This month I have the great pleasure of speaking to Kate Mackie, Global Marketing Leader at EY. Kate has worked in professional services for many years, holding leadership roles across marketing, brand and communications. She’s led teams of over 150 people and has delivered some brilliant campaigns, which have delivered real business impact.
Here’s her 5 minutes with…
Kate, let’s start by you sharing with our readers your marketing background?
I have worked in marketing since leaving university. After completing A-levels in Sciences and Maths, I studied History & Philosophy of Science combined with Management Studies at Leeds where marketing featured as a module within my course – which piqued my interest. After leaving university I started in the Agency world and moved through advertising, integrated, data, direct and digital specialisms to fill out the breadth of my experience before being recruited by GE to move client side.
What does your role at EY involve?
I lead the global integrated Go-To-Market pillar within the BMC function at EY – which means I am across programs that target our global cxo buyer audiences, aligned to their specific issues. I focus on connecting marketing to revenue to drive measurable market impact from initiatives that are underpinned by marketing technologies.
You’ve worked in professional services for many years, what have been the biggest changes in marketing in recent years?
I think we are in the midst of a maturing of professional services marketing as clients’ personal experiences are converging with their B2B customer expectations. This, combined with the generational shift of our buyers means that our prospective buyers expect their relationships to be nurtured and strengthened through digital channels.
You’ve rolled out many successful campaigns throughout your career, what has been your favourite and why?
There have been a lot of campaigns across the years that I have been incredibly proud of from the first one I delivered to the most successful – and even the ones I’ve learnt most from, that might not have hit the mark. A recent EY campaign that I am really proud of is our COP28 sustainability messaging: ‘Just Action’ – really looking at how we drive the ESG and Sustainability conversation with a focus on driving positive change for all stakeholders.
You hear so much talk about metrics these days, if you could only report on three marketing KPIs what would they be?
Metrics are key but need to be contextualized. Setting objectives at the beginning of a program will define what success looks like and therefore what needs to be measured to show the results against your targets. These differ through the funnel, through the relationship matrix and across the long- and short-term focus of a plan. In-year metrics are more focused around movement towards revenue today whereas longer term we look to deliver brand resilience driving awareness and consideration of new services. So, to be wholly unhelpful, it depends…
To succeed in professional services marketing, you need more than technical (skills) capability, what to you are the most important soft skills that you think are needed to be successful?
Stakeholder management is key. To be successful, you need the business to see you as a source of value and not a cost centre. Embracing rigorous project and financial management skillsets – or recognizing that this is not your forte and partnering with those that can – is mandatory. Speaking the language of the board is something that we don’t do enough of – we often use marketing jargon with those not in our profession and should flex our messaging to our internal audiences. We need to continue to focus on the internal marketing of marketing.
Where do you think professional services marketers, in general, are on that journey?
Marketing maturity is strengthening across professional services. The more that we embrace the language of the business, delivering outcomes and impact that are recognized by internal audiences as an investment that can drive both top and bottom-line benefits the more valuable we are seen as a function.
Looking forward, what do you think is likely to shape the future of professional services marketing?
Professional services is a knowledge-based service industry focused on insight development used to nurture long term relationships. The increased pace of innovation in knowledge management, plus the curation of personalized insights combined with both individual and account-based understanding of engagement data provides huge opportunities for technological disruption and advancement. When we start to look at margin improvements and return on investment across our programs embracing these technology and data advancements is crucial.
Thinking back over your career to date, what’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
‘You work for your CV, not for me’, was the advice given to me at the beginning of my career – which has meant that I think about roles in terms of the skills they have given me and the gaps they have filled in my knowledge. Having a well-rounded understanding of all elements of the full marketing mix has been hugely useful throughout my career to date.
And finally, what one piece of advice would you give to a high-potential professional services marketer looking to step into their first leadership role?
Unravel the spaghetti – find out the why. Moving into an initial leadership role means you need to understand your audiences better than ever before and in professional services the balance of internal and external audiences is key. A lot of times the account team are the first buyers of any messaging, so it needs to resonate internally first and then externally – there needs to be a fundamental human truth to the value proposition that can be easily communicated.