Inbound marketing for accountants can help your firm generate leads, land new clients and increase revenue. HubSpot was the “founder” of inbound marketing in 2006, and it remains one of the most widely used methods of marketing.
The ideal is simple:
- Attract
- Engage
- Delight
While the idea is to attract, engage and delight, inbound marketing does a lot more to help your firm grow.
5 Ways Inbound Marketing for Accountants Can Help Your Firm Grow
1. Company Reputation
Most firms are worried about numbers – that’s what you do – but inbound marketing goes well beyond just attracting leads. You can build your brand on the back of an inbound campaign and develop a reputation to meet the demands of today’s market.
Your reputation is everything, and you can build (not earn) a reputation with the help of key content assets, such as:
- Blog posting
- Case studies
- Videos
- Webinars
- Etc.
When you control the narrative, you’ll be a brand that people already know about and have confidence in. You’ll also be able to build brand loyalty that keeps past and current clients coming back to your firm.
2. Qualified Leads
Inbound marketing is interesting because it helps attract people in all stages of the sales cycle. You’ll attract potential clients that aren’t looking to purchase today, but they may in a month or year from now.
When you attract leads through inbound marketing, you’re also able to attract qualified leads.
These are leads that are viable prospects and have problems that your firm can solve. These aren’t leads that are comparison shopping or just want to know a little bit about your services.
Qualified leads are extremely profitable, but they won’t be the only leads that you attract. In fact, you’ll be building long-term relationships with potential clients.
3. Build Strong Relationships
Trust and credibility go a long way in the business world. Consumers read reviews, research firms and look at all of their options before making contact. You have to build deep relationships with your clients because 85% of them will do their research before buying. [1] https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/09/salesforce-2017-connected-shoppers-report
Inbound marketing can help you build relationships through:
- Engaging content
- Social media
Your firm wants to build meaningful relationships. When you’re helping a client’s business grow, you’re helping your own firm grow. Building relationships is one of the key aspects of inbound marketing for accountants.
The right approach to inbound marketing can help firms build trust, which leads to higher conversion rates and more sales.
And you’ll build more trust and credibility, which can help your brand grow.
4. Attract Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is traffic that you’re not paying for in your marketing directly. You want to attract multiple forms of traffic, whether it be from social media, search engines, YouTube or anywhere else.
When you have a customer strategy in place (a one-size-fits-all approach never works), you’ll have content assets funneling traffic to your website from multiple sources.
And not all of this traffic will be highly converting.
You’ll have an array of traffic that wants to:
- Learn more about accounting
- Understand how accounts can help their business
- Learn about your services
- Purchase your services
- Etc.
When you attract a wide range of organic traffic, you can nurture these leads and convert them to sales. You can also focus on attracting leads that are in the latter stages of the buyer’s cycle to improve conversion rates.
5. Less Reliance on Costly PPC
Is pay-per-click advertising the best marketing strategy for your firm? Maybe. Your firm may be running amazing ads with high click-through-rates and completely killing it. You shouldn’t stop these ads because they’re:
- Working well
- Guaranteeing traffic
- Able to provide results now
If you have the budget for PPC ads and it makes sense for your audience, continue running the ads. A lot of the world’s largest accounting firms are running PPC campaigns with no intention of stopping anytime soon.
Google paid ads can increase brand awareness by up to 80%.
But being fully reliant on any one form of marketing is never a good choice. You don’t want to put “all of your eggs in one basket.” Instead, you need a mix of marketing strategies to find success. When you focus on inbound marketing, you’re attracting organic leads to your site and reducing reliance on PPC.
It’s the best of both worlds, and it can help you generate more leads while spending less money.
P.S. PPC traffic, while costly, does convert 50% higher than organic traffic. [2]https://moz.com/blog/true-or-false-organic-traffic-converts-better-than-ppc
Where Inbound Marketing Falls Short
There’s a lot that an inbound campaign can do for your firm, but there are some flaws. One of the major drawbacks of inbound marketing is that it takes time – a lot of time. If you’re a seasoned firm with a steady client base, you have the time to allow this form of marketing to work it’s magic.
But if you’re struggling to keep the lights on or need to experience growth quickly, this likely isn’t the right strategy for you.
Instead, you might want to rely more on pay-per-click advertising to bring traffic to your firm. While PPC can be costly, it is a sure-fire way to generate leads to your website.
In fact, 68% of marketers view paid advertising as a very important part of their overall marketing strategy. You can always add in inbound marketing strategies later on down the road when you have the budget and time to run a campaign.
When you use inbound marketing to help grow your business, it fits seamlessly along other types of marketing. Your inbound campaign shouldn’t impact your email marketing, PPC or other campaigns.
Instead, you can run a long-term campaign alongside the marketing that is working for you right now.
The end result? Organic traffic to your business. An increase in leads. Deeper relationships. Higher conversions. And so much more.
Want to learn how our team at Leaders Online can help ramp up your inbound marketing?
