When it comes to marketing accountancy (or any other professional firms) we need to remember the fundamental principle of doing business – people buy from people. Your marketing activities should have one sole purpose, to get people to start talking to you.
As mentioned many times in Momentum’s e-shots and blogs, the key to successful marketing is to identify your perfect target client and to then start to build a relationship (person to person) with that client.
Keep it simple
I’m a firm advocate of the ‘back to basics’ approach to marketing. It doesn’t matter what marketing activity you intend to use, but that activity should aim to get you in front of your target perfect client, with a message that will appeal to them so that they want to start engaging with you.
To start off with, that engagement may well be subscribing to your newsletter, following/connecting with you on a social media platform, meeting you for the first time at a networking event etc.
However, in order for your marketing to be really effective that engagement has to lead to more direct contact with you, i.e. meeting up and talking business.
Be engaging, develop rapport
Marketing for professional firms should involve a series of marketing activities to develop that engagement. Whether that’s through profile raising such as networking, PR and local sponsorship activities to having a more targeted approach of mailings and telemarketing. The aim is to bring those people you’d like to have as clients’ one step closer to talking to you.
Keep in mind, people buy from people and then consider the following steps in getting in front of the right people:
- Who is your target perfect client?
- How can you get in front of them? Networking events, adverts, direct mail, seminars etc.
- What’s important to them and how can you help them? I.e. how can you start a conversation?
Once you start that conversation more often than not it will come down to whether there is any rapport between you. It may be that the time is not right for them to start using your firm right now, but keep in touch, develop the relationship further and in time you will be first in line should they decide to change their accountant.