Accounting firm marketing must be robust, comprehensive, and well-planned if you’re to find success. However, many businesses keep going back to the same strategies that they use year after year, even if they don’t work. Today, we’re going to start our two-part series on 25 marketing ideas for accounting firms.
If you’re struggling to find new marketing ideas, you’ll want to read Part 2 of our article as well, where we cover other fantastic ideas that can help your firm grow.
But for now, let’s cover a lot of great ideas you can slot into your current strategy to grow your firm.
1 – 12 Marketing Ideas for Accounting Firms
1. Develop an Online Presence
Over 4.6 billion people are online. If you don’t have an online presence, you risk becoming obsolete. Your CPA firm needs to build a strong online presence, which includes:
- Professional website (more on that soon)
- Social media profiles
- Business listings
- Active online blog
- Reviews and testimonials
- Etc.
While there’s a lot to cover here, we don’t want to overwhelm you. Instead, start with your website first and then move on to each point, ensuring that you maintain brand cohesion across platforms.
These elements of your online presence will dictate your marketing strategy.
2. Start Getting Reviews to Build Trust
Reviews are a powerful form of marketing, especially when 91% of people aged 18 to 34 trust online reviews. You need to start getting reviews online to build credibility and improve your chances of getting leads.
You should at least add your business to the following review sites:
Keep in mind that you’ll need a website to add your business to many platforms.
3. Build Out Your Website
Do you have a website? If not, it’s time to get one. You need a nice looking (perfeably professionally-built) website to:
- Add to business listings
- Place on social media profiles
- Add to Google
- Generate organic traffic and leads
- Build trust with your ideal prospects and clients
- So much more
Around 70% of people use mobile phones for product research, so it’s crucial for your site to have a professional design that looks good on all devices.
4. Optimize for Search Engines
Search engine optimization drives organic traffic to your website. While we recommend working with an SEO specialist to help in this area, you can begin optimizing your site in a few ways:
- Add your zip code, neighborhood and town name to your site
- Target local keywords, such as Memphis CPA or Memphis tax services
- Perform keyword research and optimize blog posts and pages
- Ensure your website is constantly updated
- Add a page’s main keyword in the:
- URL
- Title
- Alt text
- Description
- Page content
This is just the start of SEO. Work with a professional to design an SEO strategy that is plausible and can help you outrank competitors.
5. Social Media Marketing
We recently wrote a post on how to create more content on social media, and we think it fits well with this point. You should be on social media to get in front of your audience. Afterall, your audience is there! Start small and follow these steps:
- Create accounts on social sites
- Set up your profiles with brand cohesion in mind
- Begin creating and sharing content
- Add visuals and videos whenever possible
- Engage your audience and build yout community
Social media is a major driver of traffic and helps build trust. As an accounting firm, try to answer people’s questions and educate them. For example, create posts on:
- New tax laws
- Tax information
- Tax planning
- Business growth strategies
- Cash flow planning
- Acounting technology
- Etc.
After you have a proven offer and audience, consider paid advertising.
6. Pay for Advertising
Paid advertising is a fast track to generating leads, albeit an expensive one. You can begin paying to promote your website, offers, social media content, and more. Consider:
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Social media advertising
If you have the money to pay for advertising, you can improve brand recognition and grow your firm. That being said, no amount of advertising can replace solid sales skills.
7. Delve Into Email Marketing
Do you have an intake form that captures people’s email addresses? If not, you’re missing out on a crucial form of traffic. Create a free eBook or offer, and then ask people to sign up with their email addresses.
Next, create an email campaign that will:
- Nurture leads
- Build trust
- Win new leads
How often you email your audience is up to you. For some, they send out a monthly newsletter. For others, they will email daily or even multiple times a day. A great strategy is to send out emails whenever you post to your blog. Of course, what works best for you and your firm is going to be different than what works best for the next. .
8. Start Mobile Marketing
Mobile is everywhere. You can target mobile-only users on platforms, such as Facebook Ads and Google Adwords. When creating your ads, consider adding a phone number for people to call or text for more information.
9. Team Up With Others to Leverage Co-Marketing
Why not cross-promote other people’s services? If you know a financial planner, you can co-market each other’s services together to grow both of your businesses. Of course, this is just one example of the professionals that you can team up with.
10. Create a Content Marketing Strategy
Every piece of content that you create is part of your content marketing strategy. A few of the many forms of content that accounting firms create and should be marketing are:
- Blog posts
- Articles
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- eBooks
- Social media posts
For example, we may promote this very article on social media, other blogs, through paid advertising and more.
11. Sponsor Events to Attract Business
One marketing idea that is old but good is to sponsor events. You can sponsor local sports teams or a non-profit event. Local exposure is good for business, and you may be able to boost your website’s SEO if you get links from news outlets or events you’re sponsoring.
12. Hack Your Way Into the Spotlight With Viral Marketing
Even accounting firms can go viral with the right approach. Try and find ways to make your content and brand go viral. A few methods that work well here are:
Build relationships with:
- Journalists
- Bloggers
- Influencers
These contacts can promote your content and get it seen faster than most traditional forms of marketing.
Wrapping Up
We hope that you read through this post and had a few “aha” moments when discovering ways to grow your firm. Of course, ideas are just the start of the process. It’s up to you to put these ideas into practice and to see what works and doesn’t for your business.
Luckily, we also have Part 2 of this series, where we cover many other great marketing ideas for accounting firms. Read it here.
Want to skip the ideas and offload your marketing to us? Book a free consultation today to get started.
