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20 Feb 2024
If you’re an accountant or tax professional looking to grow your client base, you may be wondering how you market your firm. Marketing is a fantastic way to raise brand awareness, deliver quality prospects and build your brand.
This article looks at what marketing accounting firms can employ to help you attract the right kind of clients and prospects. From digital marketing to networking and traditional methods, there are many ways you can market your accountancy practice.
Many 20:20 Innovation members utilise our marketing support tools as part of their subscription. If you are an accountant in practice or industry and would like more information about becoming a 20:20 Innovation member, why not book a free 30-minute demo with our team today.
Marketing covers a broad range of activities that help build your accountancy business and generate new clients. By definition, marketing is a sales support tool. Many 20:20 Innovation members have come to us over the last 25 years to explore different growth strategies. We continually refer to their marketing and prospect building.
One mistake many of our members have made in the past is focusing solely on things like social media marketing, blogging or PPC (Pay Per Click) paid advertising (such as Google Ads). These are digital marketing strategies.
It’s vital to realise that marketing for accountants, when executed effectively, should be a multichannel approach which utilises multiple activities and processes.
No successful accounting firm has been built without the use of effective marketing. Marketing is a crucial facet for many reasons. These include:
Marketing helps generate leads or prospects for you to follow up on. The best marketing strategies are targeted towards the potential clients you want to work with. Done well, you can expand your client base and contribute to your overall accounting firm growth.
Your marketing efforts don’t just need to focus on lead generation. Being able to close leads effectively is so much about the strength of your brand. Think about it like this. A client has two accounting firms who offer identical services for an identical price. What helps them choose? Brand authority, or how you are perceived, is critical in the decision making process.
Much of the strength of a brand is in social proof. You may offer fantastic accounting services, but do your clients leave you reviews? Do you talk about your success stories in your social media coverage? Do you showcase your case studies and testimonials? Trust and credibility is built via social proof and helps to show your expertise.
Any relationship with a client doesn’t just need to be transactional. Your marketing strategy should focus on building relationships with your clients. This could help with your social proof but could also help to curate user-generated content and help with link building or increasing your overall reach.
What is your point of difference? What sets you apart from other accounting firms? It’s imperative that your accounting firm has a unique selling point (USP) and you market that heavily. It may be that you operate in a niche like the property sector, whatever it is, market that to prospects and get better quality prospects.
Establishing your marketing strategy is a great way to streamline your marketing efforts. Record your strategy as part of your overall marketing plan, and align this with your accounting services. The goal here is to cover as many marketing channels as possible and reach your target market as effectively as possible.
There are free things you can start with, like Gumtree goldmine ads, adding a Google business profile or marketing on social media. This article covers a whole range of free and paid options.
After all, the better your marketing strategy, the quicker you can attract clients. Here's some of the best marketing strategies.
Your accounting firm's website is the face of your practice. Like it or not, people are far less likely to read a brochure or flyer if they're following up their interest in you. They will simply take a look online and go onto your website.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, first impressions are key, making a website a key part of your digital marketing strategy. You need good load speed and a nice design to showcase the fact you are professional and legitimate. You also want to make sure that your website is aimed at your target market, increasing the chance of obtaining new clients. A poor website will often mean potential clients look elsewhere.
As well as being the face of your brand, your website is one of the most important lead generation tools at your disposal. This is where you catalogue your products and services and where you showcase your features and benefits.
You need someone browsing your site to be able to find information quickly and efficiently and allow them to either fill in a lead form or purchase items smoothly.
Let's face it, with so many websites available and over 35,000 accountants in practice in the UK, you can't afford to have a poor website! Importantly, you don't need to have a marketing team to create a website or content as help is out there, including our expert team who specialise in websites for accountants.
At a very basic level, you need a website that loads quickly, is properly laid out and doesn't look like it was built on Windows 95. In addition you need a clean, professional design, good use of fonts, information and, as an accountant, an option to contact you. Remember, this is often one of the first things potential new clients will see. Here's a few tips:
Having lots of well-placed, clearly marked CTAs (Call to Action) will help a user navigate your site and understand when they are being asked to do something (like fill in a form). Guide your visitors towards specific actions like "book a free demo" or "book a consultation" so that you encourage engagement and purposeful interactions.
You might have an expensive website with all the bells and whistles. The problem? You haven't used any principles of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and therefore your website is effectively invisible. Make sure that your site is rich in keywords that are relevant to your industry and each page has a meta title, meta description and basic structure so that it is search-engine friendly. For example, you may be a strong tax accountant and want to focus upon that as a service - your website content needs to reflect this. That way you can increase your traffic and therefore your chances of landing great leads.
UX (User Experience) is putting yourself in the shoes of a website visitor prior to launching your site. Is it easy to navigate? Can you read the text properly? Are there nice images breaking up a page? Getting a professional to look at your website design can be hugely beneficial in this instance.
It doesn't matter where in the world your accounting firm is based, your potential clients are on social media. That means you need a strong social media presence. How you setup and use your social media pages is vital. Each social media channel is different, with different content and tone required to get the best results.
