Effective marketing for accountants requires creativity, adaptability, and industry expertise. If done right, these three factors can give your firm a better competitive advantage against most accounting firms – especially against CPA firms using an outdated marketing strategy. Your marketing efforts need to be precise, relevant, and unique so that you reach and captivate your target audience, provide actual value to firm owners in the accounting industry, and make your clients stand out in a highly competitive market.
Marketers of accounting firms around the world have come to understand that successful accounting marketing means showcasing their subject matter expertise, forming strategic alliances with high growth firms, and making overall informed decisions on their marketing strategy. To learn about effective marketing for accountants better, we’ve compiled the top practices for an up-to-date and industry-relevant marketing plan.
We present to you our comprehensive guide on marketing for accountants.
Why Should Accounting Firms Bank on Digital Marketing?
Most accounting firms rely on face-to-face interactions like speaking engagements or networking events to generate leads, attract new clients, and carry out client retention strategies. While this has proven to work through the years for many accounting firms, digital marketing has been integrated intricately into so many industries. We simply can’t escape the digital age and its impactful effects, especially on the accounting industry.
Task automation and AI have made things easier when it comes to offering accounting services. Firm leaders have acknowledged how much more efficient their accounting operations can be. With that said, firm leaders have also realised that going digital when it comes to providing accounting services also entails online marketing activities that are strategic, well-planned, and calculated for an enhanced overall business development plan — one that accommodates the evolution of the accounting landscape.
Overall, accounting firms need a solid online presence to carry out their marketing strategy in a way that considers the needs of the modern client. The digital space is not just for personal use; it’s also an avenue for sharing industry insights, imparting valuable resources to key people, tracking your firm’s performance, improving your sales process, crafting initiatives to attract clients, and maintain your track record of satisfied clients.
Marketing for Accountants: Creating a Solid Content Marketing Strategy
Many accounting firms think they must choose between two trajectories — should they focus on trendjacking or churning out evergreen content? Should they focus on social media marketing campaigns or on search engine optimisation? The answer is that you can combine your strategies.
What gives your accounting firm that competitive advantage it needs are industry relevance (valuable and relevant content like the impact of AI on the industry) and timeliness (i.e. releasing tax-related content on relevant social media platforms come tax season). Producing timely and relevant content is part and parcel of online marketing activities especially for accounting firms.
Below are some online tools and strategies that make for an optimal marketing plan for your accounting firm.
1. Targeted Marketing for Accountants with Paid Ads
Effective marketing for accountants means taking your advertising initiatives in the digital space. Advertising your accounting services to both your existing clients and prospective clients requires different sets of digital marketing plans. When you use relevant social media platforms like LinkedIn or employ channels like Google Ads, advertising marketing for accountants must be tailored and personalised to truly reach your target market.
Whether your ads are for maintaining client relationships or for improving your client acquisition strategies, here are some points that digital marketing professionals can ponder on:
- Learning the right metrics for brand awareness
- Basing primarily on previously obtained data
- Determining how much is your average cost per lead
- Knowing your benchmark when it comes to cost per lead
- Showcase expertise with thought leadership content
Albeit a small part of a bigger strategy on digital marketing for accounting firms, paid ads are important because they are relatively inexpensive and easy to measure. Since paid ads are for a specific target audience, accounting marketing specialists can either employ strategic alliances with high growth firms or accounting influencers to build brand trust among potential clients or utilise client testimonials for advertising to existing clients to maintain the trust of your target market in your brand.
2. Humor in Content Marketing for Accounting Firms: Bring in the Memes!
Leveraging humor in content marketing was shown to be an effective strategy, as it can help endear your target audience to the messenger and even reduce tensions around certain contentious issues. Especially in digital marketing, humor can help humanise your brand and make it more approachable.
From timely accounting LinkedIn posts to memes for accountants, you can always find ways to insert personality into your accounting content as part of your marketing tactic. While most accounting firms (and the marketing team involved) may find humorous content unrelated or even unhelpful in attracting new clients, this type of content can still drive traffic and boost brand awareness.
3. CRM in Digital Marketing: Email Marketing for Accounting Firms
Another effective marketing strategy in accounting is email marketing, which offers a more personalised approach to tapping recurring clients, prospective clients, and qualified leads. Some of the top platforms when it comes to email marketing for accounting firms include HubSpot and Klaviyo. Through these platforms, you can send out themed newsletters to your accounting marketing clients that’s timely — like a newsletter with a featured article for seasons or events such as the cybersecurity awareness month.
