Why Marketing is So Important and How to Get Started – Part 2

Accountants and Bookkeepers find marketing so, so difficult. In my last blog post, I shared with you some of the questions that I get asked the most frequently surrounding marketing, as well as my answers to them. In this post, I’ll share with you what a plan for growth should look like.

What should a plan for growth look like?

There are a series of steps you can take to build a marketing plan:

1. Be really clear on your vision – what do you want your firm to look like when it’s finally done at the end of your journey. Where do you want to be 12 months from now? Once you know where you’re going, you can start to create a strategy.
2. What is your marketing strategy? That means you need to be crystal clear on what your ideal client looks like. Have that in writing and share that with the whole team.
3. You also have to think about your positioning statement. So, now you know who your ideal client is, who you’re targeting, what are the words that you are going to use to grab their attention?

Put the marketing foundations in place:

4. Build your email list – the size of your income is directly proportional to the size of your email list. So, how many people that you’d love to have as clients do you have on your email list? If you have a bigger email list, you’ll win more clients.
5. To build your email list, you need a list-building system in place – a lead generation system. Your system needs to consist of both a lead page to collect prospect’s details, and a system to then send out auto-response emails to build your relationship with the prospect.
6. When you’ve collected those details and want to build up a relationship, ultimately you want to meet with the prospect. You need what I call an Appointment Generation System – a system that simplifies the process of getting high quality appointments.

Having then got those foundations in place, make sure you consistently schedule time every week to work on the marketing, even if it’s only a couple of hours. Create some content, write blog posts, make videos, create social posts, and design them all to drive traffic to your lead page to build up your list.

What trends do you need to be aware of in the accounting profession?

The number 1 trend, and one of the most powerful forms of marketing, is video marketing.

This is something the profession is WAY behind on because we tend to be introverts and hate the idea of being on camera. And yet, this is so important because we’re in a relationship industry, people are looking for an accountant or bookkeeper who they hope they will be working with closely for years to come, and people buy from people that they like. If they can see your personality on video, you can build that relationship, and if they like you, they will hire you.

If you include a video on your website explaining your benefits with enthusiasm, passion and energy, you will stand out from the crowd and win more clients. Because most accountants are not doing it, when you do video, you have an advantage, and you stand out.

And there is so much potential for what you can do with video. You can build it into different pages on your website, use it for marketing, post content on YouTube. The possibilities are endless, and they will really make you stand out as the expert in your field.

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”