[Template & Guide] 8 Step Marketing Strategy For Accounting Firms
Use this in-depth guide and template if you want results from your marketing
So you’re ready to start growing your accounting firm…
Maybe you’re struggling with inconsistent referrals?
Maybe you’re not winning the types of clients that you want to work with?
Or perhaps you want to break into a completely new niche?
Great news, marketing is going to help you to fix all of those.
But don’t fall into the same trap that others have done before you…
You see, lots of firms start marketing by focusing on the wrong things:
Writing content for their blog
Posting updates on social media channels
Recording videos
That’s not to say these aren’t all important, they are.
It’s just that you’re missing an important step that is vitally important for marketing success…
A strategy.
Why do accounting firms need a marketing strategy?
2500 years ago, Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist wrote in his book “The Art of War” that:
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Marketing without a strategy means making a lot of noise and not knowing whether it will, or won’t work (hint - 9 times out of 10 it doesn’t but there are always exceptions to the rule).
It means that your marketing is unfocused:
Writing about ‘10 things you can expense in your business to reduce tax’ when your ideal target clients are bigger corporations
Talking about the benefits of cloud accounting software when your ideal target clients are likely already using a cloud platform (they’re just not using it well or integrating it with anything else)
Writing blogs for your website and praying that the Google Gods will magically rank it on the first page and you’ll be inundated with hundreds of organic readers per month
We live in a time where it’s never been noisier.
For every prospective client, several other businesses will be bidding to win their attention online and offline. That includes accounting firms and businesses in other industries.
So to stand out, your marketing needs to be laser-focused.
And to do that, you need a clearly defined strategy.
The 8-step accounting firm marketing strategy process
Don’t worry, creating a strategy doesn’t need to be as complicated or as daunting as it sounds.
You can start yours by answering the 8 questions I’m going to share with you below.
Parts of this strategy are loosely based on a great book that I’d strongly recommend called ‘The 1-page marketing plan’ of which I’m a certified partner. We’ve tweaked and added our flavours to this based on what we’ve seen work well for our accounting firm clients.
Word of warning, this is in-depth. Not a quick toilet read.
Grab a cuppa (that’s tea for my North American friends), stick your phone on aeroplane mode, and get your notepad out.
There’s also a google slides template I created for you where you can document your answers. If you’d like a copy email me at jordan (at) teamtroika dot com.
I recommend:
Read this in full first
Then go back through and complete each question in the slides
Let’s start with the first question…
1. What are your growth goals?
It’s important to start here and work backwards.
How many new clients do you want to onboard each month?
How many new clients do you actually have the capacity to onboard each month?
Most firms I know have plenty of work coming from existing clients. Combine that with a challenging recruitment climate and you might not need as many new clients as you think…
Note it down. Either client numbers, new fees each month, or a combo of both.
Once you know what this number is, then you can decide how much time/cost to invest into marketing, or whether marketing is what you need at all.
Here are 3 growth alternatives to consider:
Referrals
If you currently average 3 new clients per month and capacity only allows an additional 2 clients per month, it might make more sense to focus on tightening up your referral process first and see where that leads.
Note - this won’t be a good approach if you’re existing clients aren’t ‘perfect fit’ or you’re looking to break into a new niche. The best referrals tend to come from the best clients (and when you ask the right questions).
Additional services
Looking at how you offer additional services to your existing clients is also a great way to drive some immediate revenue growth.
I spoke with a firm last October that added $130K in annual fees in 6 months by offering more to an existing client base of 60-65 clients. They then systemised their ‘upsell process’ (hate that term but can’t think of a better one) so for every 10 ‘normal’ clients they onboarded, they knew that a certain % could be upgraded and the average fees increased.
Acquisitions
If you’re not overly concerned about the types of clients you work with, this can be a great growth strategy. I know an incredibly ambitious single partner firm that acquired her way to over £2M turnover in 5 years. Her ideal client is your standard no-thrills small business client. Proof that you don’t need a fancy niche or ‘outsourced CFO services’ to be successful and make a difference.
I’m sharing these options because they’re all worth considering.
Alright, let’s move on to the 2nd question…
2. Who is your target market?
Marketing to everybody is marketing to nobody. If you want to stand out in a noisy market you need to make it clear who it is that you want to target.
When deciding, try breaking down your ideal clients using one (or a combo) of the following:
Sectors - do you want to work with clients in a particular niche or sector e.g. construction firms?
