6 marketing initiatives for when your firm is at capacity
You can still work on your 'marketing' even if you don't have capacity for new clients
First off, a quick apology…
Last week I missed my normal Friday send of Marketing By Numbers. I’m sure none of you lost any sleep over it but when you commit to sending something every week, that’s the expectation.
I did have a good excuse since I was busy starting a 4-day hike of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
Anyway, straight back into this week with something that’s coming up in a few conversations with practice owners…
“Should we be marketing if we don’t have the capacity to take on more clients?”
It’s a tricky question to unpack in a newsletter since there are a lot of things unique to your firm’s circumstances that would impact this…
If you’re not currently promoting your services online then perhaps it’s best to hold off until you’ve sorted your capacity challenges. That said, inbound marketing takes time to see results, and you don’t want to have new team members sitting there waiting for more work to come in. Finding the balance of when to start isn’t easy.
If you are actively marketing and it’s generating consistent enquiries, then the last thing you want to do is turn the tap off (since turning it on is the hard part). If you’re lucky enough to be in this boat then something to consider would be creating a ‘waiting list’ for new clients. You can be extra picky and vet carefully whoever joins this.
But if we put both of these to a side, what other ‘marketing’ activities can you do even when you’re at capacity and can’t take on new clients?
Here are 6 for you to focus on:
1. Refresh your brand
Does your brand clearly reflect who you are as a firm?
Does it clearly differentiate you from other accounting and bookkeeping firms?
Aligning your brand around who you are, who you want to work with, and how you can help them, can be a rewarding experience both personally for yourself and when it comes to attracting more of the right clients.
Our Creative Director Libby is working with a handful of firms currently to refresh their brands. Let me know if this is a focus area for you and I can set up an intro.
2. Update your messaging
Maybe you don’t need a complete brand refresh but instead, your messaging needs updating.
Is it clear which clients you want to work with?
Is it clear what your services/packages are?
Is it clear what the benefits of working with you are?
Working on a messaging refresh can also help position you for success when attracting more of the right clients.
3. Update your website
Most websites get built and then never touched again.
If we put design and messaging to one side, what else can you update?
Perhaps you need new pages for additional services or updated photos for the team page.
One page I’d recommend focusing on (especially if you’re actively recruiting to plug your capacity gaps) is fixing up your careers page. Steal this 9-step careers page template to sort yours.
4. Update your blog content
If your blog is semi-active, it’s always worthwhile checking back through to update content pieces that aren’t evergreen.
Anything with dates in the title e.g. 22-23, you can go through and update to 23-24. It’s better to do this than create a new blog since you can leverage any existing SEO juice it might have.
5. Capture client case studies & reviews
These are so important to use in your marketing. So whilst you can’t take on any new clients, why not use the time to capture feedback from your existing ones?
Case studies can be as simple as a blog post, although videos tend to work well. Don’t worry about going all out on production, recording via Zoom/Google Meet can be just as effective.
I’ve written previously about how to get more Google reviews.
6. Strategy & planning
I’ve written about strategy A LOT here.
If you haven’t already used this 8-step template then here’s the link.
If you’re not currently in a position to take on more clients, then spending time on your strategy could be a great use of time (it also links in directly with a number of the other tasks above e.g. brand/messaging, content updates, case studies etc).
Creating a strategy now means that when you’re ready to start bringing on more clients, you have a clear process and plan to follow.
Random marketing = random results.
You’re too busy to waste time trying to do things that may or may not work. Start with a strategy and everything else will fall into place from there.
Hope this helps!
Until next week (promise never to miss a week again 😆)
- Jordan
P.S. If you’re UK based and planning on attending Accountex next month let me know. A coffee/beer/whatever you drink is on me for subscribing 🙏