Marketing For Accountants

Are you looking to grow your accounting firm?

If so you’ll need a good marketing strategy!

Rather than wasting valuable time, energy, and money on trying a bunch of different marketing strategies, that may not be as effective as you’d like, we think you’re much better off having a strategic approach to growing your business.

In this article, we at Revenue Scout are going to cover the best ways to approach the marketing of your accounting firm so you can get the attention of new leads more effectively. So, keep reading to find out more!

CPA Firm Marketing: Tips to Establish Your Foundation

Before we get into marketing strategies, it’s important to ask yourself this: have you taken the time to establish your firm’s foundation?

Your accounting firm’s foundation is primarily built on your reputation amongst peers and clients, in addition to your company’s website.

Before you spend any time or money developing a marketing strategy, it’s important to have a solid foundation.

At the end of the day, regardless of how a new lead has heard about your company, they will most likely look your company up online and do some research to make sure that you’re the right fit for their accounting needs.

Having great online reviews and a professional website will encourage prospective clients to reach out.

The Lemonade Stand Theory: How to Market an Accounting Firm

To explain the importance of the professionalism of your firm’s website, let’s look at what we like to call the Lemonade Stand Principle.

Imagine it’s a hot sunny day in the middle of July. You walk outside and you see that every kid in the neighborhood has a lemonade stand.

You pass 10 different lemonade stands and they all have a basic sign that says ‘Fresh lemonade. $2.00 per glass.’

Then, the 11th lemonade stand you pass has a beautifully drawn sign that says ‘Thirsty? Grab freshly squeezed lemonade to quench your thirst!’ As you walk up to the booth, you notice they also have a fan as well as a small umbrella that helps to protect patrons from the heat of the sun.

Are you going to buy lemonade from the ones that all look and feel identical, or the one that took the time to craft proper messaging and provide a unique experience?

This is how you need to think of your accounting services.

While you may know that your services are miles ahead of your competitors, prospects have nothing to go off of other than your online reputation and the look and feel of your firm’s website. Just like the lemonade stand, how are does your firm stand out from the competition?

When creating a website for your accounting firm, your goal should be to make it as professional and engaging as possible. After all, you want to make a positive first impression on any potential client that’s found your website through your marketing strategies!

Building Your Website

First things first, you need a great domain name. GoDaddy is a popular domain registrar. An easy way to see if a domain is available is by checking GoDaddy.

Consider including your company name and the main area your serve when looking for a domain name.

Now you have your domain, what’s next?

You’ll need to decide on the website’s purpose. Will it simply provide new leads with information about your services, prices, and contact information, or are you aiming to offer feature additional content, such as a blog?

As you designed your website, you want to make sure that it’s easy to navigate, functional, and fast. All this is what allows a business’ website to leave a good impression on new potential clients.

Getting Reviews When Marketing Accounting Services

Now that we’ve covered the importance of your website’s design and purpose, let’s start talking about why you need good reviews.

Online reviews heavily influence peoples perceptions about a company. So this aspect is crucial. But how do you acquire reviews?

You know that you offer great accounting services and have happy clients as a result.

So ask your current clients to leave you an online review. These reviews can provides leads with first-hand insight about how your company operates which can prompt them to reach out.

You should also make sure everyone at your firm is asking clients for reviews and feedback after providing services.

This can go a long way in building up a good review rating, especially if you have provided a high-quality experience to your clients and they’ve expressed gratitude.

After you have asked a client to leave a review, ensure that they know where to go and how to do it by explaining the process to them. You may also want to send follow-up emails to remind them to give you their feedback on your services.

Accountant Marketing: How To Grow Your Audience

Now that you have a strong foundation, let’s look at some strategic marketing techniques to drive more people to your business.

In a perfect world, you would have an unlimited amount of resources for marketing your accounting firm. However, this is most likely not the case.

That’s why it’s important to be selective when you are considering where to put your limited resources.

Rather than trying every marketing technique you can think of and spreading yourself and your business too thin, try to focus on one reliable marketing avenue until you achieve success.

Other forms of marketing like billboards, newsletters and print ads can be expensive and limit your reach.

