Marketing for Accounting Firms: Proven Tactics to Grow Your Business

Ever felt that your accounting firm is struggling to get noticed by potential clients? Well, you are not alone!

Constantly changing regulations, technology updates and poor staffing are some of the most common pain points for accounting firms historically. Today, marketing has emerged to be one of the major challenges faced by most accounting firms.

Referrals and word-of-mouth programs were some of the traditional marketing efforts used by accounting companies. Regardless, with increasing developments in technology coupled with a focus on growing competition and niche markets, marketing for accounting firms has become an essential part of their growth.

According to a recent survey, almost 93% of accounting companies intend to increase their marketing budget. Moreover, around 10.4% of financial firms have also increased spending on their marketing efforts. So if you are still wondering whether you should focus on marketing for your accounting firm, these numbers give the answer you are looking for!

However, the switch from conventional marketing to more targeted efforts can confuse firms about where to begin, what strategy to implement and what mistakes to avoid. Let’s face it – marketing wasn’t a part of the curriculum for most accounting professionals.

In this guide, we bring to you some tried and tested strategies for accounting firms who want to take marketing seriously. It also provides comprehensive details on the importance of marketing and the mistakes firms should avoid in their campaigns.

What Is Marketing For Accounting Firms?

Marketing is simply about bringing the spotlight on your accounting firm and making it stand out in the industry. Accounting marketing is currently growing from a relationship-focused, geographically restricted field to an expertise-driven, multifaceted strategy that uses scientific approaches and technology to widely capture the target audience. Such a marketing strategy can significantly improve an accounting firm’s service offers, client acquisition, pricing, client retention, reputation, recruiting and visibility.

It’s often common to confuse marketing efforts with business development and sales. Sales is when you understand the specific needs of a campaign. You then provide services to meet these needs and generate revenue. Marketing is when you understand the needs of your market and implement tailored efforts to address them for better brand visibility. More visibility increases the chances of customers approaching your firm for information and purchasing services or products.

Visibility is crucial for an accounting firm. Think about it – countless people use social media and the majority of them could be your potential customers, waiting to interact with you. Marketing isn’t just a tool for your firm – it’s your blueprint to leverage this huge audience and make your financial services stand apart from the digital market.

Why Is Marketing Important For Accounting Firms

Business managers generally do not prioritize digital marketing for accounting firms. However, here are the top reasons why marketing is important to help you retain your existing clients and interact with your target audience.

Client Acquisition

Marketing is important to help accounting firms get new clients. This is because it helps businesses to highlight their services, unique value propositions and expertise to potential customers. It leads to higher client reach and therefore, better customer loyalty.

Thought Leadership

A big part of marketing is to share valuable and relevant content that is relevant to your firm. These help accounting firms establish themselves as thought leaders in the financial industry. Firms also acquire more credibility as clients will now be interested in approaching them for specialized advice and knowledge.

Market Change Adaptation

Marketing for accounting firms is also important for staying updated with current market trends. This helps businesses to better understand the needs of their clients and modify their products accordingly. It further helps firms to foster client retention, trust and loyalty.

Brand Identity

An effective marketing strategy also helps accounting firms to establish and strengthen their brand identity. This leads to higher trust and credibility in the financial market, further granting competitive advantage to the business.

New Partnerships

Marketing for accounting firms is also all about relationship building. This is because marketing efforts prompt financial businesses to build and nurture client relationships. This can be done via strategies like personalized communication, social media and content marketing, leading to more client interactions and wider reach.

Position as Industry Experts

Marketing can also help accounting firms to identify themselves as experts in the financial industry. This is because marketing prompts businesses to not only share useful content or blogs but also partner with other leaders for better reach and visibility. Such collaborations combined with industry-relevant content make customers believe in the expertise of your accounting firm.

Top Marketing Tips And Tricks For Accounting Services

Everyone has heard of marketing but only a few know which strategies and tips to focus on. We will now examine 15 ways of marketing for accounting firms. Each strategy is aimed at developing new opportunities for growth and expanding the client base of your firm.

Build Your Brand

What is your brand and what services does it offer? It’s important to answer these questions before you begin with any marketing plan. Identifying your competitive advantage, whether it’s more accessibility, a verified track record or simply a good price point, will assist you in streamlining your content marketing strategy.

