In the past, accounting was a fairly stable profession with most client partnerships lasting a “lifetime,” but with accounting automation softwares and the digital world booming with information leading to competitors, it’s getting easier for businesses and individuals to shop around. At the end of the day, the difference between high-growth and low-growth accounting firms is their marketing. High-growth firms invest in marketing and understand marketing is a collaborative effort with your sales team.
When getting started with marketing, it’s best to know that there’s no “one size fits all” approach. The first thing you want to do is identify a marketing budget, keeping in mind that you may have to evolve your expectations depending on the services you want and the level of marketing professional/business you will be working with. We recommend, if marketing seems daunting, start with updating your website if it’s lacking. Get clear on your brand messaging, your target audience, and the services you offer. Get on social media and share that new website, add folks on your personal LinkedIn account (even if you don’t know them – the rules for LinkedIn are NOT the same as Facebook; strangers are welcome). What else do we recommend when it comes to marketing?
Consider Investing in a Branding Strategy
You can’t market your services to potential clients if you don’t know who they are or what they need. Not only that, but you want to have a clear understanding of your audience’s “love language” (what motivates them to contact you for accounting services). Learn about your target market through a branding strategy or pow wow with your sales team to create profiles of your top clients. Branding strategies will develop messaging that your sales & marketing teams can utilize along with competition analysis, company goal tracking, and more. If you’re starting marketing without a clear understanding of your brand, you’re going to be throwing dollars out the window.
Create a Marketing Roadmap
Having a plan will keep you focused and your efforts streamlined. Identify your differentiators (what makes you different from the rest), clearly outline all the services you offer (consider what are the most profitable and easiest services to sell), set reasonable goals with time frames (3 new clients by X date or collect 20 new lead emails in a week), figure out what marketing tactics you want to start with first (get a new website made, start social selling strategies, or email marketing). From there, you can start implementing and track successes so you can ensure an ROI on your marketing efforts. If you invest in a brand strategy, you’ll ideally have all this information put together to help organize your efforts. While the investment may seem costly to some, it is WELL WORTH the return.
Be a Thought Leader
| High-growth firms focus on standing out as leaders in the industry. They’re putting out educational content in the form of social media posts or blogs to build visibility around their services/specialties. They’re using both traditional and digital channels to get their marketing message out there. You want to stand out in the digital world especially. Show your competitors how it’s done. Did you know? Recent industry surveys show that businesses/individuals who are looking for accounting firms are picking businesses based on relevant experience and expertise. With expertise in the accounting world usually being an invisible attribute, it’s more important than ever to show off your knowledge/experience through your website or social sites. If you don’t look like the leader, people will leave your site and find someone who does look like one. So, again, you want to make sure you have a professional website. Get writing your firm’s blog and speak out on topics of interest for your clients. Work on SEO and social media posting, and consider partnership marketing (working with eco-partner businesses that feed you new clients). Do you have questions about marketing your accounting firm? Contact Sage Marketing today. We offer a wide variety of marketing services along with marketing consulting that will give your team the expert marketing guidance they need. |
