Marketing For Accounting Firms
For the modern accounting firm, marketing has become an essential business activity. Whether you are looking to increase total revenue, improve profits on existing turnover or expand your firm’s client base you need to understand and be skilled at marketing.
Accounting has changed dramatically in the past few years. Previously when a business hired an accountant it was the beginning of a long partnership.
While that is still true in some part today, it is easier for clients to explore their options (check out your competition) and new technology has made changing accountants relatively easy.
This has made the industry much more competitive.
But this also means that there is great opportunity for ambitious and progressive firms to win clients and claim larger market share.
In order to fully capitalise on this opportunity you and your firm will need to have a good understanding, and implementation, of marketing.
Where To Begin
All good marketing begins with understanding.
You cannot market your firm to potential clients unless you first understand what it is that they need.
This doesn’t mean that you have to become an expert at what they do – but you do need to be an expert in the challenges and problems they encounter.
The better you are at understanding, the better your marketing will be.
Have A Plan
Plans keep us focused and provide a vehicle for progress. Your marketing plan should be a natural extension of your business plan. Drawing you towards your larger business goals.
A good marketing plan will include:
Positioning
What is it that differentiates you from other firms? This might be industry specific knowledge, specialisations, experience, qualifications, awards, etc. What reasons can you give your prospects to work with you instead of your competition?
Objectives
Any plan should have a defined outcome. Otherwise you cannot possibly measure its success. So be specific with you outcomes; are they a particular amount of revenue, number of new clients, quantity of upsells to existing clients. Specific and measurable.
Services
What exactly are you marketing? Which services are the most profitable for your firm? Are they the easiest to deliver and sell? What else might be of interest to your prospects?
Marketing Tactics
How are you going to be marketing? The easiest way to plan this is to create a list of actions to be performed daily, weekly and monthly that can be used to achieve the objectives you have set.
Ideal Clients
Come up with a list of the clients that you work best with. What are the common features of their businesses. Can you identify why you work so well them? Once this has been established see if you can create a list of potential clients, start locally and then expand out.
Time Frames
The best marketing is done in a set period of time, so determine a length for this campaign. Timeframes need to be long enough that you can realistically achieve your objectives and short enough that they challenge/push you.
Grab a piece of paper now and make some notes under the headings we have just discussed, this will be the outline of your next marketing campaign. Good luck and have fun!
If you want some help with your firms marketing then please book a call by clicking on this link.
To download our ebook and get a list of 100 marketing ideas for your accounting practice click here for the 100 Ways To Market Your Accounting Firm
What do we do at TwentyTwo?
At TwentyTwo Agency we specialise in helping you create a strategy, attract ideal prospects, convert them into clients and get remembered and referred. Our specialities include content marketing, blog writing, email newsletter management and social media management. We are a content marketing and digital experience agency for accounting firms. We ensure you get remembered, recommended and referred.
To find out if we can help you, reach out to our team by emailing [email protected]
