintain to some degree the sales enablement. I I I just don’t think that ever goes away given the IC triad and the integration of marketing and sales and that issues and solutions combination. so I think that exists.

But I think we if as you start to invest in thought leadership, you have to start investing in market intelligence as as well, once you start to get stable. It’s not gonna be a huge part, but you have to start doing more voice of the client type of of work.

Jason Mlicki (30:35.054)
Yeah. So you’re investing in in this case you’re using market intelligence in the context of you’re investing in research to gain intel, not using marketing as a way to gather intel. or maybe both, but okay. so

Jeff McKay (30:47.436)
Yes.

Yeah. So I think the bottom line, you’re moving away from hand to mouth and you’re starting to think more strategically about how to invest those those dollars. and and the concept is I want to differentiate my firm and start building preference. And now I have the res resources to to start doing that. The next one is I’d call it scale.

and this is where firms have solidified their market positioning, but now they want to expand the performance envelope. And this is this is a place I think firms really struggle to go from that stability to now we’re really going to create a differentiated firm.

Jeff McKay (31:53.162)
And it’s it’s starting to wrestle, if you will, the vibrancy of the firm in a way where you’re making strategic investments. You’re starting to say no and yes to the right things.

Jeff McKay (32:15.009)
So, you know, and and the reason that happens, you’re you’re you’re no longer a single practice. You’re gonna have multiple practices. You’re gonna start bumping up against really sophisticated buyers or buyers of competitors, and you’re needing a more sophisticated approach to sales, sales and marketing. So in this one, I think now you really start to pour into.

Differentiating the firm with intellectual capital. This is where the Jason Malikis of the world start to come in and really start to build out those branded content experiences as you describe, where you’re really investing in stuff that differentiates you. the marketing channels, as you described, I think start to get clearer.

and real investment gets put into them, you know, whether that’s speaking opportunities or PR, or like I said, the the branded content stuff, those things are high dollar investments and they’re not one year investments. They take time to to come to fruition. but the majority of your marketing mix

Is built on trying to differentiate the the firm. And then what cascades out of that is the demand creation. Because you have stability, now you can start to work on demand creation in seeding the market for future lead gen. And you you have the luxury of doing that because you’re not hand to mouth.

But I think you still also are making investments in sales enablement, right? You gotta have the sales support in order to be effective. and you start to invest a little bit more in market intelligence because that’s what fuels the the differentiation and the point of view. And I think those three types of firms are ninety percent.

Jeff McKay (34:36.309)
Of the firms that are in professional services.

Jason Mlicki (34:39.758)
All right. So who is the remaining ten?

Jeff McKay (34:40.907)
The fourth one, the fourth one, I think, are the market leaders. And this is where people get confused. They try to market like market leaders when they’re not market leaders. So these are the Accentures and the McKenzie’s, you know, the big four names, if you will.

Jeff McKay (35:06.241)
They influence the categories. You know, they’re not trying to compete in them. They are the category. We are the big four, right? We are the big three. and the majority of that money goes into brand preference still, the differentiation of the firm, original research, you know, the industry narratives that they create.

they start to have the wherewithal to actually shift media and how the business community thinks about things. but the majority of of their budgets are all in brand preference and market intelligence.

And most firms don’t have the luxury of being there. but I mean, when you think about a firm like McKinsey and you talk about marketing mix and what goes into the marketing mix, I mean, they have dedicated research teams. Whether or not that’s that’s part of the marketing budget, I mean, they have research teams that dwarf the size of conventional firms that

Or any other three quar categories, just spending on

Jason Mlicki (36:28.366)
Well, it’s interesting, because having worked in in around thought leadership for a long time, one of the the big questions that was constantly asked in that community is should thought leadership and the editorial function and the research function be inside of marketing or should it be somewhere else? And in a lot of firms at at their various points in time, like at Accenture, they took the whole research function and editorial team for a while anyway.

