David has kindly asked me to write a regular marketing blog for The Accountants Circle. I am absolutely delighted to be given the opportunity. Please feel free to comment (good or bad), email or contact me, I am more than happy to answer individual queries.
It also comes at particularly poignant time as we move deeper into recession. You will no doubt be aware that wisdom tells you to increase marketing spend in recessionary times and take advantage of your competitors natural tendencies towards retrenchment. I do not believe you that naive and nor should you be. However I would strongly advocate a step up in quality if not quantity.
There will be many casualties as we feel the full force of this economic correction. But you can probably, with great accuracy pinpoint your own clients that will survive and even prosper. My guess is that they provide top class service, that’s a given. But in addition they will be clever marketers utilising technology to communicate effectively with the growing number of discerning and cautious customers hungry for information before they decide to buy.
Potential Clients Are Searching You Out Now...
A quick interrogation of Google’s Adword Tool tells me that there are over 2.8 million searches every month on Google for Accountants, Bookkeepers and related searches such as Tax, Payroll and Audit. This peaks in December and January to over 3 million as the late return brigade desperately searches out a quick witted accountant to save them a late filing penalty.
It’s Your Job To Smooth The Process of Those Potential Clients Searching For You..
Your potential clients are well educated highly proficient internet users having totally mastered the art over many years of ordering flights, groceries and researching holiday destinations and best buy dishwashers. The exact same search strategies are now commonplace in daily business activities searching out business services such as accountancy.
Two Questions:
1. Can They Find You..?
To use a technical term (don’t worry there won’t be many) you need to employ Pull Marketing techniques i.e. pull all these hungry searchers directly onto your Website. This in itself is relatively straightforward and surprisingly (considering the rewards) inexpensive. You must be on Page 1 of Google for your chosen keyword searches. The reason is over 80% of those searching will not venture past page 1
There are basically two ways you can pull traffic to your site:
· Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) – Paid Advertising Guaranteeing to list you on Page 1
· Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Optimisation of Key Words to get you on Page 1
I am not going to dwell on the merits of each of these methods, suffice to say they both do the job. You also have the option of proactive marketing such as advertising, mail shots or Yellow Pages Ads (and many others) which will ultimately result in hits on your site –not unsurprisingly this is called Push Marketing.
This however is the easy part. You can drive a constant stream of targeted and highly motivated prospects directly to your site, irrespective of whether you are a 30 Partner Firm or a One Man Band. Don’t you just love all this technology stuff; it’s such a great leveller.
2. But What Awaits Them When They Arrive..?
www.AccountancyPracticeBrochure.co.uk - Services: Bookkeeping, Tax, VAT, Start Ups, Tax Investigations, Audits. We’ve been doing it for a long time and quite frankly we are pretty good at it. We are client focused. We also have offices in Xtown and Ytown. We are members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and we have a Tax Calculator and We are Client Focused.
I apologise unreservedly for the exaggeration but the point I am attempting to make is that many websites are sterile, uninformative, lacking any capability of interaction and definitely NOT client focused. If your site is there merely to offer an email address and a telephone number I would stick to a listing on Yell.com. You are Accountants and Bookkeepers it’s pretty much a given that you can look after Accounts, VAT and Tax issues.
This is not what any of the 3 million people hitting the search button are searching for. They have exactly the same aspirations as you when you search the net. They are searching for sites that answer those all important questions that must be answered before they engage with you.
If you get this right the rewards are tremendous. It is a fact that more potential clients will look at your website and read through your carefully crafted copy (don’t forget you’ve driven them there with SEO & PPC) than actually pick up the phone and call you directly. But of course this applies to your competitors in totally equal measures. So although you are unaware of their identity, your first interaction with your potential client is through your website – You have total control of that initial interaction so make it count – ‘Content is Definitely King...’. The late, great David Ogilvy once said:
“The more informative your advertising
the more persuasive it will be”
And this most certainly holds true in today’s high tech world. Prospects quite simply want to be informed of the host of benefits they will receive when working with your practice.
The simplest and most effective way to create this is to imagine a would be client sitting across the desk from you having his ‘initial no fee consultation’ – What would you tell him (or her) about your Practice..?
“We do Bookkeeping, Tax, VAT, Start Ups, Tax Investigations, Audits. We’ve been doing it for a long time and quite frankly We are pretty good at it. We are client focused. We also have offices in Xtown and Ytown. We are members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and we have a Tax Calculator and We are Client Focused.”
No! I thought not - so why articulate it on your web site?
The most powerful word in a marketer’s armoury is YOU. The ratio of YOU : We should be 2:1. If you take this on board you will find your site talking directly to your prospects delivering a very personalised pitch.
List your key benefits and put them into conversational language that you would be happy to hear:
- “You will have unlimited telephone and email support from a Partner whenever you need it (unlimited really does mean unlimited)”
- “We will always keep you abreast of any changes in financial legislation, before it impacts on your business”
- “Our Guaranteed Fixed Fees will ensure that you never ever receive an unexpected bill”
If you can adopt this style you will start to communicate directly from your web page. The more beneficial information you can give about your services the more effective your site will become. Breakdown the services you offer and articulate each of them in a way that would really benefit your clients. It’s not what you do it’s the service you provide and how it’s perceived that is important. So just one last thought...
What do you do..?
“I’m An Accountant”.
OR
“I Help Start Up Companies Grow And Prosper”