A digital strategy that will actually elevate Marketing & BD in professional services: from reactive support to strategic advisor

Skip ahead:

• The frustrating reality: Marketing as a support function
• Under-leveraged digital tools and missed opportunities
• What’s holding marketing & BD teams back?
• Reimagining Marketing and BD as a strategic advisor (with data to back it up)
• What’s in it for partners? (speaking their language)
• The path forward: unlocking potential together
• Are you ready to decide?

If you lead or work in a marketing or business development (BD) team at a professional service organization, this might sound familiar. You’re scrambling to fulfill last-minute partner requests, churning out client updates, proposals, and event invites on tight deadlines. Despite your strategic ideas, your team is often treated as a reactive support function – more an on-demand service department than a driver of business strategy. In many companies operating in professional services, marketing and BD still operate at the mercy of partner directions. Priorities can change on a whim (“We need a webinar on this new regulation – can you get it out this week?”) and longer-term strategy takes a back seat. It’s an exhausting cycle that leaves many marketing/BD professionals feeling underutilized and frustrated.

It’s not that partners or fee earners intend to sideline M&BD. It’s just how things have always been done. Partners focus on billable work and client demands; marketing is expected to “support” by producing outputs. Success is often measured in outputs – the number of events organized, pitches submitted, or articles published – rather than the outcomes those activities achieve. In short, M&BD teams in are busy, but not always empowered to shape strategy or drive growth in a meaningful way.

Compounding this challenge is how professional services organizations use their digital tools. Most have invested in websites, email platforms, and CRM systems – but are these tools being fully leveraged? Too often, the answer is no. These powerful platforms end up being used in a very limited, broadcast-only capacity, focused on pushing out content quickly rather than driving deep engagement or uncovering new business opportunities.

Consider your company's website. Is it basically an online brochure and news outlet? You might still be treating your website as a one-way content repository – updated frequently, yes, but not personalized for different visitors or designed to capture leads. Analytics might be collected, but rarely translated into action. Similarly, think about email marketing. Newsletter blasts and client alerts go out regularly to thousands of contacts. But beyond basic open rates, how often is that data used to identify interested clients or trigger follow-ups? In a rush to “get the newsletter out,” the richer capabilities of modern website and email platforms – personalization, segmentation, A/B testing, nurture tracks – are left on the shelf.

Then there’s the CRM. Professional services organizations have huge troves of client data in their CRMs, from contact details to interaction history. Yet in many cases, CRM is used as a glorified address book or holiday card list. The untapped potential here is enormous – CRM data could be mining engagement metrics, referral patterns, cross-selling opportunities – but instead it’s often incomplete or siloed. Valuable insights about client interests and relationship strength never make it to the people who could act on them.

You’re sitting on great digital tools and rich data, but using them primarily for basic tasks. Websites deliver information, email blasts push content, CRMs store contacts – all necessary functions, but not sufficient for true growth. This under-utilization represents a huge missed opportunity to create more meaningful engagement with clients and prospects. When digital platforms are treated just as fast content pipelines, we fail to capitalise on what they really can do: surface actionable insights and foster two-way interactions.

Why do so many marketing and BD teams remain stuck in this reactive, output-driven mode? A few familiar hurdles are at play:

• Limited partner engagement: In many cases, partners and fee earners involve M&BD only tactically, not strategically. They’re busy with client work and may see marketing as “the team who make brochures and schedule events.” Getting meaningful partner buy-in for long-term marketing initiatives can be tough. When leadership doesn’t actively engage M&BD in strategy or client planning, the team is left waiting for instructions rather than driving initiatives.
• Output-focused KPIs: What gets measured gets done. If the metrics for marketing success are all about volume – number of campaigns sent, events hosted, proposals delivered – then the team will naturally focus on producing those outputs. It’s hard to take a step back and analyze data or plan a smarter approach when you’re being evaluated on how many things you churn out. An output-centric culture leaves little room to measure engagement quality, client satisfaction, or revenue impact, which are the real indicators of success.
• Inefficient use of technology: Having the latest marketing tech stack doesn’t help if it’s not used effectively. Often the issue is not lack of tools, but lack of integration and strategy. The website, email system, and CRM may all function separately without a unified plan to connect the dots. Data exists but isn’t turned into insight. Perhaps the firm lacks training or people with the right data analysis skills to leverage the tools fully. In some cases, the technology is implemented to “check the box” but workflows never change – so the fancy CRM ends up as an expensive database that no one queries for strategic insight.