out of marketing and moved it over and reported up to the chief strategy officer, or even directly to the CEO sometimes, because to your to delineate your objectives a little bit more, it was seen as like marketing was too short-term focused. Marketing was the mindset of marketers was we got to move the needle in the next 12 months. And they really wanted that those thought those research engines and those thought leadership engines to be looking out years or decades, right? What what are

How are we going to shape the market over the next three, five, seven years? And so to your point, that that was one way they’ve I’ve seen some of those large firms handle that. I really like your four delineations here a lot. In my mind, as you’re talking about it, I see sort of like this this continuum of of sort of lead gen biz dev activities on one end and at the other end, sort of thought leadership, demand gen and

Other brand preference building activities at the other, and it’s like a sliding scale that that sort of you know shifts a little bit over time as a firm evolves. it the funny thing is is that when when you say that though, a a leading firm to use your language would still spend way more on lead gen and bizdev than probably most firms at the survival or stable stage, just because it’s a much larger firm. yeah.

Jeff McKay (38:19.231)
In terms of absolute dollars. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (38:21.002)
Absolute dollars, right? you know, it’ll be a very small portion of their of their spend, but they’re still I don’t want to I don’t want listeners to walk away with this idea like well, they’re not spending anything. That’s not true at all. They’re spending a ton on those activities. But just as a percentage of the whole, it’s pretty small.

Jeff McKay (38:35.361)
Yeah. Yeah, and they and they may not even call it lead gen. Well, I don’t know what they would call it, but it’s instead of lead gen, it’s lead capture.

Jason Mlicki (38:48.364)
Yeah. Yeah. so all right, well let’s let’s close this out. What what what’s our advice? What’s your advice? You know, you know, if if a client just says, Hey Jeff, how much should I spend on marketing? What is the answer? I mean not like the number, it’s more like w w what do you tell them?

Jeff McKay (39:12.023)
So if you think about the categorization, you know, if you’re an early stage firm, you’re gonna spend marketing dollars to find opportunities. You need to spend the amount of money that is going to identify the number of opportunities you need to fuel whatever the growth you want. And if you can only

Jason Mlicki (39:36.878)
Yeah.

Jeff McKay (39:39.988)
invest enough money to find enough opportunities give you five percent of growth, that’s what it’s gonna give you. But if you have you know the wherewithal to spend 25% to find that level of opportunity, you’re gonna get that level of opportunity. but you just have to think how many opportunities I need to get to X number.

And then work backwards from from there for those survival firms.

Jason Mlicki (40:14.03)
I like to tell firms almost any one of those first two, maybe even three levels that you you think about that investment at like a continuum. And what I mean by that is that logically, the more money you invest in marketing, the higher the likelihood of you getting your stated objectives goes up. and and so some of it is like.

How much are you willing to invest and able to invest to get the confidence you need that you’ll hit the target? And part of that’s your decision. Cause on some level, marketing is still an art and there’s still a an unknown to this thing. That’s, you know, it’s very rare where a firm can predict we’re gonna put X amount into marketing and Y is gonna come out every time, every quarter. there are very few businesses that can do that. There are some that I’ve encountered over the years, and it’s a pretty remarkable thing. That’s a topic of a different conversation.

But very few firms exist in that zone. and so one way I like to think about it is like, well, if you invest this much more, the likelihood you’re gonna get what you want goes up dramatically. You know, and sometimes that’s when we talked about mix and channels, sometimes that’s what it is. It’s I always try to tell a smaller firm, it’s like, don’t try to do everything. You don’t need to be everywhere. Have a podcast. Do a podcast, do it really well, have a newsletter, do it really well. I mean, do one or two things and do them exceptionally well versus trying to do 10, 12 things.

Jeff McKay (41:18.145)
That’s a great point.

Jason Mlicki (41:42.58)
You look at a huge firm like Accenture, they kind of do everything, right? I mean they got a gazillion things going on in every possible direction. And you don’t wanna you can’t be that. So don’t try to be that. So

Jeff McKay (41:54.07)
And that’s good advice if if you want to increase the ROI of your marketing investment.

