One of the biggest challenges in creating a successful business, whether you are an accountancy firm, bookkeeper or coffee shop, is obtaining and keeping customers. Having a strong digital presence is now essential. The internet is usually the first place customers go, to search for a product or service. Google alone, processes over 105,000 search queries every second. To succeed in this new era, businesses need to be found, liked, shared and engaged with online by their current and prospective customers / clients.
So where do you start? Who has the time to create custom content on a regular basis, and how do you make sure it’s high quality as well as helpful for your clients?
BOMA was developed to remove the complexity from digital marketing.
While digital marketing requires a whole new set of skills, the fundamentals are actually unchanged from traditional marketing. Customers still look for credibility, authenticity and social proof (positive recommendations from others). BOMA makes it easy to create and send effective digital campaigns that will engage your audience and it does this in a number of ways:
- BOMA brings all your communication channels together. Email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. Easily created and distributed with a couple of clicks.
- Share a blog post you’ve written or an article you’ve read online. Simply paste the link and BOMA creates the campaign for you with images and introductory text for email and social posts.
- Expertly written articles – Users gain access to a custom-built library filled with high-quality articles on a range of topics that support your clients.
- Create emails and social posts from scratch in minutes. Intuitive email templates, plus you can choose from over 600,000 searchable and free images.
- Design once – BOMA automatically reformats the content and images to fit the channel you send it to, whether it’s email or a social media post. No more painful editing or calling in the design team. BOMA does it for you.
- When your campaign has been delivered BOMA delivers straightforward performance analytics.
BOMA is self-drive marketing and we want to give you the best functionality to support your business. So here are some ways to make the most of BOMA in order to add value for your clients and market your firm.
1. Gather Your Followers
Digital Marketing always starts with your audience. Upload your contacts to BOMA via a CSV file import. And when you do, you can add a tag, so that your communication is always targeted. See more on tags below.
2. Make It Easy for People to Sign Up
Wherever your prospects find you, whether it’s on your website or your business’ social pages, make it easy for them to sign up for news and updates by providing a form for them to enter their name and email. You could also provide something of value in exchange for their email address such as an industry report or a guide on tax. If they have sought you out, they are probably keen to hear what you have to say. Put this upfront and centre on these pages or include a pop-up form to capture email addresses.
3. Beautifully Branded Emails and Posts
Every communication you send out builds awareness of your practice and represents your brand values through the use of your brand colours, style and tone of voice. BOMA gives you the tools to easily create an on-brand look and feel for your campaigns. All you need to do is upload your logo. BOMA then pulls out the brand colours for use in hyperlinks, buttons, borders, backgrounds etc. You don’t need to know the colour Hex codes or RGB values!
4. Use Tags in Your Contact List
Your clients work with you, based on your expertise, and the relationship you establish by showing you understand their particular pressures.
Not every client is the same and they may not all be interested in the same content. Using tags in BOMA allows you to segment your contact list so that you send information they are genuinely interested in, or surprise them with something they didn’t know, but are glad you told them. If your campaign is not relevant, you increase the chance they won’t open your next email or read the next post.
Your tags could be based on their industry sectors, such as construction or retail. You can also create tags based on their location or what business stage your contacts are in (eg growth vs established). Sending relevant information that offers useful insight, will establish your firm as uniquely positioned to help them in their business.
5. Post to Social
Social media channels such as Facebook may have started as a place for people to keep in touch but the impact of social media on buying decisions is growing fast. And businesses of all types are using it to engage with customers.
Social media is a more immediate and less static platform that your website. You can share an industry comment on Twitter, an expert opinion piece on Linkedin and more of your personality and team news on Facebook. On these sites, you can connect with a broader audience and the communication is two-way, unlike the more traditional channels such as newspaper ads or radio.
If your posts are liked and shared, they are amplified and you benefit from the word of mouth. This is powerful. In a study by Nielson, 92% of people trust recommendations from people they know. Compare this to the extent that they trust ads in the Newspaper – only 46%.
That’s why BOMA gives you more than just email marketing. With each campaign, you can reach new and existing clients through email and across all your social media pages. Simply choose the channel and BOMA will reformat your campaign so it is compatible as an email, a tweet, or a post!
6. Use the Content Library
Not sure where to start? One of the biggest impediments to digital marketing for most businesses is creating content. We know this because it is the most common reason we are given when we ask this question. Many firms are held back because they lack the time for the planning and creation of content, and the cost of specialist staff can be high.
BOMA was designed to solve this problem and make the content creation effortless. BOMA gives you access to a library of content that is regularly updated and covers the full range of business advisory.
This content is designed to help you in your role as business advisor to your clients by engaging and nurturing them with valuable information. With a few simple steps, you can send a campaign out in minutes or use it to kick start for your marketing by adding your personal touch.
Choose from a range of content covering a variety of topics including Retail, Construction, Events, Small Business Advice, Security, Cloud Software, Cloud Accounting, Accounting Basics (invoicing, payroll, cash flow) and more…. And it’s written for your specific location. Select the content that is relevant to your audience and then personalise it in the campaign flow.
7. Use the Image Library
No more searching the internet for stock images with creative commons usage rights, or paying for usage rights, the BOMA image library has over 600,000 free images to choose from. Just type in your search term and choose from the selection. If you want to customise the image you can do this in the email editor. And now you can let your creativity rule with frames, overlays effects, lighting or simply leave it as it is!. Visual content is more engaging than text alone, choose an image that is going to appeal to your audience. If you prefer to use your own images you can upload these directly into the editor and customise them as well.
8. Customise Your Campaign
“Incorporating humanity and personality in your content is one of the most important things you can do as an accountant. Even when you have great provided content, it’s still a ‘one size fits all’ until you make it your own”. says Karen Reyburn, Managing Director of creative agency The Profitable Firm.
Add your own personal touch, such as a personal greeting, an introductory paragraph, expand on the content with complementary information or share your views and opinion.
Your clients work with you because of your brand and personality. If you are known for your sense of humour or turn of phrase, use these in your campaigns. Your communication with clients and prospects grows your relationship and builds trust.
9. Create Your Own Campaigns from Scratch
Whereas marketing is about driving sales, content marketing is about offering clients something that will help them and their business. In the long run, it’s still about driving business growth but rather than directly asking for something, the practice of publishing articles and advice gives your readers something of real value.
The end goal is to establish you as an advisor and trusted expert (and this helps your ranking on search engines). Karen Reyburn suggests “Write out exactly what you would say to a client aloud, without worrying about the written ‘professionalism’ that can often feel quite boring. Once you have that first draft, you will either be surprised to discover it’s perfect as is, or you’ll make a few small edits and it will be good to go. That will make it a lot more interesting – and best of all, helpful and relevant to your clients!”
Great content strengthens your relationship with existing clients and builds awareness of your firm for prospects.
10. View the Insights
Use BOMA’s campaign insights to understand what content resonates with your clients.
BOMA helps to supercharge your practice with multi-channel digital campaigns and there’s no need for any creative or marketing skills. But we are pretty sure you will develop some of these skills in the process. You know your business and your clients best so you are best placed to understand what they would like to hear. When you combine this with the data on how your campaigns performed, you have all the information for engaging and effective digital marketing.
Digital Marketing Made Easy
Marketing with content builds awareness for your firm, establishes you as an expert in your field and provides useful information and advice for your clients.
Getting started can be challenging but BOMA offers the tools to create and send campaigns with ease. Think of it as an extension of the relationships you have already with your clients. BOMA is self-drive marketing. But you are still in the driver’s seat and you can choose how you use the platform to best support your firm. So what are you waiting for? Send a campaign today.