Training options for turning a PA into a marketing assistant

During the recession, many firms reluctantly dispensed with their marketing and business development staff which meant that the day to day burden of marketing fell onto the shoulders of secretarial and administrative staff. Many smaller firms cannot afford to hire full time marketing qualified staff and instead look to promoting secretaries and assistants into such roles. As a result, lots of firms ask me about the best training options for these staff. I address the issue in detail on my web site (www.kimtasso.com) but here are the options for those in the property industry looking to convert PAs into marketing supremos.

A secretary/PA will have many of the fundamental skills necessary to undertake much of the day to day marketing administration, but to be really confident and effective the secretary will need both some specialist skills training and some education in the general principles of marketing.

You should be aware that the training needs of those working with residential property (business to consumer) will be slightly different to those working in commercial property (business to business). Typically, whilst both will use digital marketing and public relations the commercial marketers will need to be better at professional selling, pitching and relationship management.

Strategic understanding

Before letting a new marketing assistant loose on the wide range of marketing and promotional tools, it is advisable that they develop a broad understanding of the principles of marketing which should include an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the various tools and guidance on how to create plans and campaigns and measure effectiveness.

Marketing education

There are a number of half and one day courses that I present through the Professional Marketing Forum (www.pmforum.co.uk). These sessions were designed specifically to provide a secretary with a broad overview of the purpose and various functions of marketing at a strategic level and also to consider the various roles and activities that will take up the lion’s share of time – for example, managing the database, producing and sending out promotional materials and organising events.

Current courses include: Basic marketing for secretaries, Professional and Practical Skills for Marketing Assistants, The Proactive Marketing Executive and The Future Marketing Manager.

Marketing reading

These general courses can be supplemented with marketing reading – I have prepared numerous reading lists for marketing assistants, some of which appear in the FAQ section of my web site (www.kimtasso.com) and others which are available on request.

For those in the property sector, my book “Growing your property partnership”, while aimed at partners, provides good introductory chapters on subjects including: strategic marketing, tactical marketing (an A-Z of promotional techniques), selling (including pitching) and relationship management. The other book I co-wrote with Graham Norwood for the property industry is “Media relations in property” which provides an introductory how-to guide to generate publicity in the residential and commercial property sectors.

Marketing qualifications

Of course, if the intention is that the PA/Secretary is embarking on a long term marketing career then it would be good to obtain some professional qualifications. At the Chartered Institute of Marketing (www.cim.co.uk) there are three levels of qualification – Certificate, Diploma and Postgraduate Diploma. These can be studied in distance programmes, on intensive weekends and in the more familiar evening or Saturday class formats.

There is an introductory certificate for those completely new to marketing which comprises two units:

Unit 1 - What is Marketing?
Unit 2 - Understanding Customer Relationships

Each level comprises four papers – with assessment methods being predominantly assignment based although exams are common at the senior level. The courses are practitioner oriented – encouraging students to apply what they have learned to their own work environment and challenges. The course breakdown is as follows and typically students attempt to do two or four papers each year.

Professional Certificate
Unit 1 – Marketing Essentials
Unit 2 – Assessing the Marketing Environment
Unit 3 – Marketing Information and Research
Unit 4 – Stakeholder Marketing

Professional Diploma
Unit 1 - Marketing Planning Process
Unit 2 - Delivering Customer Value through Marketing
Unit 3 - Managing Marketing
Unit 4 - Project Management in Marketing

Professional Post Graduate Diploma
Unit 1 - Emerging Themes
Unit 2 - Analysis and Decision
Unit 3 - Marketing Leadership and Planning
Unit 4 - Managing Corporate Reputation

CIM also provides courses targeted at Digital Marketing including the CAM Diploma in Digital Marketing comprising the following units:
· Digital Marketing Essentials
· Digital Marketing Planning
· Marketing & Consumer Behaviour

They also provide the more advanced Diploma in Managing Digital Media:
· Integrating Digital Media and Branding
· Implementing Digital Campaigns
· Advertising
· Public Relations

CIM (see above) also provides a range of 120 shorter one and two day courses covering a range of operational topics – for example:

- Advanced email marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Social media marketing

Operational issues

Once some basic marketing knowledge is acquired, it is time to learn how to use the most common tools used on a day to day basis by marketers.