The best thing you can do before producing anything or distributing anything is to get focused. And this is so critical and it’s so hard for firms, but it’s a message that you and I send to our clients. You can’t be all things to all people. And if you want strategic lift, you have to have a fulcrum point that allows you to.

punch above your weight to mix a bunch of metaphors. and and you just yeah you you get focused on something some market some some type of client some size of company some particular problem and you might start a little slower but you’ll have higher dividends for the amount of of money you invest. So if you’re in

Jason Mlicki (42:38.03)
You gotta stay focused on your metaphors.

Jeff McKay (43:01.983)
Early stage and you’re trying to find opportunities, it’s a lot easier to find those opportunities when you clearly define what they look like. And that’s where most small firms go awry. When you’re in the growth stage of your development, I think you start spending more market dollars to create preference.

And this is where most of the firms listening to this podcast probably probably exist. you need to start investing into things that drive preference. And that’s going to be expertise, results, and sympatico, that mix. but I think in its in its simplest terms, your

Branded content experience is the way to think about it. What do we want to be known for? And what is that seminal point of view piece that we’re going to use as a fulcrum for building brand differentiation?

Jason Mlicki (44:19.33)
Yeah. No, I like that.

Jeff McKay (44:20.992)
Because once you have that, the the marginal cost of distributing it in today’s world is is minimal. if you have the right tools, and you have the right marketing person or people on your team. You s you said this earlier, you know, a one person marketing team could outmarket, you know.

a larger team if they have the right positioning and and and tools in order to do it.

Jason Mlicki (45:01.356)
Yeah, yeah, now more than ever. I mean, I think it’s becoming more and more every day. so all right. Well I think we’ve

Jeff McKay (45:09.088)
Yeah. So then the last one, the so the last one is not really relevant to all of our listeners, but if you’re a market leader, your marketing dollars going into shaping the markets. That’s why you’re market leaders. It’s that simple. If you’re not shaping the market, you’re not gonna be a a market leader for for long. So

Jeff McKay (45:31.92)
And I I’m I’m not saying that somebody in an early stage can’t shape a market. It happens. but it takes incredible focus in order to do that. But market leaders are g out there and making investments to shape markets.

Jason Mlicki (45:49.645)
Yeah. All right. So I guess I guess we’re gonna leave with the classic consultants answer. How much should you spend on marketing and what should you spend it on? It depends.

Jeff McKay (46:06.145)
But it’s I well, for all of my rambling, I think we’ve given a pretty clear answer. You need to define where you are in your development. And then that’s going to dictate your mix. once you have clarity on what’s the business objective you’re trying to achieve. So don’t think in terms of a percent of revenue. Think in terms of

What am I willing to invest in order to grow? And if I want 5% growth, I don’t have to invest as much. But if I want 50% or 100% growth, I have to invest in a totally different way. it’s just that simple. But I think most people just think, hey, I want to grow at Okay, then

Here’s your here’s your marketing mix. Here’s the things that you should focus on. Go grow at ten percent.

Jeff McKay (47:16.299)
But that’s the question. How fast do I want to grow and what am I willing to invest in order to achieve that growth? Not as marketing a want or a need. Not what percent of revenue should I spend on marketing, but what level of growth do I want and what am I willing to invest in order to go after it?

Jason Mlicki (47:42.211)
And I would add a third is how much risk am I willing to accept on achieving that outcome? Because that’s what I was trying to say is like if you invest more, the risk goes down. You invest less, the risk goes up. So not always in a linear way, but yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jeff McKay (47:46.061)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff McKay (47:58.754)
Yeah, yeah, because there is a cost. There there’s a cost to underinvesting. There is a cost to underinvesting. And it’s an unseen cost, but it’s a it’s an opportunity cost for firms and they need to factor that in as well.

Jason Mlicki (48:19.278)
All right, man. Well, this was good. Thanks for thanks for thanks for breaking it apart with

Jeff McKay (48:26.509)
Pleasure. I’ll see you later, buddy.

Jason Mlicki (48:27.542)
All right. See ya.