Here’s another example: if your accounting firm offers tax preparation services, then create a blog post that your newsletter can feature during tax season. These blog articles and newsletters will serve as valuable resources for your target market, like CPA firms. Especially if you want to use email marketing for accounting firms to promote events and special offers, it’s important that your materials like newsletters don’t sound like a hard sell.
Aside from timeliness, consider the relevance of your materials, especially regarding how they are the best-fitting solution to the pain points of your target audience. Meanwhile, another tip is knowing what topics interest your target market — like crafting a blog post of free accounting software for small business owners or promoting a networking event that’s ideal for small accounting firms. Finally, diversify the accounting marketing content types you churn out, such as a cloud accounting podcast or CPA marketing videos to provide your clients with some variety.
4. Digital Marketing for Accounting Firms: Accounting CRM Tools, Software, and Platforms
CRM or customer relationship management in the digital space is also possible for accounting firms. They provide a centralised platform for managing client interactions, facilitating communication, and enhancing client satisfaction. With CRM tools, software, and platforms, digital marketing for accountants is made more efficient.
Accounting firms can track client interactions, store important client information, and automate processes such as sending timely reminders for financial deadlines or following up on invoices. CRM also enables accounting firms to analyse data and trends to better understand the needs and preferences of their clients, leading to more personalised and targeted services.
This marketing strategy helps to build relationships with potential clients, to boost client referrals, and ultimately to drive growth for the firm. In today’s digital age where the competition among accounting firms is tight and intense, leveraging CRM technology is crucial for your accounting firm to stay ahead of the curve and deliver exceptional services to your clients.
5. Social Media Marketing for Accountants: LinkedIn, Meta, X, TikTok
Having evolved from exclusively content sharing between users into one of the best tools in marketing for accounting firms, social media can be leveraged for many different CPA marketing techniques. Some of which are lead generation, talent attraction, client retention, boosting brand awareness, reaching your target market better, and establishing thought leadership in the field of outsourced accounting, among many other things.
For B2B-dominated social media platforms like LinkedIn, high-value lead magnets and paid ads are some of the materials that accounting marketing professionals can deliver to their target audience. Meanwhile, platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), X, and TikTok can help drive traffic, boost brand awareness, and assist with lead generation for your accounting firm as well.
6. SEO Marketing for Accountants: Employing Search Engine Optimisation Strategies
Accounting firms can benefit a lot from employing search engine optimisation or SEO strategies. After all, most practices that offer marketing accounting services need Google for effective CPA firm marketing. Some content SEO techniques like researching and clustering relevant accounting keywords, checking your internal and external links, and employing tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to help search engines like Google to crawl and/or index your page faster.
Meanwhile, some technical SEO techniques like studying XML sitemaps or hreflang are also crucial to master as an integral part of your larger marketing strategy. When you get SEO marketing for accountants right, you boost site traffic, increase brand awareness, generate leads that are verified and qualified, and overall cement your firm’s reputation beyond the digital space.
7. Leveraging AI for CPA Firm Marketing
AI is here to stay, and this might scare a lot of people (especially accounting marketers when it comes to their job security). However, there are too many benefits to using AI for accounting firm marketing for you to ignore it. When utilised right, AI can enhance your data analysis and forecasting processes, improve your firm’s compliance and risk management, and elevate your overall business communications.
Especially for most small accounting firms, AI can help with task automation and faster content production. Some AI-backed trends in accounting marketing include the adoption of machine learning that’s for risk assessment and financial forecasting. There’s also the integration of natural language processing and blockchain technology with AI, which is mostly for securing record transactions and streamlining accounting processes.
Can Outsourcing Help with Marketing for Accountants?
Absolutely, but there’s so much more to outsourcing. Contrary to popular belief, hiring outsourced accounting professionals for your accounting firm isn’t just about cutting costs. Having the right outsourced team sets your firm up for long-term success in a highly competitive industry.
Outsourcing teams go above and beyond to drive growth, increase brand awareness, and maintain client engagement for your accounting firm. Beyond marketing for accountants, outsourced accounting can help your accounting practice stay in the black through streamlining your day-to-day accounting processes and putting the labour-intensive accounting tasks onto the plates of a highly helpful outsourced accounting team.
Accounting Tasks Made Easier with Outsourced Teams
TOA Global is your partner when it comes to working with highly trained, top-tier outsourced accounting specialists. With our accounting outsourcing services, you can leave the long, difficult tasks to a highly experienced and seasoned roster of accounting professionals. With the right outsourced team, accounting firms can increase their capacity, accommodate their workload fluctuations, and provide quality services to their clients.
Interested? Book a chat with us today.
