Why Marketing is So Important and How to Get Started - Part 1

Accountants and Bookkeepers find marketing so, so difficult. Over the next two blog posts I’ll share with you some of the questions that I get asked the most frequently surrounding marketing, as well as my answers to them.

What are the obstacles to marketing?

There are 3 main obstacles that we need to overcome in order to unlock the power of marketing:

1. Lack of knowledge – As accountants and bookkeepers, we’re not taught marketing. We’re taught the technical skills for becoming an accountant, but not marketing. So, we need to acquire the knowledge as marketing is the most important function for any business. Without marketing we don’t have a business! Marketing is so critically important; it’s what differentiates us from everybody else.
2. Lack of interest – Marketing is so important, but as trained accountants it’s not our primary interest. We have to overcome that and become fascinated with marketing.
3. Too busy – So many people tell me they don’t have time for marketing. That’s because so many accountants are working crazy long hours. This is probably the main reason holding us back from unlocking the potential of marketing.

Can I outsource my marketing?

The short answer is – NO.

Not until you’ve figured out what marketing works in your firm, because every firm is different. Once you’ve gained that knowledge and put in place systems to support your marketing, only then can you hire and train somebody else to do it.

As business owners, we have to understand marketing. If your main obstacle is that you’re too busy and that’s why you’re looking to outsource, then the single biggest reason for being too busy is that we’re too cheap and have too many clients.

So, a starting point is to put our prices up and lose a few clients. If you raise your prices by 20% and lose 20% of clients, you’re making the same amount of money but with 20% less work to do. You’ve freed up a whole day to work on your marketing strategies and systems!

How critical is the tech stack in driving growth?

Whilst the tech stack is very useful, I wouldn’t say it’s critical, in as much as a lot of marketing is based on principles that have been around for over 100 years. Marketing is about words and communication; how can we communicate our value to potential clients? So, the tech stack isn’t absolutely critical to that. 

Nevertheless, there have been huge changes in technology which have made marketing much easier to do. With the right technology we can do things quicker, and smaller firms can compete with larger firms because we can do powerful things without needing huge budgets.

Some of the tools we can be using are:

• Video – YouTube is a free platform where we can put video out and build our brand at no cost. We should absolutely be taking advantage of that.
• Social media – Social media is such a powerful form of marketing – we can get our message out to such a wide audience.
• Content marketing – Getting content out there is so important, and there’s so much technology that makes that easy. For example, scheduling software like MeetEdgar for scheduling posts to go out automatically at certain times and dates.
• Email marketing – There are so many great email marketing systems like MailChimp which make it easy to create emails in advance that then go out automatically.
• Lead generation systems – Using lead pages for capturing contact details is great for building your list.

How important is it to seek a trainer to help you grow your firm?

Seeking a trainer to help you is a good idea for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we have to keep learning all the time – it’s critical to invest time in learning because, as someone once told me: ‘The day you stop learning is the day you stop earning.’

Every week I schedule time to learn something brand new – and anyone who is a business owner should be continually learning. That means not just doing the CPE credits and technical stuff you have to do. If you want to build a successful accounting firm, you have to keep learning the soft skills, the marketing, and communication skills.

Having a coach or mentor also means there’s someone to hold us accountable. Someone that we can work with to help us develop a plan and put that plan in action.

In Part 2 of this series, I'll cover more of the crucial answers to questions I get asked all the time about marketing.

Watch the full video on why marketing is so important and how you can get started here: Why marketing is so important and how to get started

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

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Wishing you every success on your pricing journey.

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”