For example, TikTok would require a video marketing plan. LinkedIn speaks more to businesses and professionals so would be more formal than, say, Facebook. X (formerly Twitter) has a character limit so requires you to be snappier.
Social media is an extremely powerful digital marketing tool. Accountants and tax professionals should focus on sharing value, creating curiosity and find your potential customers' pain points.
Social media refers to channels like X, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram. Each medium has millions, even billions, of users so it would be crazy not to include social media marketing as part of your overall marketing plan for accountants. It's why digital marketing for accounting firms is so important.
There's a multitude of benefits to effective social media marketing. Social proof, online visibility, brand profile, interacting with customers, showcasing your brand identity...the list is huge. Here's a few lesser-considered benefits:
Social media platforms offer accountants in practice a chance to connect with existing clients, prospects and, perhaps just as importantly, other accounting professionals. You can also rub shoulders (virtually of course) with industry influencers who could help promote your business. It also allows you to consider your target market and engage in conversations which you may not have previously been aware of, allowing you to potentially attract new clients.
Social media isn't just a forum to shout about how great you are. Nor is it a place for throwaway content just "because everyone else is doing it". Effective social media marketing can be a fantastic lead generation tool. Give people real value and, sometimes, entertainment and they are far more likely to become paying customers.
You don't need any capital at all to start marketing on social media. You can tap into local organizations through closed local groups, for example. You can even promote your professional services for free to people in a specific area. When (or if) you go down the route of paid social media ads you'll find that CPC (Cost Per Click) is a lot less than things like Google Ads.
Potential clients will consume content online. That's a fact. What you need as an accountant or tax professional is to get your content marketing in front of your target audience. How? Well, starting with a simple blog post might be a great way to showcase your industry insights.
Blogging should form a key component of your wider content marketing strategy. Blogs are either articles or posts that you publish on your website covering topics that are relevant to your clients. For accountants, this might be about things like tax rates or the Budget.
Your blog posts can be formal or informal in terms of tone, with the goal to build your brand or a person within your accounting firm into a thought leader.
Showcasing your expertise and breadth of knowledge via content marketing (blog, video posts, podcasts or guest contributions) is a great way to tell existing clients or your target audience what you can offer. It is often referred to as inbound marketing, but should be a part of your digital marketing plan - as it can be vital in raising your profile.
Content marketing efforts, including blog posts, are a great way to start with online marketing. It's generally a low cost/free way to get in front of potential clients and there are numerous additional benefits. These include:
It gives you a platform to share meaningful, high value content. This will help engage with your potential clients and establishes your expertise in your target audience.
By posting regularly and hosting the content online, you increase website traffic and also build SEO. Relevant content with the right keywords inserted will improve your SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) and will mean you rank higher on search engines like Google or Bing.
A well-written piece of content can serve more than one purpose. As well as being great for search engine optimization and developing thought leadership, it can simply be used as a great educational resource for your clients. Focus on topics that will help your customers or potential clients understand industry trends, products or services.
This isn't necessarily the goal when it comes to content marketing efforts. However, this is where layout and website UX can help. A good CTA placement, internal links to other pages and services or phone number placement can help turn a content browser to a prospect.
Podcasts, regardless of which space they are produced in, need to be done right. That means having the right audio equipment, a soundproof room, a good presenter and great guests. Add to that, you need to operate in a competitive market so your content needs to be spot on. It may be that you are always talking about the latest trends and topics, or it could be that you are reacting or commenting on networking events that your clients or peers want to know about.
Podcasts don't need to take a chunk out of your marketing budget. Creating content in this medium is a useful way to talk directly to potential clients and showcase your accounting industry knowledge.
You'll need to plan well, choose the right hosting platform and get savvy with editing to clean up the audio.
Podcasts have seen a surge in popularity, particularly in a post-Covid environment. It's one of those "other marketing strategies" that are often overlooked but, in fact, are relatively simple to produce.
Podcasters produce audio or video files which are streamed or downloaded online. A podcast would therefore form part of your digital strategy. Normally the podcasts are episodic and people release episodes daily, weekly or monthly.
Accountants can use a podcast to engage directly with current clients and your target audience, you never know, it may even help further client relationships.
Aside from diversifying your marketing strategy, producing a podcast is a great way to discuss your professional services without being too "salesy".
Each podcast is a valuable resource that can help you reach your marketing goals and podcasting is an under-utilised marketing channel. You can deliver up to date information and build relationships with your listeners which will only improve your brand authority.
Other benefits include:
Whether your listeners are prospective clients, current clients or previous clients, your podcast can help create a sense of community on a single marketing channel. Traditional advertising simply doesn't achieve this in the same way.
The more diverse you can make your overall marketing strategy but particularly digital marketing, the better. A podcast is a dynamic part of your content marketing efforts and appeals to different audiences with slightly different media consumption.