Verticals - do you want to work with clients across multiple sectors all with similar needs e.g. inventory businesses? eCommerce businesses?
Shared challenges - do you want to work with clients across multiple sectors all with shared challenges/goals to achieve e.g. Businesses all looking to raise investment and grow, or businesses that need CFO-level support but can’t afford to hire in-house
Once you have an idea of a niche, the next thing to do is complete the PVP matrix (shout out to Frank Kern for this one)...
Passion - How much do you enjoy working with these businesses?
Value - How much value can you add to their business? Will they value your services?
Profit - Will delivering services to these clients be profitable? Can they afford your services?
You want to make sure there’s a big YES next to each of these before proceeding…
Once you understand who these target clients are, you then need to note down all of their pains (challenges, pains, fears) and gains (goals, wants, aspirations) when it comes to the accounting & finance side of your business.
And I mean ALL of them. The best marketers are the people that understand their target market better than anybody else. Your goal is to enter the conversation already happening in their mind.
For example, let’s assume your target clients are e-commerce businesses selling products online.
One of their accounting pains might be that their accounting system isn’t integrated with their inventory system so they’re constantly re-keying information and lacking real-time updates.
One of their accounting gains might be that they want greater insight into their financial performance so they know if they’re having a good month or not.
Note as many of these down as possible. Ask yourself: “what are they trying to achieve on a daily basis?”.
Having a good understanding of these pains and gains then feeds into the next question…
3. What are your value propositions to the target market?
If you want to stand out and seem like the only logical choice for your target clients, then your value propositions need to convey the benefit of working with you.
A value proposition is a simple statement that clearly communicates the benefit and outcome of your service.
Here’s a really simple framework for creating one…
We help <name of target market> to <service> so they can <achieve gains/avoid pains>
Let’s see this in action using the examples above of the e-commerce business:
We help e-commerce businesses to set up integrated cloud accounting systems that save them hours each week and allow them to focus on growing their business.
We help e-commerce businesses to understand how their business is performing in real time with timely, and accurate financials.
Do this for each of the core services that you offer, and map it across to a pain or gain your target market faces. I’ve included a grid to help you in the slides.
This messaging then wants to be weaved into your website, social media channels, and anywhere else your target market spends time.
This brings us nicely to the next question…
4. Which marketing channels should you focus on?
A marketing channel is a platform or outlet you can use to get in front of your target clients.
Choosing the right ones to focus on is important because you want to invest time and energy into places where your target market spends time. For example, you might not have much luck trying to reach lawyers on TikTok.
If you already have some clients in your target market, ask them questions like:
What social media channels do you use?
What websites/blogs do you visit?
What events do you attend?
What groups/communities are you part of?
What are they searching for on Google?
If you don’t have any clients in your target market currently then some good old-fashioned digging on Google can help.
Try googling terms like: “<target market> events” or “<target market> news”. Review the sites that come up and note down any possible opportunities.
Tools like Sparktoro are also helpful for identifying sites these use and influencers they engage with.
I wrote another newsletter here explaining specifically how to find your clients on Linkedin using their search functionality.
Once you understand where they spend their time, you need to decide which to focus on.
We recommend picking at least:
An awareness channel i.e. where people hear about you - ideally pick at least 1 social media channel assuming your target clients are active on there
A consideration channel i.e. where people will learn more about you - ideally use your website/blog + add a lead magnet to capture leads ready for nurture (will cover this further down)
A conversion channel i.e. where people will finally take action and reach out. This can happen on social media but the best place is email (most business owners check their inbox regardless of industry)
5. What content should you create for this target market?
Think back to the earlier examples we gave about writing content for your blog, recording videos, and posting on social media.
Now you can focus on this armed with a clear understanding of:
Who you’re creating content for
What their biggest pains and gains are
Where they spend their time
Here’s an example:
Who: owners of marketing agencies
Pains/gains: struggling to measure/improve the profitability of jobs
Where: Linkedin
Content: Educational videos shared on Linkedin documenting ways to measure and improve profitability e.g. using project tracking software that integrates with Xero
See how much more focused and impactful this will be now that you’ve nailed your strategy?
We recommend creating 2-3 content buckets to create your content strategy. These are key themes for you to focus on. Typically what we find works best is:
Bucket 1 - Accounting/finance related - Topics related to the type of work you do for your ideal clients
Bucket 2 - Niche focused - Topics related to the problems/goals of your target niche
For each bucket, list out all possible sub-topics you can talk about. For bucket 1 your sub-topics might include payments, cash flow forecasting, CFO services, and cloud tech stacks.