Databases and emarketing/email campaigns

Day-to-day the marketing assistant’s role will in large part focus on creating, maintaining and using information in a database. Whilst some firms may still rely on spreadsheets (or even Word documents), ideally the information should be kept in some form of marketing database or CRM (Client Relationship Management) system. Some firms will have a marketing module integrated into their other practice software.

For this reason, once the principles of marketing are understood – and there is familiarity with issues such as the Data Protection Act you should look at training provided by the suppliers of your database software. Some firms will outsource their email campaigns to external providers such as Campaignmaster or Concep in which case they will not need to understand the intricacies of creating e-campaigns and managing the responses.

The Institute of Direct Marketing (www.theidm.com) offers a wide range of one to three day courses covering subjects such as:

- The Absolute Essentials of Direct and Digital Marketing training course
- Best Practice Google Analytics
- Complete Digital Marketing
- Designing Persuasive Websites
- Direct Marketing for Newcomers
- Effective Business-to-Business Email Marketing
- Introduction to copywriting
- Pay per click advertising
- Project management skills

Design

Most marketing assistants are required to assist in the development and production of a variety of marketing materials – whether these are advertisements, hoardings, signs, newsletters, email alerts or traditional leaflets and brochures. Ideally, you should ask your firm’s designers for details of your corporate or house style guide which shows how to use (and not use) your firm’s logo, colours and other visual identity elements. If you are not trained in design yourself, it would be advisable to ask your external designers to provide you with a series of templates for the relevant software packages that you use so that you can simply enter the text and images required to an existing format.

Typical software packages for producing materials include: QuarkXpress (professional designers) and Quark Promote (small and medium sized businesses) or Adobe Indesign. You will probably also use some form of photograph or image manipulator such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Digital Image suite.

Web sites

Hopefully, when external designers built your web site they incorporated a CMS (Content Management System) to enable you to make many of the smaller changes in-house. In this case you will probably need a quick training session from the designers to understand how to make changes to rapidly changing pages such as those showing new particulars, press releases about deals and new developments or the addition of partners and agents to your business.

More sophisticated skills are required to ensure that your web site appears in high rankings from search engines such as Google – and you may need to do some SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) training in order to do this. Similarly, if your firm does a lot of online advertising you can either use the self-tutor tools in Google Adwords or seek more general training on PPC (pay per click) advertising.

Blogs and social media

The use of blogs and social media are increasingly important in today’s marketing mix. Familiarity with the main tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can be acquired easily on-line. The various main blogging tools are relatively straightforward too although writing good content (especially titles) takes a lot of practice. Copywriting skills training will help here.

Copy and content

But having the skills to enter text and graphics is only part of the equation. In both traditional and online communications it is imperative that you have good content. Copywriting is a skill of its own and you need to adopt different styles of writing depending on whether you are designing mailshots, newsletters, web content or more extensive research reports. Most PR agencies will have staff who can write copy or you can hire freelance writers to do this work for you. There are also a selection of short courses on copywriting. Although the further complication is that in order to write good copy that prompts action and sells you need to also understand the principles of good sales technique.

Other short courses

CIM (see above - http://www.cim.co.uk/tandq/training/home.aspx) also provides a range of 120 shorter one and two day courses covering a range of operational topics – for example:

- Competitive tendering
- Copywriting skills
- Email marketing
- Fundamentals of selling
- How to develop key accounts
- Marketing the brand
- Mobile marketing
- PA’s Guide to marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Social media marketing
- Using the database for direct marketing
- Viral marketing

Kaplan Hawksmere offer some specialist communications and PR training courses (http://www.rtpiconferences.co.uk/hawksmere/category.php?id=49) including planning and managing special events, effective writing skills for business, marketing and advertising law and writing skills for PR.

Other sources of training

Associations

There are three associations that provide a variety of training and information resources for those in the professions:

Professional Marketing Forum (www.pmforum.co.uk) is a membership group that offers a variety of full and half day training courses as well as online article banks. They also provide a series of Unmissable Monday shorter sessions (some of these are free) – lasting just an hour or so – and webinars. It also provides a good opportunity to network with other young marketers working in law, accountancy and property.

