How to grow your Accounting Firm

A question people may ask, how to start an accounting firm, how to grow it, and how to win clients. There are 12 strategies 12 things that every accounting firm, every bookkeeping firm should be using to build a bigger business.

Referrals:

One the first thing that you should definitely be doing if you want to grow your business if you want more clients you should be doing something which is actually nothing new. You know this but sometimes as you’ve heard the old ones are the best.

In his case, that is certainly so number one referrals are still the best way of winning new clients but you want to make sure that you have some systems for doing this put in place some systems to systematically get referred to systematically ask for referrals in every meeting it’s the best way to grow an accounting firm.

Joint Ventures:

What I mean by that is think about who else do you know has customers but people that you want as clients and yet you don’t compete and then get together and form a strategic marketing alliance.

So, an example might be the local bank manager you would love to have as clients local bank managers customers. So, what can you do to help the local bank manager so that in return they might refer some of their clients? It may be your local financial advisor. If you’re a CPA or an accountant, what about the local bookkeeper? If you’re a bookkeeper, it might be the CPA accountant.

So who else do you know who has customers that you would like to have as clients and you’re not competing? That’s a joint venture, go and meet those people and come up with some ideas on how you can help each other.

Networking:

This is you want to get out there and just talk to people but there are some great networking events.

Exhibitions:

Where do your ideal clients hang out? What trade exhibitions are there? Go to the exhibitions where your clients go and start a network.

Advertising/PPC:

So in the old days when I was in practice in the 1990s, all yellow pages adverts and newspapers and advertising in those days weren’t very successful. It wasn’t always a good return investment these days things have changed because we now have pay-per-click.

I’m still not a big fan of adverts in paid newspapers trade magazines but of course, test them but pay-per-click can work very well particularly Facebook apps which are the best ones I use extensively and it’s very successful.

Tele-marketing:

Telemarketing back in 1996 and I started my accounting firm was just starting to become popular and a lot of my clients, I won you know, early years came from telemarketing.

It’s now not quite so easy because it’s now more established there are now many telemarketing agencies making telephone calls on your behalf to help set up appointments.

I hear mixed results but it’s worth exploring it’s worth adding that to your list of things to check out and use as a way of building your practice.

Speaking:

If you’re more confident speaking is one of the best ways to grow your practice either running your own events could be.

For example, I know in the UK when the tax changes every year we have the budget having a budget update Breakfast, Club meeting. So, you guys are run your own events or get to speak at other people’s events like for example the local bank manager so think back to those joint ventures do any of those people run events could you speak at the event now you’re probably thinking that’s scary and yeah perhaps it is.

If you’ve never spoken before in front of an audience the very first time it is scary but trusts me it’s one of those things like all things in life it gets easier and easier and easier when you do speak at events, you get in front of an audience and they will see you as the expert, you will is.

Blogging/Articles:

One of the best ways to win new business know is content blogging articles so either writing articles for a magazine or blogging is for a blog post make sure that you create content particularly if you’ve got the expertise you want to build up your profile.

You want people to see you as an expert so make sure you build that into your list of marketing strategies by writing articles regularly in a blog post.

Video Marketing:

This one might be a scary one but video marketing makes sure you have got a YouTube channel.

Why do I think this is important for the accounting profession very simple we’re in the relationship business clients are clients of yours because of you they love you they what they love working with you and so we want to make sure that when we’re looking to win new business we want to make sure that we are communicating our passion energy our enthusiasm you’ve got some real knowledge you’ve got a personality and video having a youtube channel allows you to get that across to potential clients in a way that most traditional marketing cannot do so consider that again it might seem scary.

Direct Response:

What I mean by this is you want to make sure you build up your lists; these are your prospect database. You want to have a bigger list of qualified leads as possible because if you can build a list of a thousand potential clients or ten thousand there it becomes much easier to systematically convert them into clients.

If you’re gonna run a speaking event for example and you’ve got a list of a thousand people to invite there’s a good chance you might get fifty to a hundred people to show up and they may convert a worthwhile number into clients.

But if you haven’t got a list you’ve got nobody to invite to your marketing events so you want to build up a list and you do that through what’s called direct response marketing.

In other words, you create something that’s valuable to people, it could be an e-book, it could be some constant, some sort of content it could be some checklist, some systems you create something of value and you create what’s called an opt-in page sometimes called a The lead page or squeeze page.

It’s a page where people put in to give it their name and email address to grab the thing that’s free it’s powerful because you’ve now pre-qualified them because if for example, you create a resource an e-book on the ten most powerful tax strategies for business owners anybody that gets that you know is a business owner and be is interesting powerful texture planning strategies. Therefore, you can you know they’re your write client and you can then send me future marketing material of that type to those people and what you then do is you use that to collect email addresses you use it to build up your email list to collect your leads very very powerful and these days very easy inexpensive software allowing you to create opt-in pages to transfer the email addresses into an emailing marketing system.

E-mail marketing:

As you build up your database your list make sure that you have a strategy to keep emailing those people what should you email well you should email mainly stuff that’s valuable send them valuable stuff articles and if you’ve done things like blogs or you’ve done videos on YouTube send those to them send them valuable stuff but every now and then you can sell it may be that you’re running an Update event it may be running a webinar it may be you want to invite people in to have a meeting with you which you would then use to turn them into hopefully a client.

Social Marketing:

This is a big one when I was starting my accounting firm in the 1990s social media did not exist and I wish it did because this is other than perhaps referrals this one is probably one of the most empowering.

There were so many social media platforms that you could use to win clients whether it’s Facebook Instagram whether it’s LinkedIn.

Twitter is such a powerful way for you to take your content your expertise your knowledge to get it out there for zero costs there’s no cost with social media and what you’ll do is you’ll build up your personal brand build up your reputation by adding value some of those people will reach out to you and they will eventually become clients so you need to have a social media marketing strategy.