Are you an accounting firm looking for quick, insightful tips on how to make your marketing better?
You’ve come to the right place. In this article, our marketing team here at AccountantLift is going to share ten tips which accountant businesses of all sizes can apply to their marketing.
Let’s get going. As always, feel free to get in touch if you would like to take advantage of a free, no-commitment marketing consultation with a financial marketing specialist here at AccountantLift.
#1 Be personal on social media
Lots of financial firms write about themselves in the third person on their LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook profiles. This is boring and limits your ability to bring personality into your brand’s tone of voice.
Make your bios and descriptions first person, and make them personal. Social media is your window to show the human face of your firm.
#2 Make marketing memorable
Some of the most powerful financial planning brands in the UK incorporate something unique and memorable into their message, imagery or tone of voice.
Tandem Financial, for instance, uses the catchy strapline: “Because everyone’s path is different”. Another financial planning firm, Paradigm Norton, rallies around the phrase “people matter”.
Find the unique hooks which you can leverage in your own financial marketing.
#3 Pay to play on social
Facebook and other social media platforms want you to pay to use them. That’s why company pages appear less frequently now in users’ news feeds for organic posts.
To be seen on social, you need to pay to play. Don’t waste your money by spending excessively and without a plan. Yet do not neglect to set aside a reasonable ad budget either.
#4 Invest in the customer experience
Financial firms’ clients and prospects want a consistent brand experienced across multiple channels. That’s the same generally across the board these days with customers. They want you to look and feel great – and the same – across email, your website, content, social media and more.
#5 Repurpose your content
Did you write an excellent article on estate planning last year, which would still be used today if slightly adapted? If so, then you have some great raw material to make an infographic, short video or image board / slide-deck. People often don’t mind reading something again if it’s presented in a new way.
#6 Tell a story
Customers and clients love a good story. It helps them buy into your brand and trust you.
One financial coach who is very good at this is Catherine Morgan, who focuses on financial advice and planning for women. She describes her personal story as a transformation from a high-spending person on the brink of debt, to someone now more financially astute and able to save.
Your brand might not be built around one personality like in this case, but you still have a story to tell.
#7 Be speedy
Many accountants’ websites not only look like they have been teleported from the 1990s. They are often very slow to load, leading to a very poor user experience.
Many studies have shown that people today expect a website to load within 2 seconds. If it does not, then your conversion rate dramatically starts to fall as people bounce away in frustration.
Perhaps it’s time to invest in new, bespoke website design with the essential speed features you need? If so, then talk to us here to book a free design consultation over the phone.
#8 Map out your customer journey
Rarely will someone become your client, straight away after seeing your content or advert for the first time. Getting new clients is a bit like dating – it’s a journey/process where it takes time to build up trust, relationship, and a sense of being comfortable with you.
Think, therefore, about the steps in your customer journey and tailor your marketing strategy to nurture people along this process. For instance:
- Reach – how do people find out about you?
- Act – how do people start to show interest and engage with your brand (e.g. downloading a guide)?
- Convert – what brings them to the point of sale?
- Engage – how can you turn them into loyal, repeat customers who advocate your brand to others?
#9 Build a persona
Most accountants know that they shouldn’t be targeting everyone with their marketing strategy. Some will know about segmentation – i.e. picking a group of people to focus on (e.g. local business owners).
However, fewer will take the time to build a customer persona and target their marketing towards it. A persona goes beyond simply selecting your target demographics (e.g. age and income), as you tend to do when doing customer segmentation. Your persona takes things further by:
- Detailing the typical habits and behaviours of this person.
- Outlining their typical day.
- Describing what’s important to them – what they prioritise and most value.
- What problems they are looking to solve – in which order, and how desperately.
- How they tend to find out their information.
And more. With a persona, as you can see, you can be much more focused and targeted with your message once you know more than just the basic details of “what my audience looks like.”
#10 Use email properly
Email is not dead as a marketing channel. However, it is often used so ineffectively by accountants in their marketing that quite often, it might as well be!
Avoid spammy, quick-fix tactics such as buying email lists from off the shelf, and blasting the contacts with your content and offers. Tonnes of people have done the same thing to the list, and you will almost certainly see limited results. That’s not to mention the risky GDPR/privacy/data protection territory you are treading on.
Email is a great tool to nurture your leads through their customer journey – building relationships and trust by helping people get to know you, and see you more as a trusted industry authority and thought leader (see point #8 above).