That why, when it comes to marketing for accounting firms, our recommendation is to focus on search engines first because there will always be people using them to find services, like yours, in their area.

When it comes to this line of marketing, we’re going to breakdown your two of the best options: include paid ads and SEO marketing.

How To Use Paid Ads

Paid ads help you appear at the top of a search engine like Google.

For example, if someone searched “accountants in Dallas,” the first result they would see would most likely be a result marked “ad” for an accounting firm in Dallas.

When you scroll past the ads at the top of the Google search results, you get to the organic search results.

These are the results that appear organically rather than through paid placement.

Essentially, you’re paying to appear at the top of Google. We recommend this option if you are just starting out, and aren't appearing in the organic search results yet.

These ads will help you generate more traffic to your site from people who are specifically looking for services you offer.

The ultimate goal of paid ads is to get a percentage of people seeing your website through the ad to reach out and become a client.

But how do you make a compelling Google ad?

First, you’ll need to create an account. Then start a new campaign and set a goal, such as driving more traffic to your website or converting more leads.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to choose where your ads should appear.

Do you want your website to be seen at the top of potential leads’ Google searches?

Would you rather have your ad displayed on websites that are relevant to your business?

Furthermore, you want to select the locations and demographics that you want your ad to be shown to.

Once you have the framework ready, you can start writing the actual ad. When writing it, there are a few things that you can do to maximize its success and grab the attention of potential clients.

Start with understanding the structure and guidelines that your ad must fall under.

There will be a headline, which has a maximum of 25 characters, the display URL, with a maximum of 30 characters, and a description, with a maximum of 70 characters.

You want to use this limited space to make a compelling case for why people should choose your accounting firm over another business.

Additionally, you’ll want to include keywords related to the needs of your potential clients. For example, if you are an accounting firm in Dallas, you will want to make sure you use the words ‘Dallas’ and ‘accounting’ in your ads.

Another way you can optimize your paid ads is to run A/B tests. Write up at least 2 strong ads that use different variations of keywords and call-to-actions. Each methods will appeal to different leads. Keep track of which ad is performing the best and then adjusting accordingly.

SEO

You can also use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to help boost your website’s visibility in Google. The goal of SEO is to get your website to rank higher on Google and generate more traffic through organic search results.

However, for this strategy to be effective and grow your accounting firm’s audience, it has to be solid. After all, the top 3 websites that appear in a Google search result get over 50% of all clicks.

This means that investing time and energy into SEO is worth the effort.

Let’s look at some ways to make the most out of you SEO campaign.

There's a lot more to it than what we're able to cover here, but don't worry, we have an entire blog dedicated to SEO for your accounting firm!

The foundation of any solid SEO campaign are keywords. Without them, your marketing plan will not be effective. But how do you choose the right keywords for your business?

Let’s say your accounting firm is in Seattle, WA. This is an example of keywords you will want to use would include:

• Accounting firm
• Seattle accounting firm
• Washington accounting firm
• Accounting firm Seattle
• Seattle accountant
• Accountant in Seattle
• Business accountant
• Accountant for small businesses in Seattle
• Seattle accounting services

And so on!

When choosing keywords to use, it’s important to look into their search volume and location relevance. The most effective keywords will have a high search volume and will be relevant in your region.

Now that you have an understand of keywords, you can start to build links to your website.

This means researching other accounting firms’ websites that are already experiencing a high level of web traffic. If you see a competitors website at the top of a search engine result, that means that they are succeeding, and you can learn something from them.

If you see gaps in their online marketing techniques, you can fill them in with your campaign.

For example, you may notice that your competition has high website traffic but doesn’t post high-quality content for people to engage with.

This presents you with an opportunity to provide quality content to differentiate yourself from them. You could even take it a step further by having guest bloggers feature on your website or featuring as guest bloggers on other popular accounting websites.

The possibilities are truly endless!

Digital Marketing for Accounting Firms: How to Nurture Your Audience

Now that you know the importance of SEO and appearing high in search engine results, you’re ready for the next stage: nurturing your audience.

One thing about website traffic, that many business owners don’t realize, is that statistics show only 3-5% of people who visit a company’s website are ready to reach out and learn about its services.