Chances are you already know the strengths of your accounting and tax preparation services. If you are still unsure, do not hesitate to reach out to your present customers. Go ahead and ask why they prefer your services. This is also a great opportunity to find out the weaknesses that you need to address in your firm.

The first step is to brainstorm with your marketing team and decide your firm’s vision and also the areas you want to prioritize. You can decide the identity of your brand, your target audience and techniques preferred to reach them.

Be a Niche Authority

Potential customers do not want tax preparers who are just “good enough”. Rather, they are looking for accountants who are the best in the field as per their price point. Placing your firm as an industry-level authority can acquire clients who need financial services in your niche.

How can your accounting firm become an authority? You can start by sharing information with your customers and connections. This can be done by posting articles, podcasts and lectures or simply by networking. The more you assist others in financial services, the higher their chances of working with you. For example, if someone has read your blog on taxation, they will contact you if they need assistance with their taxes.

Think of your accounting brand and place yourself out in the market. Start writing relevant blogs, participate in networking events and speak at industry events. Visibility will make your brand look credible and providing quality services will build your impression.

Create Niche Content

You are confident of being extremely knowledgeable in your field. How will others find out about your skills? Firms can sometimes feel unsure of posting content about an issue for fear that they might reveal business secrets. This is rarely the case. In reality, interested customers look for sufficient information to identify whether your firm has what it takes to solve their concerns. They then hire you!

For starters, you can post any content like podcasts, blogs or articles for your website. Remember to be creative! Consider co-branding with accounting products or working with other similar firms.

The first step is writing your firm’s content by yourself. You can even hire a writer if you are not confident in your writing skills. Alternatively, an employee from your firm may also be willing to write content. Asking your team could reveal their hidden talents and skills!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Another successful accounting marketing technique to direct more traffic is to develop content for your website. No content is complete without considering SEO. Even the most well-researched content needs assistance in going up the search results so that it does not get lost amidst thousands of other results.

For this strategy, you can work with an SEO consultant to check your site for changes or use digital tools. These will provide you with keywords to optimise your firm’s website content.

It is important to know about the basics of SEO and its impact on the ranking of your accounting firm. When working with an external consultant, it is particularly important to review their claims and deadlines for showing results. Be wary of anyone who provides guarantees of rankings.

Availability of Free Resources

Podcasts and podcasts are undoubtedly helpful for advancing your accounting firm’s reputation. However, think about other free resources that your company can provide to clients, which are less time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Links to accounting-related websites, revenue firms and timesheet templates are some of the many free resources that can be offered to clients. A free tax planner can help you to obtain client information for free in less time. Any tool that can assist both you and your clients can be shared for free.

Think about questions or tools that offer generalized solutions to clients. This can include calls that redirect the client to the required website in response to their tax refund update queries. After identifying such resources, publish a collection of free resources for clients to use as additional marketing tools. For example, seminars or webinars answering general questions to clients are great for increasing trust and promoting a positive brand image.

Social Media Marketing

A big reason why accounting companies have limited growth is because of their dependency on traditional marketing methods. They generally rely on word-of-mouth tactics instead of social media, advertising and email marketing. However, not leveraging social media in today’s world is a missed opportunity to acquire new clients. This is because LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have comprehensive marketing tools that enable your commercials to reach your target audience.

Social media marketing is an effective way to connect to your customers and enhance your online paste. You however need to post regular, good-quality content to grow your firm’s customer base. The potential growth outcomes nevertheless outweigh this long-term effort.

To get started with social media marketing, set up an account for your firm across each popular platform. Next, begin networking by creating content and interacting with your current audience. A social media consultant can assist you with these in case you are unsure about leveraging social media platforms for your accounting firm.

Make an Inbound Marketing Funnel

We’ve seen how the marketing funnel smoothens your journey of converting potential clients to permanent clients. This is because it helps us to structure the steps of getting new clients and design methods to elevate your conversion rates.

This tool provides a simple form of marketing by designing a basic timeline to interact and follow up with new clients. Examples include adding a client to your email list for sending newsletters and calling the client to take a follow-up after 5 days of initial contact.

