Marketing basics for accountants

While no one expects accountants to be avid marketers, a certain amount of effort must be focused on marketing to help your accounting business grow.

Relying solely on referrals is far from sufficient, especially now, in the post-pandemic circumstances where most businesses, especially small firms, struggle to get noticed.

As much as you cringe at the thought of marketing and all the related marketing costs, embracing a few tactics can help you attract more clients and retain your current ones. You might even be surprised by how cost-effective certain marketing tactics are!

Here, we’ll talk about marketing basics for accountants and what you need to grow your accounting business in this competitive industry.

Define Your Niche

To promote your business simply as an accounting firm is too broad of a term. You can’t target everyone, rather, you should focus on your niche and the specific services you provide.

Are you a tax accountant or a forensic accountant? Do you offer bookkeeping services, accounts payable, internal or external auditing? Who are your customers?

Defining your niche is the logical first step towards growing your business because, in order to market a service, you need to know who you’re talking to. Get to know your audience, figure out what they need.

When you know who your ideal customer is, along with your target demographics and geographical location, you will know exactly what steps to make to attract them.

Build a Solid Website

Assuming you already have a website for your accounting business, how much thought have you put into building it and making it appealing to prospective clients?

Is the website easy to navigate? Can visitors easily find what they’re looking for on your website? Are your pages optimized? Can visitors easily contact you?

While you may dismiss this as being irrelevant for the quality of your services, keep in mind that today, potential customers turn to Google before spending their money. They research a business and decide whether they can trust them based on their digital footprint.

First-time visitors to your website will create an impression within seconds and this is why it needs to represent you well.

Web development and web design are both important here so you should turn to a professional to help you craft a great website.

A great website is one that loads fast, has a simple design, and all the relevant information is easy to find.

Write on Topics to Solve Your Customers’ Problems

As an accountant, you might not be thrilled by this idea but it falls under marketing basics and it is essential. If you haven’t already, start publishing useful content to address your clients’ concerns and common questions.

This might sound all too obvious but you shouldn’t just publish for the sake of publishing. Also, your posts shouldn’t just be about the services you offer. Content should be clear, engaging, and should focus on actual common problems and questions that your clients or target audience typically have.

In your everyday dealing with clients, you surely come across various common concerns and questions. Use your blog as an opportunity to address these issues and attract a broader audience.

If you’re not sure what to write about, check out other accounting blogs to get an idea.

To say that blogging is time-consuming wouldn’t be an overstatement. It is. It takes time to do research and write a 1000-word meaningful post that your audience will find useful. And keep in mind that you need to do this regularly.

However, the benefits outweigh the effort you put in and the advantage of this marketing tactic is that it doesn’t cost you money, only time.

Of course, you can hire an experienced blogger to do this for you but if you want to avoid the associated costs, we suggest you start writing yourself.

Adopt Basic SEO Practices

We mentioned optimizing your website pages earlier. Search engine optimization is truly vital to growing your business as it will help you increase your Google rankings and reach a wider audience.

Yes, accountants' SEO might seem like an odd concept at first, but your business will hardly survive - let alone thrive and stay competitive - without it. Businesses who fail to realize this will quickly lose their spot in the modern world of innovation.

SEO is a comprehensive method with many aspects but primarily involves keyword research and implementing these keywords into your content as well as your website. Your target keywords should naturally appear in your blog posts. They should also be used in page titles on your website.

If all this sounds overly complex to you, no need to worry because finding an SEO expert to help you with your strategy is usually the step most businesses make. You don’t need to understand the details as long as you understand how valuable SEO is for the growth of your business.

Don’t Neglect Your Existing Clients

Too many businesses focus all their attention on gaining new clients while neglecting the value of their current customer base. Your marketing strategy should involve addressing this too since your current customers are likely the source of your future customers.

Referrals are still an invaluable tactic for expanding a business. Not only will satisfied clients remain loyal clients but they will recommend your services to everyone they know who might be looking for the accounting services you provide.

Hence, strive to improve customer experience. Seek feedback from your existing customers to gain an insight into what might be improved. Create a base with frequently asked questions to help them solve their problems.

You can also consult an expert to help you with this and come up with a strategy for improving customer experience.

Bottom Line

Mastering marketing trends and methods is not necessary but adopting these basics can go a long way in helping you grow your customer base. The important thing is to pick a strategy, create a plan, and stick to it.