So how do you capture the attention of the remaining 95-97% of visitors?

You can change how your audience engages with your website by nurturing them!

There are 2 main methods that you can use to nurture your website’s audience: Re-marketing ads and email marketing.

Re-marketing Ads

Re-marketing ads are an excellent way to stay in touch with leads that haven’t been converted into clients.

Re-marketing ads are shown to people who have already seen your website or interacted with your business online in some way. Since they showed interest in your services, re-marking ads can help keep your company front-of-mind.

Let’s say someone in your area is searching for a new accounting firm to work with. They look up some firms on Google, and since your excellent SEO marketing has put your website near the top of the first page, they click to learn more.

Then, after briefly looking over your website, they leave and think “I’ll get back to this later.” That’s where re-marketing comes in!

Since consumers are more likely to choose businesses that they are familiar with, running remarking ads that target individuals who have already visited your website is a great way to stay fresh in your audience’s mind and convert leads into clients.

By having your business and your content reintroduced to people who are already familiar with your accounting firm, you will be more likely to gain a tangible clientele from your online marketing efforts.

You can also use these strategies across a variety of platforms that are used by millions of people every day. These include:

• Youtube: You’re able to show personalized and engaging ads to the millions of people who use the platform every day. This is based on their past interactions with your YouTube channel and your content.
• LinkedIn: You’ll be able to use the LinkedIn Insight Tag to keep track of conversions, retarget, and get detailed insights on your audience including their professional traits and content preferences. From there, your audience will only continue to build as time goes on, as many LinkedIn members will see your ad and engage with it.
• Facebook and Instagram: We do not doubt that you’ll be able to drive traffic to your website using this platform. This is because of Facebook’s ability to provide hyper-specific ad campaigns when it comes to the audiences that you are targeting. The Facebook Business Manager feature allows you to manage your business pages on both Facebook and Instagram, in addition to customizing your ad campaign.
• Google Display Network: Display ads, as mentioned earlier, are dynamic marketing campaigns that show users your ads based on the content they are interacting with. Through Google, you can create responsive display ads that are specifically shown to people who have already interacted with your content and your accounting firm’s website.

Email Marketing for Accountants

Email marketing promotes your company’s services to your audience in a direct fashion.

This kind of marketing technique sends emails address to clients to keep them up to date on your business, allowing you to solidify your brand, keep your audience engaged, follow up with potential leads, and build a solid relationship with your existing customers.

There are many email marketing platforms that you can use, including Mailchimp.

Let’s go over some best practices!

To be effective, these emails have to contain high-quality content that your clients want to engage with. Whether it’s a follow-up email, a promotional message, or an attempt to ask a client for a positive review, make sure it’s attention-grabbing and engaging.

You want to start your emails with a catchy subject line, such as “The best way to fix your finances” or “Take control of your finances today.” Getting creative with your email headlines will help your content cut through the noise.

But how do you get people to sign up for your email list in the first place? There are a few methods that are proven to work!

First, try offering clients online accounting services. Many new business owners need help managing their finances, and you can provide that guidance!

For simple accounting services like bookkeeping or tracking income and expenses, you can offer online consultations that people can quickly and easily access. This will grow your contacts, in addition to adding leads to your email list.

Another thing you can do is to make your appointment booking system available online. This will allow your clients or leads to schedule appointments conveniently.

Besides this obvious advantage, like making leads more inclined to use your services, to book online they’ll need to provide their contact information, allowing you to easily follow up later.

By taking the time to properly nurture your audience, you’ll be able to increase your conversion rate and get more leads for your website.

Strategies For Accounting Marketing: Bottom Line

Now that you know the best ways to market your accounting firm online, you’re ready to get started!

Using these methods, we’re positive that you’ll be able to drive more traffic to your website, convert leads into valuable clients, and grow your accounting firm’s audience in no time.

With high-quality content, glowing reviews from clients, strategic online marketing techniques including SEO and re-marketing, and a professional website that grabs people's attention, you'll be able to stand out and surpass your competitors. All it takes is some time, dedication, and strategy!

If you’re looking to learn more about effective online marketing for your accounting firm, contact the experts at Revenue Scout today!