Professional Services Marketing Group (www.psmg.co.uk) is similar to the above group and also provides a series of online resources and training sessions.

Profile (www.profile-network.com) is a group focusing entirely on those who are involved in marketing and PR in the property industry. They offer many events although most involve listening to key people from the industry talking about their experiences and gaining insight into how journalists think. But excellent networking opportunities nevertheless.

Specialist web sites

There are many sites dedicated to marketing and many offer free tutorials, guidance and templates. Just a few of those that might be of interest are shown below. There are many more shown in the fave links section of my web site at www.kimtasso.com

http://www.marketing-online.co.uk/ Dave Chaffey is an emarketing expert (his book is very good) and he does many of the courses for the CIM

www.hubspot.com Authors of an excellent book on inbound marketing, this site offers free webinars also.

Property sector specific courses

There are a number of training sources in the property sector – although most are targeted at the actual estate agents rather than the marketers who support them.

http://www.estateagencyacademy.co.uk/ This site has a number of free videos to watch on subjects as diverse as The 7 Principles of Persuasive Marketing, building your brand online, using social media to promote your business and customer relationship management.

http://www.naea.co.uk/ Mostly courses on estate agency but a couple on effective selling are included.

www.rics.org Mostly these are courses relating to the professional aspects of surveying, but there are occasionally courses on business development related skills such as negotiation, presentation skills and business planning.

http://www.hsconferences.com/marketing.aspx Henry Stewart provides courses to the property industry. In marketing, they offer specialist marketing analytics and digital asset management courses. Its “Introduction to property” courses are particularly useful for those who are new to the industry

Consultants

Some of the consultants in the sector who may also be able to help with training and coaching are:
www.kimtasso.com
http://www.consortiamarketing.co.uk/ is
http://www.propertyadd.com/
http://www.estateagencyinsight.co.uk/ There are some audio seminars which help with general business development issues

Personal or firm brand?

Brands and the professions don’t mix too well. Amongst the sophisticated firms, there’s confusion over whether it’s about reputation (past performance) or brand (future promise). Amongst the traditionalists, it’s all about visual identity (logos and design). And many partners will argue “It’s not about the firm’s brand, but about the individual partner and the relationship”. I don’t entirely disagree.

However, if every partner ploughs their own furrow there’s only a limited reach for their “personal” brand – even if they are superb networkers, regular speakers and media darlings. And as a personal brand, there’s only so many clients and so much work one partner and his/her team can accept.

Some of the most incredible success stories in professional services marketing are where a number of partners work together – either by happy accident or agreed strategy - to infiltrate and dominate a particular (niche) market. Between them they share the load of profile raising, service development, service delivery and networking. Together it is quicker to acquire and serve a significant number of clients that accelerates them through the experience curve and establishes them as market leaders. As a team they can field the partner with the most appropriate personality, style or experience. Together they really do offer the “strength in depth” that so many talk about.

A personal brand lasts a lifetime. A firm brand can live forever.

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Property leadership - Ian Coull, Chief Executive of SEGRO

This morning I went along to the lovely offices of Lovells to attend the Profile face-to-face interview where Peter Bill (former editor of Estates Gazette and writer of a marvellous foreword in my second book) interviewed Ian Coull of SEGRO. I thought I’d share some of the highlights as it provided interesting insights into what it takes to lead in the real estate world.

Peter started with questions relating to Ian’s childhood which was in Perth. As well as being capped for Scotland (sadly losing against Argentina), Ian’s career aspiration was to be a Chartered Accountant so that he could “own a nice car and house”. Persuaded that Chartered Surveyor was pretty much the same thing except outdoors he trained at Perth County Council before going into private practice. Declining a partnership he then moved to work with James Goldsmith at Cavenham Foods in 1975 where they accelerated from £30m to £3000m in just three years. After a spell at Texas Homecare in 1982 he became one of the 19 board members at Sainsbury where he remained for 15 years.

Peter’s questions then turned to why, in 2003, Ian was persuaded by Sir Nigel Mobbs to take the reigns at Slough Estates – “the stamp collector”. In answering this question he commented that whilst it took him two years to achieve the fundamental changes needed in the “fragile company”, he would advise other leaders to “just do it” within their first 100 days.

