Marketing Strategies For Attracting Clients To Your Accounting Firm
Passive Organic Marketing Strategies For Accounting Firms
Optimizing Your Website For SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Our main goal with this strategy is to rank your website on google search for people already searching for an accountant.
When thinking about SEO there are 2 main steps Key Word Research (Researching what people are searching on google when looking for accountants) and Optimizing your website according to the key words you would like to rank on google search for.
This is to increase traffic to your website of people already searching for an accountant. It is important to remember that google ranks your website not just on the key words but on the experience people have on your website.
This means that you should be creating a website that has relevant content that keep people engaged for longer. Google’s ultimate goal for search is to give people exactly what they are searching for – leaving your website within a few seconds shows it is not something they wanted to find.
Make your website build trust and credibility while giving a good experience with relevant information people are searching for.
Redirecting Traffic From Your Social Media Profiles To Your Website.
Social media has become one of the major factors for getting new clients and driving people to your website. Very few people are not using social media and those that do use it for almost everything – including researching service providers.
The sources you have that is redirecting people to your website the better. Everybody is always looking for more information and will most likely not be satisfied with only your social media profile – give them the opportunity to research you further on your website.
Creating this interconnected web that leads back to your website is a good way to increase traffic and your website quality score for ranking on google.
Don’t miss the opportunity to reach more people with different social media platforms, there is always a chance for them to turn into leads.
You can do this with a profile funnel that promotes a lead magnet which they can claim on your website. This is basically a background image promoting a lead magnet and in the description a link to your website where they can claim it. Check out our personal examples for Facebook & LinkedIn.
Once this is setup and the lead capture system is running, everybody looking at your social media pages that gets interested in your lead magnet will go to your website and become a lead to get the value of the lead magnet.
Listing On Local Directories (Like Google My Business)
Back in the day this used to be the main source of traffic and leads – everybody used the Yellow pages. Nowadays everything is online so you still have business directories just online.
This is usually very affordable with a lot of benefits for your reputation online. By having reputable business directories driving traffic towards your website, is a good signal for google that your website is of high quality and they will increase your search rankings.
The main directory you should take advantage of is Google My Business (GMB). This is a free way to get a lot more traffic that can turn into leads and clients. Showing up in local search results is a massive win for your practice (search accountant near me and see if you show up). By having GMB you automatically increase your quality in the eyes of Google.
GMB also has a reviews section that is the most important factor when Google judges your quality – there is nothing like people giving you good reviews. It builds trust and credibility making Google rank you higher on search results.
Redirecting Traffic From Other Websites To Your Website (Backlinks).
Having other businesses send traffic from their website to yours, is a great indicator for Google that you have a quality website with relevant information people are searching for.
Basically this is other businesses vouching for yours. Just remember that this should be websites that is relevant in your space and they should be of high quality themselves. It will not help having 20 food stores liking to your accounting website (Except if your niche is food stores), same goes for very “spammy” websites.
Google has become extremely smart in identifying what is quality traffic and what is irrelevant traffic you paid for but has no value. I am referring here to buying backlinks from websites not in your space or bad websites – common rule of thumb is if you have to pay for backlinks they most likely won’t help.
The best way to build these connections to other websites is the old fashioned way of build business relationships and expanding your network. Don’t waste too much time searching for a shortcut, rather put in the time and effort necessary – Fooling Google is a lot more difficult.
Active Organic Marketing Strategies For Accounting Firms
Content Marketing For Accounting Firms
At this stage you have the foundations for your website, social media platforms, lead magnet, lead capture and nurture processes in place.
Now you want to showcase your brand by doing some content marketing. This can be anything that your prospects find interesting or valuable.
Usually this falls within one of the following content ideas: Solving Specific Problems, Sharing Success Stories Of Your Clients, Sharing Your Experience With Lessons You Have Learnt, Giving Some Advice For Businesses Or Inspiring or Motivating Your Audience.
A lot of people write social media posts, blog posts, articles, shoot short or long form videos, go live on social media, shoot & promote free courses, share funny memes etc. Answering peoples’ questions and promoting other businesses and solutions – as long as they are valuable for the person seeking help, is another great way to showcase you and your business.
This can be done on your website, blog, personal & business social media pages, in social media groups, forms, question boards etc.
Whichever you choose to do it is important to have an overarching strategy behind what you are putting out there. Content without a goal or purpose is just time wasted – keep in mind you want to drive the prospects to your profiles and website where you can give them value for becoming a lead that can turn into a client.
Content marketing can be very time intensive and it takes quite a while to build momentum – entire industries are built around content marketing. If you decide to add content marketing as part of your strategy, you should be in it for the long haul and be dedicated to quality content because poor content can harm your brand just as easily.
Direct Outreach For Accounting Firms
Ever received an unexpected gift that was really valuable? Remember how it felt, first you really appreciated it and second you wanted to find a way to repay or show your gratitude for that person.
This is called a direct outreach value strategy – sending your prospects something they will find valuable without expecting anything in return.
We love to do this with our lead magnets that they can download from our website. The strategy is simple, you make a list of prospects you would like to reach out to and then reach out to them with value.
No need to over complicate anything just make a quick introduction and give them the link to the free value.
Direct outreach can be done on any platform like Facebook, LinkedIn etc. or you can just go old school and send some emails. Either way the platform doesn’t matter, it is all about the value.
Remember the value strategy is to attract prospects to you, so don’t go and hard pitch them with your introduction – give value without expecting something in return.
Paid Marketing Strategies For Accounting Firms
Running Search Ads For Accounting Firms
The most common search ads are Google Search Ads as they have more than 95% of the search engine market. Easy to identify as the first few results in searches with the “Ad” in front of the URL.
Google search ads are basically you paying Google to rank your specific website page for specific key words or searches. For example, if someone searches for “Accounting Firm Pretoria” you can pay to be ranked in those search results – keeping in mind you compete with other firms also wanting to rank and those willing to pay more will rank higher.
Running Google ads are very similar to most paid advertising in the sense that you should know what you are doing or the chance you are going to lose money are quite high. With that disclaimer out of the way, Google ads are a much easier way to get to the top of search results without the massive effort for SEO.
In order for your google ads to be most effective you should understand the intent of the person searching. If they are merely searching to do some research and don’t have any intent to buy – you might be wasting your money on them. Key word research and understanding the intent of the traffic is very important.
Smaller firms without the big marketing budget will need to be more creative in the keywords they would like to compete on since most of the common ones are dominated by the giants in the industry.
Getting yourself an expert in Google Ads with proven results for your industry will go a long way in the ultimate success of your marketing.
Paid Marketing Systems For Accounting Firms (For Search Ads)
With all paid marketing it is very important to maximize the ROI, if you are paying for it make sure you are taking full advantage and not missing out on opportunities.
Most paid marketing need to be integrated with several marketing systems: lead capture, nurturing and retargeting etc.
First you need to capture the leads in return for value and automatically enter them into a series of follow-up emails to nurture them into paying clients.
Second you need to track all visitors to your website that you can retarget them with future ads. Most commonly used are the Facebook Pixel that creates a unique identity for each visitor to your site and tracks them across the internet. This is why you get advertising for shoes everywhere when you looked at shoes in an online shop.
With these systems in place, you should start thinking from the prospects perspective. If they are searching for “Accounting Firm Pretoria” they don’t want to land on a webpage that says “Tax planning Stellenbosch”. Your landing page (the webpage they land on when they clicked your ad) should reflect what they are searching for and give them exactly what they want.
Don’t over complicate it, give them exactly what they want and make it as easy as possible to work with you.