To implement this resource, carefully evaluate the strategies that worked previously in landing new clients as well as the follow-up times that worked best in converting new clients. Next, prepare a standard workflow for interacting with new clients and also select employees who would be responsible for every step of the process.

Marketing Plan with a Strong View

You are sure to get lost in the industry if you are perceived like any other accounting firm by your clients. The accounting field is crowded and dynamic strategies are needed to make your firm stand apart.

This does not mean that you always have to do something too radical. Think about a common accounting question raised by customers and come up with an unexpected or unique answer. Find a differentiating factor for your firm and publish it.

Identify a unique insight of yours and consider how it can help you expand your audience. Once that is decided, think about how you can present this to your customers and keep them hooked.

Chatbots to Your Website

If your accounting firm is new, responding to chats from every customer can be a hassle. In contrast, large firms might find it difficult to give time to respond to every message amidst the huge workload. Adding a chat feature makes marketing for accounting firms convenient by enabling clients to directly engage with you.

New clients will likely reach out to you more if you make it easier for them to contact a real employee from your firm initially. The chat feature can also be outsourced to a third party that obtains initial client data and shares it with you. In this way, you will not have to utilise your resources to talk to clients.

Consider whether you want to respond to chats from your website externally or internally. Once decided, work on incorporating the chat option into your webpage.

Make a Newsletter

While accounting basics remain unchanged, regulations and laws keep changing. So you can create a monthly or weekly newsletter for your customers. This could provide updated and relevant information on changes that could impact their finances and investments.

Remember that there is a lot of information out there on tax or finance that customers can use to make better decisions during the financial year. The trick is to be regularly present in your customers’ inboxes. This will enable them to always reach out to you if they have an accounting query or are looking for a recommendation.

Think about who will share your newsletter and who will prepare the content. Also, consider the frequency of publishing, the details included and the client lists to share with.

Use Review Websites

Most people depend on recommendations from family and friends when they are looking for credible accounting services. Alternatively, they will search the Internet if they do not get any recommendations.

You cannot overlook customer reviews on platforms like Google. While a negative review cannot be removed, you can always provide premium accounting services to obtain positive feedback from customers.

You cannot ask for positive reviews since it would violate the terms of service for review websites. However, you can always let your clients know that you are available on these websites. This might motivate them to give you some good reviews.

Participate in Local Awards

This marketing strategy is all about self-promotion. Nevertheless, nominations are an excellent way to obtain local exposure. Many small leadership and business awards ask for aware nominations and applications.

It’s normal to feel uncomfortable to promote your firm for an award. However, remember that any other firm participating in these would also need to be nominated in this manner.

To get started, review newspapers or the websites of local organizations for posts about awards and nominations. Then research the application process. It can still be a great networking opportunity even if your firm does not win.

Networking

Most accounting firms are small organizations serving other small organizations. Take time to network with this community during volunteer meetings, local business meets and entrepreneurship events. This will allow your firm to connect with new clients.

While most networking events are indirect ways of marketing, remember that these events are also great for meeting other accounting businesses and learning about their experiences. Consider these events as an opportunity to promote your brand. This will help new clients remember you when they are searching the industry for accounting services.

Review LinkedIn to find out about local professional events. You can also connect to local accounting firms to learn more about networking events.

Have Professional Marketing Material

Business cards are not obsolete. Rather, having multiple cards in hand will prevent the hassle of constantly noting down your number on a random napkin or paper. Keeping business cards ready also makes you look professional. While it may seem trivial, something as small as a business card will make your firm look high-end and credible.

Reusable water bottles, coffee mugs, notebooks and branded pens are other marketing materials that can promote your accounting brand. Search online for businesses that can make such materials for your firm.

Carefully review existing marketing materials in your firms. Think about how you can modify them or create new materials to market your brand to customers.

Volunteering

Generally volunteering should not be considered as a marketing opportunity. However, engaging with local charities is still a great way to commercialize your brand. You can volunteer as an accountant or by other means. Local charities provide plenty of opportunities to network with organizations supporting similar causes.

Additionally, small business owners also conduct a lot of marketing activities. They may even promote your brand for sponsorships or your financial support to the charity.