There was a lovely story about the name change following the sad demise of Sir Nigel (third generation owner of the business). Originally they were looking at SEIGRO (using Slough Estates International) and went through the various domain registrations and legal checks. But just in the nick of time, a colleague at UBS mentioned that it spelt ‘orgies’ backwards and so the name became SEGRO.

Ian talked a little about the two biggest developments in his time at SEGRO -The sale of the US assets in 2007 which completed just days before the recession hit and last year’s purchase for £110m of Brixton Estates (£1.2b enterprise value which had previously been at £5b).

The words of Sir John Harvey-Jones “To be the chief executive you need the constitution of an ox” were supported but with a firm endorsement to the value of a team sports spirit in the leadership mix. Ian also suggested that “you need to know what you don’t know” to be an effective leader, understand that the things that arrive for you to deal with are the really complex problems and that often, when everyone is saying you need to go right, you must follow your gut instincts and steer to the left.

Peter then picked up on the fact that, rare for a FTSE company and even more so for a property company, SEGRO had until recently had two female members of the Board. Ian valued the different perspective, insight and calm that women brought and explained why those Board members had moved on. But he stressed that it was most important that you had the right person for the job – regardless of gender.

As a keen Labour supporter, there was some discussion about the forthcoming election – and some sadness that there wasn’t the same enthusiasm around as there was when Labour came to power 12 years ago. Ian also commented on the two thirds UK and one third Continental European mix of the SEGRO portfolio but gave little away on the company’s future plans for investment in other industrial nations such as China and India but urged people to check out Jones Lang LaSalle’s Index of Responsibility.

There followed a number of questions where there were comments about boom-bust cycles, the short termism of the stock markets, the value in experienced coaches and the challenges of finding industry reshaping innovations. Overall, it was an interesting interview exploring the more personal side of a well known and much admired industry leader.

It was also great to catch up with Gerard Tomnay – now a senior associate at Lovells – who I had the pleasure of working with many moons ago at Nabarro.

Kim Tasso

Architecture and construction – marketing and selling professional services

I have just written a review of this book by Basil Sawczuk (an architect turned business development director) which will appear in a forthcoming issue of Professional Marketing magazine. The book provides a really good basic introduction with lots of examples, checklists and sample scripts to provide a real hand-holding guide to those who are new to the world of selling professional services.

There is an elegant seven stage model around which the 240 page book is based:

1. Selecting the clients you want to work for (starting with an analysis of which of the current clients are profitable and your exposure to different market sectors)
2. Identifying the needs of the client (including the right people to approach and listening skills)
3. Shaping the service to suit the needs of your target client (modelling a bespoke service and the need to adopt the client’s point of view)
4. Communicating your availability and capability to the target client (building rapport and noticing when the client switches to buying mode)
5. Proposals and tenders (pre-qualification, method statements, framework agreements etc)
6. Delivering added value and obtaining repeat business (including service touches and account management)
7. Building credibility (which is happening through all the stages by demonstrating credentials such as capability, compatibility, credibility and reliability).

There are some interesting statistics, for example:

* In 2005 global construction output was approximately US$4.6 trillion. UK output ranked within the top 10 with annual output in 2006 of £113.5 billion.
* UK professional services firms earned £13.9b pa with 27,950 professional service firms in UK employing 270,000 people
* Of the total earnings engineering firms accounted for £3.9b (28%), architectural services £3.3b (24%), surveying services £2.3b (17%) and management services £1.7b (12%).
* In 2004/2005 SMEs secured 22% of central government contracts and the majority (59%) of local authority contracts.
* Research shows that somewhere in the order of 68% of clients change their suppliers because they perceive that their suppliers become indifferent to their needs.

And some helpful rules of thumb:

* The least profitable 20% of your clients will probably take up 80% of your spare management time.
* Make sure that no one client contributes more than 25% of your turnover, preferably no more than 15%
* Probability of leads being converted into jobs – OJEC probability starts at 2% unless known, potential clients who don’t know you 10% and known to client max probability at 20%

Whilst most marketers and experienced salesfolk will be familiar with the content (and perhaps a little alarmed at the lack of mention of the need for a marketing plan or the use of social media) it is a recommended read for those fee-earning professionals in the construction industry who want a basic, jargon-free and pragmatic step-by-step introductory guide to selling.

Kim Tasso