Marketing for Accountants

The big barriers to marketing for accounting firms

Based on hundreds of interactions with our member firms here at The Gap, the three most common barriers to successful marketing for accounting firms are:

Lack of a clear Marketing Plan, with little understanding of the marketing strategies that work best.
Limited internal marketing resources, in the way of people. There are many different skill sets required across branding, website creation, content writing, digital, and even SEO. You won’t find those in one person, so asking someone in your administration team to execute these tasks is unlikely to work.
No content marketing strategy, with no capacity to produce high-quality content that provides value to business clients.

Some firms have overcome the above challenges by outsourcing key marketing tasks, either engaging a marketing agency or deploying offshored contractors. In addition, many firms now subscribe to ‘stock’ content solutions to ensure they can consistently roll out blogs and other educational content.

In marketing, we talk about defining your buyer personas.

For example, you may decide that one of your personas is ‘Early-stage construction businesses’. Defining this persona helps you visualise a single person to represent that group of clients.

This becomes a strategy for connecting with your target audience. When you understand who you're talking to, you will be more targeted, persuasive and effective in your marketing.

For example, what are their typical challenges and how can you provide solutions in the form of services to overcome these? What are their interests and how can you engage with them and show that you ‘get’ them?

Make sure key messages are ‘above the fold’

According to some research, the average time spent on a website is just 15 seconds! Your future clients need to be able to engage with your main messages straight away, without scrolling down for ages. This is even more important if they're viewing on a mobile device.

Include testimonials or case studies

Testimonials can be short or long. They should be written in your client’s own voice, not rewritten in yours. This ensures they remain unscripted and authentic. One technique to use when creating a testimonial is the ‘reverse testimonial’ process. Start by asking about the challenges or obstacles they overcame in deciding to sign up for your service. There will always be obstacles to overcome, e.g., price or energy and time needed to implement.

For more information on building great testimonials, download our Guide to Utilising Client Feedback for Testimonials.

Examples deployed in the accounting industry include:

Blogs and articles
eBooks
Business guides and checklists
Videos, e.g. educational webinar recordings
Calculators

Some of this content can be ‘gated’ (visitors must provide their details before they can access the content). Don’t gate all of your content. For example, it doesn’t make sense to gate blogs and articles.

Content marketing works because it:

Builds a lead pipeline
Improves your search rankings
Grows your brand
Establishes credibility and trust

Content marketing is an important tool to attract, engage and delight future clients because it works on the basis of providing value before you try to extract value. This is well depicted in HubSpot’s Marketing Flywheel.

The Marketing Flywheel

Developing content ‘pathways’

Creating a series of articles under one topic, and driving readers to an event, can be an effective way of taking future clients on a content journey, engaging them at a deeper level.

For example, your lead article might be ‘Seven Causes of Poor Cashflow’. Your next seven articles drill into each of those seven causes, creating a pathway to unlock content of value and allowing them to choose the content most relevant to their business. These articles could drive readers to attend an upcoming cashflow management webinar or seminar.

Repurposing your content

Publish your content in multiple places - on your website, in social posts, in online community groups, or as additional links in blogs and articles.

Subscribing to ‘stock’ content solutions

Writing blogs and articles from scratch takes time. One solution is to subscribe to a quality content provider, such as The Gap’s Premium Content Library.

The great thing about subscribing to great stock content is that the content tends to be evergreen in nature, so it won’t date.

You can mix stock content up with your original ‘in the moment’ pieces. If you’re worried about being in a ‘sea of content sameness’ when using stock content, customise the content to reflect your brand and voice.

You can take the time, cost and complexity out of customising and posting content by subscribing to a fit for purpose marketing platform, enabling you to change images and tweak titles and text.

We recommend the BOMA marketing platform. Check out the BOMA ROI Calculator here to work out how much time and money you could save by using a digital marketing solution.

Education marketing is simply the process of educating your existing and future clients, rather than pitching to them. It works on the basis of providing value to clients before you extract value from them. It also earns people’s attention, rather than forcing it. It's at the cornerstone of ethical marketing and sales.

Delivering educational webinars to clients

There has been a Sudden Shift to Education Marketing via the webinar.

Educational webinars are one of the smartest marketing strategies for accountants today because they:

Position your ‘value-add’ services
Leverage your time better, providing support to clients on a ‘one to many’ basis
Create advocates who refer new business
Enable clients to buy more services from you
Help raise the profile of your young guns

Your webinar content

The education possibilities are endless. Consider developing or subscribing to webinar content within the following business categories:

Mastering the call to action

To increase your ROI from education marketing, ensure the content links to services you offer. Then, present a call to action that makes it easy for clients to buy those services.

You don’t want to come across as being salesy, so offer three options: a complimentary option, e.g., a guide, so they can self-serve; a low-cost option, e.g., a worksheet they complete with a short review meeting; and a full-service option, e.g., a Business Planning session.

Plenty of clients will take the complimentary service option. That’s good marketing. They’ll think highly of you, they’ll keep consuming your content, and they're likely to refer new business.

Repurposing your webinar content

Every time you create an education piece you also create a marketing asset. The key is to repurpose those assets so you get maximum outcome for minimum effort.

Here are six examples:

After a webinar, send an email with a link to the webinar recording. Clients can watch at their own pace. This boosts your call to action.
Publish a link to view the recording on your website. This is a great way to win ‘new to firm’ clients.
Post the recording to YouTube or your business’s Facebook page.
If you have a clients only Facebook group, add a link to the webinar to get more views.
Post your best webinar feedback on social channels.
Create content pathways. When leads download a video, send them a personalised email with a link to a free, but related, resource one week later.

Always add lead capture forms to downloadable content to maximise lead generation.

And remember - the best marketing is education.

For comprehensive advice on managing webinars, download our FREE Webinar Management Process Guide.

Your content needs to serve your clients’ needs.

Their needs might be existing needs (an important change to legislation), or a need that you create (to take steps to improve their cashflow, for example).

Here are some content categories to consider. Don’t focus on just one - mix them up.

Guidance on how to improve profitability, margins, and cashflow
Content pathways (a series of messages planned in advance)
Important legislation updates (don’t make this boring; speak in their language and avoid jargon)
Opinion pieces on topical business issues
Client profiles and case studies, always with permission
Updates on your business and team members

Social media marketing is a must-have for all businesses.

That includes accounting firms. In fact, most accounting firms today have a dedicated in-house resource to manage their social platforms, even if it’s just one hour per week.

There are a number of platforms to consider. Which platforms you use depends very much on the profile of your clients and where they hang out.

Social media platforms are more immediate and therefore less static than your website, so the key is to keep posting, constantly and consistently. You can share an expert advisory piece on LinkedIn, an industry comment on Twitter, and more of your firm’s personality and team news on Facebook.

If your posts are liked and shared, they are amplified, and you benefit from the word of mouth.

8. Your Return on Marketing Investment.

Digital marketing, unlike traditional marketing, is measurable.

Analytics you should set KPIs around (and measure actual performance) include:

Website traffic and engagement
Individual website page traffic counts
Page bounce rates
Conversion (clicks on call to action buttons)
Leads generated from ‘gated’ content
Email campaign open rates
Social media followers and likes
Revenue growth!

Digital marketing, in particular content marketing, is a long-term process of raising your brand’s profile and demonstrating value to your audience.

It’s important to PLAY THE LONG GAME!

To check out The Gap’s extensive Premium Content Library and other marketing assets, contact one of our Business Development Consultants.