Marketing plays an incredibly important part in raising awareness of your accounting firm. Whether your aim is to improve the profile of your partners, highlight your main services or attract new prospects to your practice, there’s a way for marketing to attain these goals. And with the accounting market evolving so rapidly, it’s vital to find your niche and to promote it.
A firm’s average marketing spend doubled in 2020 to 3% of firm revenues, according to the Association for Accounting Marketing’s Budget Benchmark Survey. But where do you start when it comes to scaling up your marketing for 2022 and beyond? At Capitalise, our key Capital Advisory methodology is built around nurturing deeper, more valuable relationships with your key clients – and our Playbook and onboarding guides give you all the content marketing and promotional tips you need to get this message out to your desired audience.
Let’s take a look at the key pillars of creating a marketing strategy for your firm, and how knowing your brand, your customers and your key goals is central to effective marketing.
1. Knowing what you're about as a firm
If you don’t know your mission or purpose as an accounting practice, how can you expect your prospects or established clients to know either? If you want to create clear, effective marketing, your starting point is to define the core vision for the practice.
Are you going to focus on compliance work and low-value/high volume revenues? Or are you more keen to explore the potential of advisory and expand your value-add services? You must also define whether you’re going to specialise in a particular niche industry or business type, and factor all of this into a clearly defined vision for your brand.
2. Defining your ideal client
When you start any kind of marketing, it’s critical to know the audience you’re targeting – and this is far easier to do when you have a clear outline of your ‘ideal client’.
If the firm's focus is high-volume compliance work then your ideal client will be freelancers, one-person microbusinesses or contractors. If you’re aiming to push advisory as an offering, your perfect client will be established startups and SME owners. Think about the client’s business type, location and service needs, and their available budget. Then you can tailor your services, marketing and promotion to the needs of this demographic.
3. Deciding on which services to market
The vision you have for the practice, and the nature of the ideal client audience you’re targeting, will help define the key services you offer as a firm.
Founders of startup businesses are likely to need help with early stage funding, stabilising their cash flow and formalising their initial business plan. And owners of established SMEs will want outsourced finance support, deeper management information, high-level tax planning and someone to sit in on their board meetings.
4. Choosing the best marketing channels
You know who you’re targeting, and what service you’re promoting. The next step is to decide on the right mix of marketing and social media channels for your campaign.
Digital marketing has made it far easier to promote your practice, and having a good website and online presence will be key to your success. But which channels will you use to drive prospects and engaged clients to your site? Email campaigns, blog posts, webinars, social media marketing and targeted digital advertising are all options for your marketing toolbox.
5. Putting your marketing into action
The planning, research and tactical thinking behind your marketing are all crucial steps in the process. But what you really need is to bring all these elements together into a cohesive and well-defined marketing strategy – a road map that will guide your marketing success.
Our latest guide, ‘Marketing Your Accounting Firm In The Digital Age’ takes a deep dive into the five key marketing pillars we’ve summarised in this post, with ideas, tips and practical advice on how to create a robust and productive marketing strategy.
If you’ve got big plans for your firm in 2022 and want to shout about them, download this FREE guide and start the New Year with a re-energised approach to your firm’s marketing.
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