The Top 5 Marketing Mistakes Accountants Should Avoid

Improve the quality of your marketing with a few simple tweaks

If your accounting firm relies 100% on referrals, eventually, that will cap your growth and you’ll need marketing to keep growing. You’ll also have a better foundation to grow your reputation and expand your reach. 

To help you on your marketing journey, here are the five most common marketing mistakes accountants make and how to avoid them. 

1. No clear target audience 

To convince people you’re the right partner, you need to show that you understand them. Learn about your ideal client and their goals to make your marketing more effective and create a more meaningful, ongoing relationship. Go too broad, and your message will be so vague it will speak to no one.  

How to define your ideal clients

While client demographics like age and gender can create part of a picture, a definition should go much deeper than this. You need to understand what motivates them, their business problems and how they consume media. 

Defining a buyer persona based on an existing, highly valued client is a great place to start. What are their:

  • Needs and goals – saving time? Money? Or do they value communication?
  • Pain points – how can you provide solutions or answers to their challenges?
  • Buying process – what is their typical process for engaging with a product or service? 
  • Interests – hobbies, family life and the media they like to consume
  • General information – their current role, industry and demographic

Once you’ve got this information, use it to create different personas, AKA fictional representations of your target clients that bring them to life. Unless you only deal with one kind of client, you’ll need to create more than one persona. 

2. No unique selling proposition (USP) 

A unique selling proposition highlights your competitive advantage to win the right clients. It’s where your strengths meet their needs and wants. With a clearly defined USP, it’s easier to cut through the noise and grab their attention. If you’re unsure what sets your accounting firm apart, start by asking yourself what you do best. For example, do you love helping small businesses grow? Are many of your clients in a particular industry, giving you expert-level knowledge? Whatever you’re good at, pinpoint it and curate content that highlights your specialities. 

3. You give nothing away

Never be afraid to share your secrets. You may think that when potential clients know how you do what you do, they’ll do it themselves. But in reality, it helps them understand why they need you. Clients appreciate expertise and openness, especially when the tips and advice genuinely benefit them. The key is to put your client’s interests above your own and trust that you will get back as much as you give in marketing. 

BOMA has created an efficient way to provide your clients with useful content. Check out our extensive content library and digital toolkit that make it easy for busy accountants to build their businesses. 

4. No strategy 

Every marketing act costs time and money, so you need to be careful you’re spending it wisely. If your marketing has no overarching strategy, it’s almost certainly a waste. Instead, approach marketing as systematically as you would a client’s accounts. First, decide who you’re targeting and be clear on your goals. Only then can you think about how to achieve them. You’ll also have ways to measure your marketing, so you can tweak or pivot as needed and understand what ROI you’re getting. 

5. No digital footprint

While referrals are the bread and butter of accountants, marketing can help you drive the right leads and go beyond your existing networks. It’s crucial to have a great website, a Google My Business listing with as many reviews as possible, and well-maintained social media pages to boost your referral game and grow your reach. Cover your bases so that when potential clients do some extra digging, they’ll be impressed. It’s also important to ask for online reviews. Approach clients directly and make it easy to submit one.

 

Marketing matters

Marketing is an effective way to reach new clients, engage them and help them decide to hire you. As a business owner, you need to define your target client, generously give away your expertise and leave a digital trail for referrals. If that sounds like an impossible task with your already busy schedule, BOMA makes it easy.

Ready to ramp up your marketing game? Sign up for a free trial with BOMA today.