5 questions to answer before you start marketing
Getting clear on your strategy is crucial for marketing success. Start by answering these 5 questions...
About 2,500 years ago, Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, wrote “The Art of War.”
Amongst many of the concepts he shared, one of them holds true for marketing…
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
The point is here that you need both strategy AND tactics in order to be successful.
Sounds pretty obvious, right?
And yet for a lot of accounting firms I speak to during our discovery process at Troika, their approach to marketing is often random (i.e. random activities) and grounded in tactics.
Posting on Linkedin, sending out email newsletters, recording podcasts, and writing blogs for your website.
Don’t get me wrong, these things all can and do work - but without a strategy, they’re just… noise.
They need a strategy to hold them together.
So how do you go about creating one?
To keep it simple, you can start by answering these 5 questions…
Related - Want to see a real-world marketing strategy in action? We did a teardown of everybody’s favourite Canadian CPA, Ryan Lazanis. Take a look under the covers at how he markets his business here.
Question 1 - What are your goals?
The goal of marketing is to drive results. And in order to understand if it’s driving results or not, you need to be clear on what your goals are.
Do you plan to break into new industries/verticals?
Do you want to niche down in one specific industry?
What are the revenue growth targets that you want to hit?
Where possible, try to make these SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
For example, your SMART revenue goal might be to add £100K of new fees from marketing in 12 months.
Question 2 - Who are you targeting?
Marketing to everybody is marketing to nobody.
You need to have a specific target in mind to keep your marketing activities focused.
More times than not I see the most success coming from having a specific niche e.g. construction, dentistry, agencies etc.
That said, it’s still possible to market to broader segments as long as you’re clear on the specific pain points and challenges that unite them.
For example, I recently helped an accounting & CFO firm in Canada create their marketing strategy where the target market ended up being businesses in their local region between $5-$10M across a few industries that lacked the crucial financial insight they needed to grow but were too small still to hire an in-house CFO.
Question 3 - What is your message to that market?
In a crowded market like accounting & bookkeeping, how you position yourself is everything.
I love this quote from Howard Gossage that says, “People don’t read ads. They read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.”
In order to be of interest to your target market, you need to fully understand their pains and challenges. You need to enter the conversation already happening in their mind.
Using the example from above from the CFO firm, they understood clearly that these businesses between $5M-$10M likely only had an in-house bookkeeper or controller and that they weren’t getting the insights into the finances they need. They knew at some point these businesses would need to hire a CFO but would probably struggle to hire one, or afford one, so their message to the market became something consisting of…
“We can support the growth of your business with a fully outsourced finance team. You’ll have access to the experts you need from accountants, up to CFOs, to help you understand your financial data to help you make better decisions. You can have all of this for a fraction of what you’d pay to hire a CFO internally”.
Question 4 - What are your core content pillars?
Now that you understand who you’re targeting and the message you need to push out, figuring out what to say through your content becomes much easier.
In terms of content strategy, we always recommend using something similar to these 5 key pillars which we’ve shamelessly borrowed from Alan Dibb.
1. Education
For education, go back to the pain points and challenges of your target market and think about the core topics you can talk about. Then try to break these down into smaller sub-topics. You should ideally aim for 3-5 macro topics, with 10 subtopics for each.
Here’s an example of what one macro topic looks like for us at Troika:
Macro topic: Marketing for firms.
Sub-topics: Strategy, Social media, SEO, Lead Generation, Content marketing, Marketing tech, Referrals, Email marketing, Messaging, Copywriting.
2. Showcasing
This content pillar is all about showcasing what your firm does. This includes social proof e.g. reviews, case studies and testimonials, as well as any press coverage you might get that showcases your expertise.
3. Community
Community is your opportunity to talk more about your story, your values, and what goes on behind the scenes. This pillar also works great for attracting potential candidates to work at your firm as well as prospects.
4. Driving leads & sales
Most people forget to include this as a content pillar. You’re absolutely allowed to promote what you do with a view of driving leads and/or sales. You just need to do it sparingly otherwise people will get put off if you’re constantly trying to sell.
5. Being timely
The last pillar is all about showing you understand your ideal client's target market and being timely with content. Are there specific conversations happening that you can tap into? Are there any changes on the horizon that you can help them to prepare for?
Question 5 - What channels do you use to push out your message & content?
Notice how this is the last thing we look to answer vs. the first…
Now that you’re clear on who you’re targeting, your message, and the content topics you can talk about, we can finally figure out the best channels to use.
Which social media channels does your target market spend time on? If they’re creative, then Instagram and TikTok might be best. Selling to SaaS founders, Linkedin and Twitter are likely better ones.
What are they searching for on Google? How much search traffic is there for these search terms? Is SEO a channel where we can drive tens of thousands, or just a few hundred?
What news and media sites do they go to for updates? Do these sites offer the ability to submit content for free? What are the paid advertising options they offer?
Here is a non-extensive list of marketing channels for you to think about:
Search/SEO
Social media
Video
Email
Website/Blog
Podcasts
Influencers
Paid (PPC and Paid Social)
Try not to choose too many channels at once. It’s better to start with 1 or 2 and get them working properly than to spread yourself too thin over more.
For most firms (there might be slight variations of this based on the specific niche), as a starting point, we’d recommend your website/blog, email, search, and 1-2 social channels.
That’s it for this one.
Until next time…
- Jordan & Matt
P.S. Need help planning your firm’s marketing strategy for 2023?
We have space to help 5 firms in January plan their marketing strategy with our Marketing Blueprint process.
The process takes 2 hours and you’ll leave with a simple 1-page marketing strategy, a 90-day marketing plan with key activities & actions, and clarity on exactly what you need to do.
The cost is £499 (approx $599 USD) and spaces are first come, first served.
Email jordan (@) teamtroika dot com to claim yours.