For each sub-topic, there’s like 3-5 different angles you can use to talk about it giving you a pretty huge list of content topics to work from.
Remember, always connect a subtopic to a specific pain or gain they’re facing.
6. How do you capture leads?
I wrote about why this is important in more detail here. But in a nutshell…
Most clients aren’t ready to work with you today. So they’re not going to book a call. You need a way to nurture them over time, and email is the best way to do that.
The best way to capture their email address? A lead magnet.
You need to create a piece of high-impact downloadable content specifically for your target market that:
Shows you clearly understand their specific pains
Have the expertise and insight to help solve them
I’m not talking about some fluffy tax-saving guide. It needs to be super-focused.
Here’s how I’d approach it…
Identify their single biggest pain point that you’re positioned to solve
Note down what they need to know to be able to solve this pain themselves
Give it to them
Genuinely, give them everything. Hold nothing back. The reality is that 99% of them will not implement or do what you’ve told them.
Why? Because my guess is there are several ‘it depends’ questions in there that you’re uniquely positioned to answer based on your years of hard-earned experience.
Here’s an example:
Target client: Fast-growth SaaS start-ups raising capital
Services you offer: Full finance function + outsourced CFO
Single biggest pain point: Trying to raise capital and show profitable growth
What they need to know to achieve this:
Key components of a SaaS financial model: revenue, expenses, cash flow, and more
Techniques for forecasting revenue, e.g. bottoms-up approach, top-down approach, and more
Expense modelling and cost optimisation strategies to increase profits
Example guide: The SaaS Start-ups guide to profitable revenue growth
7. How do you nurture leads?
Capturing leads is one thing. But the majority of them won’t be ready to work with you today.
That’s why you need a process for nurturing them over a long period of time (months and years).
Email marketing is the best way to do that.
Here’s what I recommend doing…
You need to send an email once a week.
If you’re emailing once a month it’s not even close to being enough.
People are busy, life happens, and with all of the noise out there in the world, it’s easy to forget what you read 3 hours ago never mind a whole month ago.
When sending weekly emails, the process that works well is the following:
1x monthly: Typical email newsletter format - include recent blogs, news updates from the firm + reminders about upcoming deadlines etc
1 x weekly (except for the week above): Educational emails - A plain text email with a simple tip or recommendation specific to the pains of your target market.
Here’s an example of one from a previous Marketing tear-down victim, Ryan Lazanis:
8. How do you convert leads into clients?
The final piece of the puzzle…
You’ve got an email list of engaged leads, now you need to turn them into clients.
The reality is that you can’t force people. When the time is right for them, they’ll decide. But there are certain things you can do to nudge them along in the right direction…
The first is reminding them about the different ways you can help them. A great method for doing this is to use a ‘super signature’ in your email marketing. A super signature basically gives clients 3 options depending on how ‘needy’ they’re feeling at any point in time.
Here’s a template…
P.S. When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you…
Subscribe to <name of newsletter>
Download a copy of <name of lead magnet>
Book an accounting discovery call
This goes at the bottom of every email you send to your marketing list, week in, week out.
The second thing is something you need to do from time to time…
Ask.
Yes, you need to reach out to people and ask if they need help with what you’re offering.
You can do that via email, or social media like Linkedin. But providing somebody is engaged and has been consuming your content, you have every right to ask and start that conversation.
What’s the worst that can happen? They say no. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
Get started creating your strategy today
Hopefully now you can see that marketing is more than just randomly posting on social media and relies on having a clear strategy to follow.
When you find answers to these 8 questions…
What are your goals?
Who are your target market?
What is your value proposition?
Which marketing channels should you use?
What content should you create for this target market?
How do you capture leads?
How do you nurture leads?
How do you convert leads into clients?
…you’ll be in a much stronger position to market your firm, attract your ideal clients, and convert them into happy clients.
Anyway, congratulations on reaching the end. You stuck with this which tells me you’re committed to making a change in your firm.
Don’t forget to request a copy of the template slides to so that you can complete with your answers to capture your strategy down. Either email me at jordan @ teamtroika dot com. Or click below.
And if you have any of those ‘it depends’ questions, well, you know where to ask…
Until next Friday,
- Jordan