The more regularly you can post, the more you can increase your personal and business visibility. Listeners will become familiar with you and build relationships that could turn them into paying clients later down the line.
Providing you are promoting your accounting firm's website at the end of the podcast and gently talking about your accounting services, leads will likely follow.
Regular newsletters, sent via email (e-shots) are well-known as an effective marketing channel. Why? Well, email marketing is generally a cheap way to reach your target audience and even free email marketing tools allow you to segment and personalise your outbound communication.
Curating a newsletter that you sent to clients and prospective clients on a regular basis can help market your products and professional services as well as showcasing some of your great content.
Many firm owners and accounting firm partners who work with 20:20 Innovation use email marketing to provide valuable and relevant information to their contacts.
Newsletters and e-shots are organised communication sent out on a regular basis, normally via email marketing. Newsletters can, of course, be printed and sent out via direct mail either in addition or instead of digitally.
A successful newsletter isn't a 1,000-word advertisement for your accountancy practice. You should be able to balance valuable content with things like client testimonials and specific services to reach potential customers. You can also use them to highlight any local charities work that you may have done, or even highlight satisfied clients with a testimonial or two.
There are numerous ways a newsletter or e-shot can benefit accountants, which is why so many accounting firms include them as part of their digital marketing plan. Here's just a few benefits:
One of the main objectives with email marketing is to drive traffic to your accounting firm's website. Your newsletter, therefore, should include lots of links to relevant articles, resources or service pages to push subscribers onto your website.
A newsletter is a great way to reward your subscribers with specific offers or benefits. Making a subscriber see real value in opening and reading your e-shot each week or month is the starting point for things like client referrals. Plus, if you lay out your newsletter well then it saves subscribers a lot of time finding your content.
Putting together a newsletter which emphasises your great content, services and benefits is an excellent way to enhance your credibility and profile.
PPC and paid advertising is, certainly in a modern context, normally a digital marketing strategy. However, it is worth mentioning that paid advertising could well be taking out adverts in local newspapers or even outdoor ads like billboards.
One thing to consider if you're going to utilise PPC in your marketing strategy is your sales process. You need a good sales process to be able to handle leads that come in via PPC.
To do this right you need to be able to target a smaller base of prospects as opposed to going for a broad target audience. Your ad copy needs to be enticing and you need to make sure you speak to your customers' pain points in order to get good clicks.
PPC is exactly what it says on the tin. You pay a fee per click to a specified landing page or destination. The fee will ensure you get exposure in search engine results as well as other mediums like social media. PPC is a highly specialised skillset and it's not something you can "dip your toe" in. There are numerous agencies you can outsource your PPC to or you could opt to hire an in-house specialist.
Using PPC effectively can not only generate leads and potential clients but it can also give you huge insights into things like how much a lead costs, what people are searching and demographic information. On top of that, other benefits include:
PPC allows you to precisely target your audience using things like audience insights, behaviours, job role, industry and demographics. You can also focus on interests and location. This means you should, in theory, get better prospects.
Setting up your pay per click accounts like Google Ads is relatively straightforward and there are numerous online tutorials. As such, you can set up an account, add a payment method and start reaching a targeted audience almost instantly.
Paid advertising allows you to look at extremely detailed analytics to measure the ROI of your campaigns.
This one has been saved for last for a very good reason...it's difficult to pull off! Any marketer dreams of creating a piece of viral marketing that is seen by tens of millions of people. That single piece of content could supercharge a business and make them a global household name.
The reality is that content rarely goes viral. But that doesn't mean you can't back each piece of content you produce with a marketing campaign to help it reach the widest audience possible. Often, something goes viral organically. But you can be strategic as an accountant in how you increase the likelihood of your content being shared.
Something as simple as a press release could help you garner wider interest in your firm, whether you do something as a PR stunt or possibly support local organisations in a unique way. Use social media platforms to promote this and start creating content that is shareable and you never know...
Put simply, viral marketing is creating and promoting a piece of content which then rapidly spreads to a large audience. The content can either be standalone, for example a video, or it can form part of a wider campaign.
Apart from the obvious benefit of being seen by hundreds of thousands of people, viral marketing can help with things like:
Viral marketing can mean that a single piece of content or campaign is remembered and referenced for years to come. That brand recognition shines a light on your whole persona and can be a great way to stand you apart from competitors.
Many accountants are small business owners, and gaining a wide social media presence or catching up with bigger accounting firms can be difficult. Having a piece of content go viral would hugely increase your engagement and interaction.
Once people start sharing a piece of content across social media platforms you being to rapidly spread to a large audience. This means you substantially increase your visibility over various marketing channels.
Seeing a piece of content gain massive traction tells you a lot about how your target audience behaves. You can record this information in a well-managed CRM and use it to inform future marketing efforts.
20:20 Innovation work with more than 1,200 accountancy businesses in the UK and we provide a marketing support package as part of your membership.
If you would like more information about joining 20:20 Innovation why not book a free 30-minute demo with our team today or call us on +44 (0) 121 314 2020.
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