These factors reinforce one another. Limited partner engagement means marketing isn’t invited to bring data to the table; focusing on output volume leaves no time to experiment with analytics; and underused tech leads partners to conclude (wrongly) that digital tools don’t add much value. It’s a cycle that keeps marketing and BD operating below their potential.

Now for the good news: it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a clear path to breaking out of reactive mode, and it’s centered on better use of data and digital strategy. The vision is to reposition M&BD teams as strategic advisors to the business – trusted partners to fee earners who provide insights, reduce administrative burdens, and help drive growth. To do that, we must start unlocking the potential in our existing data and technology.

Imagine if your BD and Digital Managers could walk into the quarterly practice group, sector group, or key client team meeting with a list of truly hot opportunities, backed by data. For example: “Our analytics show that 15 of our top 50 clients have repeatedly engaged with our M&BD activity about cybersecurity regulation over the past three months. The data, based on a total engagement score across online and offline activity indicates an opportunity to drive revenue with lower fee earner time investment. Now would be a great time, Partner X, to reach out to those clients about our new cyber compliance offering.” This is marketing using digital insight to proactively identify revenue opportunities through total engagement captured and analyzed across marketing one to many and BD one to one activity – the kind of conversation that turns heads in a partner meeting. It’s a far cry from just reporting how many clicks last month’s newsletter got. Luckily, professional service firms are beginning to recognize the need to direct their M&BD teams to find these opportunities. That means giving these teams the mandate and resources to analyze client data and drive strategy, not just execute orders.

A data-driven, digital-first approach also lets marketing tackle a pain point very close to partners’ hearts: non-billable time. Every hour a consultant spends on business development or administrative tasks is an hour not billing a client. By leveraging technology, M&BD can significantly reduce the non-billable burden on fee earners. Take client research and targeting as an example. Rather than a partner manually sifting through contacts or guessing which clients to pursue for a new service, the M&BD team, with the use of their website, CRM and email platform, can provide a curated list of warm leads showing interest in that area. When marketing operates as a strategic partner, partners get to spend more time doing what they do best – advising clients – while marketing supplies the insights, materials, and support to drive business growth efficiently.

Crucially, repositioning M&BD as a strategic function involves a mindset shift. The company needs to start valuing insights and outcomes as much as outputs. This might mean introducing new KPIs: tracking how marketing efforts influence pipeline, client expansion, or conversion rates, not just counting activities. It also means marketing leaders need to confidently bring data into conversations with leadership. Strong data reduces internal debate and opinion wars – when you can show which services clients are searching for on your site, or which thought leadership pieces are getting the most engagement by buyers and influencers at clients and targets, it shifts the discussion from “I think” to “the data shows”. Reliable data from clients can focus decision-making and even overcome skeptics. Many firm CMOs are now realizing they need strategies driven by digital and data, and skills on their teams to mine these insights. Investing in those capabilities – whether through training, hiring, or partnering with tech experts – is now becoming a priority.

To successfully elevate marketing’s role, we must also acknowledge how partners and fee earners think. Their world revolves around serving clients and meeting financial targets. Any initiative that doesn’t clearly support those goals will be met with polite skepticism at best. So, framing the marketing transformation in terms that matter to partners is key.

First and foremost, emphasise how a data-driven marketing approach will help win new work and deepen client relationships. When your marketing team is monitoring client interactions and market trends, the company is less likely to miss out on opportunities – whether it’s an existing client with a growing need or a prospect ripe for a targeted approach. For partners, that means more high-quality leads served to them on a platter. It’s the difference between spamming every buyer and influencer you want to build a relationship with versus getting a heads-up that “Client X has been engaging a lot with our competition content, maybe there’s an opening to discuss current concerns.” Most partners would much prefer the latter scenario, as it directly feeds their pipeline with less wasted effort.

