Digital marketing has paved ways for businesses, big and small alike, to grow their brands and also win more prospects. It’s an effective way to attract and retain clients. Digital marketing for accounting firms makes business visible to bigger markets. Additionally, it allows you to reach prospects from all over the globe.

One of the many industries that greatly benefit from digital marketing are accounting firms. The growing economy of the U.S. and its complex tax environment has greatly contributed to this expanding industry. With that being said, an increase in demand comes with a price. Additionally, more accounting firms are competing for clients and attention. This is where digital marketing steps in. Digital marketing will help put your accounting firm on the map.

Marketing for accounting firms in the digital niche requires diligence, teamwork, and an effective strategy. Marketing for accountants doesn’t have to be complex. We want to make digital marketing easier for you. Therefore, we’ve developed a simple 10 step guide to market your accounting firm.

1. Market Research And Knowing Your Niche

Before jumping into the world of digital marketing for accountants, it’s important to conduct research. It’s paramount to know your market to determine your niche. It’s also important to know your market’s wants, needs, likes, and dislikes in order to provide valuable service. You’ll also be able to:

• Keep up with trends and challenges
• Provide proof and value as to why they should choose your firm
• Know how to approach prospective clients
• Ensure satisfaction to your clients

After doing your market research, it’s time to determine your niche. Knowing your niche is important because it allows you to only target people who are interested in your services. Therefore, you get valuable leads and avoid unnecessary spending.

Since you’ve already done your market research, finding your niche is now subsequently easier. You now know which platforms to use to reach clients effectively.

Once you choose your niche, fully invest your time in that chosen specialty.  Once you’ve gotten better in a certain specialty, you’ll find clients from this niche will begin to come to you instead of you looking for them. The most common accounting firm niches are medical practices, estate accounting, forensic accounting, IT, international tax, and mergers and acquisitions.

2. Plan And Strategize

This second step is where all of your research and information you acquired to devise an effective marketing strategy comes into play. The first thing you have to do to get started on your marketing strategy is to list out your goals. Are they to generate more leads or to boost sales? Whatever it is, take your time to determine and define these goals. Knowing your end goal will make choosing which methods to use easier.

Use your marketing plan as your guide to keep your marketing efforts organized and keep the productivity going. Your marketing for accountants plan should contain a USP (Unique Selling Point), a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), business targets, and overarching goals.

Remember to track and document your marketing strategy to effectively know which methods work for you.

The first thing to check off on your digital marketing list is your website. Remember, many who are just discovering your firm online will base their initial judgment on your firm’s website. With that being said, it’s very important to make a good first impression. Ask yourself how you would want to present your firm to people who see it for the first time. Also, keep in mind the message would you wish to deliver through your website’s design and content.

Design, content, and user experience are important elements in creating your website. It should be able to represent you and deliver key information to a prospective client. Therefore, you should also try the tips listed below to improve your accounting firm’s website:

• Introduce your accountants with photos and bios so clients know who they’ll be working with. You can also include their awards and recognitions to improve overall credibility.
• Include your contact information on your contacts page. You can also include a form so they can message you and inquire before you talk on the phone.
• Try blogging to boost your SEO rank, establish your authority, and improve your credibility. Create a content marketing strategy and post blogs consistently. Publish relevant content or post other relevant articles and resources you’d think your clients would want and need to read.
• Create a separate page for your services. List all of your services and define what they are. Explain your process and how hiring your accounting firm can benefit them. Highlight what sets your accounting firm apart from your competition. This is where you can insert your USP.

3. Get Your Firm Listed Online

Consumers nowadays are becoming more tech savvy. Anyone with the intention of purchasing a product or acquiring any type of service does prior research. It’s become a process almost everyone goes through. With that being said, it’s paramount to have your business’s information listed online so consumers know your firm exists.

Hypothetically speaking, if a potential client is looking to acquire help from an accountant, and they Google “Accountant Near Me” or “Accounting Firm Near Me”  and your company isn’t on that list, you’ve lost your chance to gain a client. In other words, you’ve pretty much given your competition a head start.

You want your accounting firm to be seen. It’s your responsibility to make sure that your firm is listed on all major directories and accountancy-specific listing sites. This includes Google My Business, Yelp, Safari, Bing, YellowPages, etc. Some other accountancy-specific listing sites are AccountingMatch, AccountantsWorld, CPA directory, and CPA Finder.

A study by BrightLocal states that a typical business listed on Google My Business alone receives 59 actions from their listing each month. Imagine how many actions you’d receive if you had your business listed on all of those major directories.

If you’re going to have your business listed on more than one website listing site, make sure to always have your listings consistent and accurate throughout all listing directories. Additionally, be sure to avoid limiting your business information. For example, mention the small details like business category, availability of parking area, handicap-friendliness, etc.

4. Choose Your Marketing Channels

The next step to marketing your accounting firm is to choose which channels to use.  It’s time for some inbound marketing tactics!

Before you dive into that, start researching how people find accounting firms online. Then, research the type of information they’re seeking. Knowing this will help you learn the best way you can deliver prospective clients what they need.

In a study created by Hinge, they found out how buyers “check out” potential professional service providers.