Research the charities in your locality. Next, think about a cause you are passionate about and look for organizations supporting the same. Reach out to them to see the kinds of support you can provide. Maintaining long-term relationships with multiple charities goes a long way in marketing for accountants.

Common Marketing Mistakes by Most Accounting Firms

Despite its benefits, marketing for many accounting firms can be a challenging subject. Generally, accounting firms make the following marketing mistakes when prioritizing their business development and growth.

Poor Marketing Strategy

A faulty marketing strategy is one of the most common errors made by accounting firms. This is because of the lack of any innovation or uniqueness when firms are designing their marketing campaign. Traditionally, accounting firms take a very simplistic approach when it comes to designing their online marketing activities. A group of senior executives, business partners and if lucky, a marketing director, will come together and brainstorm their ideas on online marketing activities.

A big problem of such an approach is making everyone reach an agreement on a shared marketing consensus. Large groups like the above can also be resistant to change, making it difficult to adopt a unique marketing strategy. Moreover, since most accounting firms are run by accountants, there can be a tendency to shy away from novel marketing investments and sending opportunities.

A better alternative to this mistake is to allow a small group with more decision-making authority for marketing strategy development. Additionally, it’s also important to carefully research the preferences and needs of your target audience. This will help your firm create a differentiated branding strategy that is sure to make consumers remember you.

Incorrect Skills

You are likely to be fully equipped with the skillsets needed to deliver high-quality accounting services. However, when it comes to marketing, accounting firms may not be prepared in the same manner.

Marketing today requires a broad range of skills. These include web analytics, social media and search engine optimization to name a few. Unfortunately, accounting firms make the mistake of minimizing rather than maximizing the expenses of marketing. This leads to understaffing or an underskilled marketing department. Sometimes, accounting firms may not even be aware of the skills needed for an effective marketing strategy.

Lack of Proper Execution

While some firms can create a marketing strategy, implementing it can be difficult. For example, an accounting business can start an investment podcast as a marketing approach. However, after the first two episodes, there is less enthusiasm and the program is stopped. Marketing tasks need sustained efforts for results and sometimes it’s easier for firms to only focus on paying client work.

Often firms make this mistake intentionally. This especially happens when a new marketing technique fails initially and firms revert to their traditional strategies. Additionally, this mistake can also occur due to a lack of accountability and oversight. This mainly happens when accounting firms do not have any mechanisms in place to monitor the execution of their new campaign.

Initiative Without Metrics

Another mistake is that accounting firms do not scrutinize how their marketing efforts are performing. Renowned firms tend to evaluate their marketing efforts more than smaller firms. Therefore, it’s no surprise that these businesses have the data needed to modify their marketing campaigns and perform better than others. Additionally, these accounting businesses also research their customers leading to better knowledge of what drives their audience.

In contrast, accounting firms that use anecdotal research instead of performance metrics are likely to invest more in marketing strategies that provide little to no results. They also tend to make the mistake of spending essential resources following techniques that are irrelevant to the accounting industry.

Broken Funnel

The sales funnel is of three parts. The top part is where your customers first learn about your firm. The middle part is when you use strategies to gain their trust. The third section is when prospective clients turn into paying customers. Some accounting firms make the mistake of not connecting all parts or leaving out one of the sections. As a result, marketing prospects do not give the expected results.

For example, a firm may post a blog on investment trends in 2024. However, there will be no features in the blog to improve engagement, such as links to services and officers. The potential customer is therefore left wondering what to do next. Every marketing strategy should include all components of the funnel and should also provide clear steps to guide the client further.

Conclusion

There are lots of incorrect ways of marketing an accounting firm. It’s no surprise that the accounting industry has one of the slowest paces of growth in the market.

This article provides a comprehensive guide on marketing for accounting firms. The tips and tricks outlined here are sure to boost your business as a market leader in the industry. By strategically understanding the needs of clients and optimizing their content, financial businesses can stand apart from rivals and foster long-term growth.

In the complex landscape of accounting, the marketing journey is essential. High-performing accounting firms know that aiming for client engagement, brand strength and visibility is a continuous commitment. The trick lies in being flexible and continuously modifying your firm’s marketing strategies. This will ensure that the company grows in the present while also being adaptable for the near future.

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