Remember, the goal is to increase revenue opportunity and decrease non-billable fee earner time simultaneously.

Next, highlight efficiency. When M&BD operate as strategic partners, they can shoulder tasks that partners frankly shouldn’t be doing themselves. Think of things like initial market research, drafting email marketing, or configuring the CRM to automatically flag cross-selling opportunities. If marketing can take on or streamline these tasks (using the digital tools at hand), partners save precious time. And saved time is saved money in a professional services context – it either gets reinvested in billable client work or in genuinely strategic BD (like face-to-face meetings with a well-qualified prospect). By reducing the noise and low-value admin that often falls to fee earners, M&BD proves its worth in a very tangible way.

Finally, position marketing’s evolution as a win-win. The goal isn’t to diminish the partner’s role in business development, but to amplify it. With marketing providing better intel and support, partners can engage in BD from a stronger starting point. They can trust that when the marketing team and their BD Manager suggests an initiative or brings data, it’s rooted in firm-wide benefit, not “marketing for marketing’s sake.” Over time, success stories – a client win that originated from total engagement scoring data, or a significant cross-sale that BD facilitated due to a strong data driven digital strategy – will build partner trust. M&BD moves from being seen as a cost center to a co-pilot in generating revenue. That’s ultimately what we’re aiming for: an internal culture where marketing/BD and fee earners work hand-in-hand, each respecting the other’s expertise.

This is all about how partners should spend their one-to-one BD time and using your digital strategy to identify where that time should be spent. In the partner language, we’re identifying who they should spend lunch with, not turning them into digital robots.

Transforming an M&BD team from a reactive support unit into a strategic advisor doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a journey of small wins, cultural shifts, and an investment in a systematic technology tune-up across your website, CRM and email platform. However, the momentum is clearly building in the professional services sector to make this change. Industry leaders are increasingly urging firms to empower their M&BD teams to drive growth, and forward-thinking marketing and BD professionals are keen to rise to that challenge.

From my own experience, having been on the inside of a law firm as Co-CMO and now supporting clients on their digital journey in my role at Squiz, I can attest that the untapped potential is enormous. Most firms already have the data and tools they need; the key is to start using them in smarter, more strategic ways. That could mean initiating a pilot project where marketing partners with one practice group to use client engagement data for targeted outreach. Or it could mean finally integrating your website and email analytics with your CRM analytics to get a 360° view of client interactions - the pressure total engagement score. With each step, remember to communicate wins and learnings back to the stakeholders (especially partners) – this keeps doubters on board and builds the case for further investment and trust in marketing.

Ultimately, elevating marketing and BD to a strategic role is about changing perceptions. It’s about demonstrating value, not by louder self-promotion, but through results and collaboration. When a marketing team helps a busy partner reclaim hours of non-billable time, or uncovers a client need that turns into a new matter, people notice. When data replaces hunches in decision-making, outcomes improve. Over time, marketing and BD can shed the “service department” label and be seen for what they truly can be: a growth engine and strategic advisor at the heart of the firm’s success.

It’s an exciting time to be in professional services M&BD. The organizations that embrace a data-driven, strategic approach will not only achieve better business results, but also foster more fulfilling careers for their marketing and BD professionals. After all, most of us didn’t get into this field just to play catch-up with requests – we joined to make an impact. By unlocking the potential of our technology and data, and working hand-in-hand with our fee earners, we can finally make that impact at the scale we’ve always envisioned.

The digital landscape is moving fast, and it doesn’t take long to shift behind the competition that are already thinking about these things. If you can build strong digital architecture across your key platforms - your website, CRM, and email platform - and combine that data to give strong insight and indicators on how partners can spend their BD time, you’ll start to see a shift, with revenue opportunities emerging, and non-billable time decreasing.

We know that exploring new platforms can seem complex. That’s why we’re here to make it easier. Our team can help you assess where your digital strategy stands today and show you how to activate the full potential of your website with Squiz DXP.

To book a consultation with one of our experts, click here.