If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail…
Having a marketing strategy in place is essential for accountancy firms to ensure that they raise their profile, attract new clients, retain their existing clients and position themselves as an employer of choice.
But if you haven’t written a marketing plan before, or do not have the luxury of a marketing team within your firm, then it can feel like a daunting (and non-chargeable) task.
Set Your Objectives
It is impossible to create a plan or measure your success if you don’t set out what you want to achieve. What does good look like to you? What are your goals? Remember that objectives should be SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based. E.g. “get more enquiries” should be “increase new enquires for tax advice by 15% by December 2024”.
Research
A robust marketing strategy requires some background research. There are numerous ways you can analyse your business, the current marketplace and your competitors. It is useful to have this information before putting your plan together. A SWOT analysis of the business overall is a good place to start. In terms of measuring your marketing, it is also a good idea to get some statistics from your website, social media accounts and new business levels too so that you can benchmark later down the line.
Pinpoint Your Audience
Before embarking on some new marketing tactics, it is vital to understand who your target audience is to avoid wasting any of your budget and maximising the results. Creating client personas is a worthwhile spend of time so that you can drill down on who your perfect client is. It is likely that you will have 3 -6 ideal client types, depending on the size of your practice. When analysing your audience, think about where you can reach them, what their challenges are, what their buying patterns would be, their budget for accounting advice, their interests etc.
Develop Your Key Messages
Do you have one really clear, strong point that you want to get across to your audience? Are you the longest-established firm of accountants in your town? Are you offering a completely online service with an app? Or do you specialise in a particular sector or service? Decide on your key message or a small number of key messages and make sure that your plan complements them.
Develop Your Strategy
Once you have carried out your research, established who your primary audience is and what messages you want to get across, it is time to develop your marketing strategy. Looking at your objectives – what are the best ways of achieving these goals? Put some timescales in place. You might not be able to do everything at once (given time or budget) so make priorities and think about different stages of your plan. This can also make the task less overwhelming.
Decide on your Marketing Tactics
There are various different tools and methods that you can use to market your accountancy firm. It is likely that you will want to pick a few tools to do well, rather than use them all. From radio advertising to SEO, running events to social media campaigns. There is a seemingly endless list of ways to market businesses nowadays. Think outside of the box and be creative, but also think about where your target audience is.
Review and Rework
A good marketing plan should always be flexible and ever-evolving. Make sure you measure the success of each project and review at set points. Aspects of your plan can be chopped and changed if you find that things are not working, or other aspects are working well and need to be maximised.
How can we help?
At Consortium, everything we do revolves around a strategic plan. We don’t go into firms to ‘do some marketing’ without knowing exactly what the objectives, audience and key messages are first.
If you need help devising a marketing strategy that will compliment your overall business goals, then please get in touch to arrange a discovery meeting.