You can use the image above as your guide to help you choose your marketing channels. A few other factors to take into account when choosing your channels are: your marketing budget, your target market, and your resources. You can choose from these channels:

• Social media
• Referrals
• Email
• Content marketing

We’ll get into more in depth into each channel below.

5. Social Media Marketing

“73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.” 

Buffer

Social media has the power to help you gain more clients. Additionally, it’s a digital marketing channel you can use to reach and also engage with your targeted audiences. As an accounting firm, you should seriously try to take advantage of it.

Most people would think that marketing on social media is easy. However, marketing on social media is more complex than most people think.

Substantial research goes into social media marketing. Businesses need to know their audience well in order to curate content that’s relevant, timely, engaging, and enriching. It’s also important to know which social media platforms businesses should use to execute their strategy. You should also consider:

Social media is great for many things. It helps you connect with potential clients, fellow professionals, as well as industry leaders. Check out our list below to help improve your social media marketing game.

6. Get Referrals And Reviews

Referrals are extremely effective in bringing new leads to your firm.

This is why customer service is extremely important. You always want to satisfy your clients. Your clients are your best advocates. In other words, they help your client list grow. They also can easily refer you to other families or businesses similar to their own.

Honor this opportunity by giving clients who refer you a reward. Try offering discounts or writing “thank you” cards to show how much you appreciate them.

You can make it easier for your clients to refer you by adding a referral page on your website.

Another thing that will help you get more leads is by featuring positive reviews on your website. Ask your clients to write a review about their experience working with you.

Reviews aren’t only helpful to prospective clients, they’re also helpful to you. You’ll get client insight on ways you can improve and better serve them.

7. Flaunt Your Expertise

Content marketing allows you to kill two birds with one stone. You’ll be able to flaunt your expertise and improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ranking.

(For those who don’t know what SEO is, it’s basically the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website to users of a web search engine. The websites with the highest SEO rank appear on the first page of search engine results.)

You can start content marketing by creating a blog for your accounting firm’s website. Having a blog will put you ahead of the competition. By blogging, you’ll also be able to show current and potential clients your expertise. You can also answer frequently asked questions from your clients on your blog. Additionally, you can write about something broad as long as it’s relevant to your industry.

Other forms of content marketing are podcasts, YouTube videos, and webinars. The more content you produce, the more visibility your accounting firm gets. In other words, the higher quality of the content marketing you produce, the higher the credibility.

8. Optimize Your Website And Content

We’ve explained what SEO is and why it’s important in the previous tip. With that being said, you need to optimize your website and all of its pages. This includes photos, videos, etc.

The ideal website is informative, well-designed, and optimized. Therefore, your website should always be updated and include your business information with keyword-optimized content.

For example, if you’re an accounting firm in Los Angeles, you should expect that people are likely searching for the keywords “Best accounting firm in LA. Be sure to include relevant keywords in your website.

Your target keyword should be in your title tag and meta-description. Make sure that your meta description is also brief, comprehensive, and alluring enough to get people to click on it.

9. Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways of promoting your business. In sum, your main goal for email marketing is to retain relationships. Studies show that Email marketing has a $44 ROI for ever $1 spent for 2020.

If you’re just starting out your email marketing campaign, here are four tips you can follow:

• Choose an email platform – Select an email marketing platform that suits the needs of your accounting firm. Try popular email platforms like Gmail, SenderGrid, MailChimp, Newsletter2go.
• Make it sound professional – Make sure your emails’ content and grammar is polished. Try to communicate your message, thoughts, and business offers as clearly and concisely as possible. Most people only spend 1-3 minutes to read a text and to understand its core message.
• Use catchy subject lines – A catchy subject line has the power of making your email stand out from a user’s overloaded inbox. Make your subject line captivating and informative.
• Increase your subscriber list – Create a lead magnet page on your website to increase the base of your potential clients. This method will also make your email marketing more effective. Give your subscribers free articles, presentations, and case studies. Additionally, you can also include explanatory videos and infographics that contain valuable information for your target market. People want to find simplified high-quality content that can explain sophisticated financial topics.

 

10. Track Your Results

Tracking and measuring your results is just as important as executing your marketing strategy. Therefore, it’s essential for your accounting firm to set up a system where you can measure the success of your marketing tactics. Subsequently, this enables you to see which parts of your marketing strategy isn’t working. This information also allows you to make the necessary changes and prevent wasting any more of your resources.

Keeping track can also help you make smarter decisions before sinking your entire budget into one tactic. You can also track the amount of time spent on marketing tasks to get an overview of the investment you’re making in each task. Measure them by choosing key performance indicators (KPIs) depending on your strategy.

There are many built-in analytics tools you can use to measure your results. Some of these are: Google Analytics, Hootsuite, HubSpot, and Buzzsumo. In sum, having this kind of data allows you to make a data-based decision regarding your accounting firm marketing plan.

Conclusion

Don’t be intimidated. Digital marketing for accountants can seem overwhelming at first. All in all, the benefits you get out of it make everything worthwhile.

Are you ready to start your accounting firm’s digital marketing journey? Contact us for even more help!