In a highly competitive world, winning new clients and growing your business can be difficult. This is especially true for the accounting scene, as firms exist here and there with the same structures, promises, and bearings. It can be incredibly difficult to find your voice in the sea of competitors, but marketing exists for a reason—it amplifies.

Although marketing for accountants is a landscape that can be a challenge in itself, learning it can be easy for accountants. All you need to do is understand the fundamentals of practice, as well as understand your firm, your clientele, and your goals.

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Knowing Your Firm’s Audience

In an effort to bring marketing into your business operations, here is the first part of our series called “Winning Clients and Influencing Success”, which seeks to shift the focus on what matters the most – your target market. Let’s get started:

Step 1: Identify your target audience

In the realm of marketing, it’s important to understand that not all customers and prospects are equal. Your existing clients are not necessarily loyal ones, and you’ll need to work to ensure that they remain with your firm. To make sure that you’re targeting the right people and not placing too much on those that cannot bring much value to your organization, here are some factors to take into account:

    • Are your clients easy to deal with?

    • Do they generate a hefty amount of revenue despite the difficult transactions?

    • Can they bring and create connections to other potential clients?

    • Is working effectively and efficiently possible?

The other factors will depend on your firm’s goals and mission, but the key here is to understand your ideal clients before pursuing them with marketing. Although profitability is paramount, bear in mind that the trade-off also involves factors that cannot be equated with money—a boost in reputation can be highly beneficial, for instance, as well as a network of other clients.

Step 2: Build lasting relationships

It’s entirely easier to deal with people we already know and trust, and favors can easily be handed to people we care about. The accounting landscape is built on equivocal trust and loyalty, but if you wish to win more clients, you’ll want to build new relationships.

You’ll want your accountants to be genuinely interested in a new client’s success, which allows you to keep new and existing clients. A strong CRM will allow you to connect better, so make sure to connect—ask about their lives and professional goals, but underneath all of that, make sure that you constantly deliver.

Step 3: Listen well 

This step anchors on the previous step—when you talk to your clients and ask questions, make sure to listen to them. You’ll want to make sure that you know and understand what they want, potentially allowing you to provide them with what they need even without asking.

Listening will allow you to be proactive, especially when it comes to doubts, hesitations, and other misconceptions. By dispelling them early, you earn their trust and confidence earlier. Ultimately, by doing so, you’re able to close sales and potentially avoid disasters.

Marketing Made Easier

Amplifying your voice in a sea of competitors is paramount to success. Your pursuit of marketing may be daunting, especially since it could very well be above your comfort zone. By learning new things, however, you allow your accounting firm to transform better, especially when it comes to winning clients. Now that you know how to target the right clients, all that’s left to do now is explore the next marketing step—incorporating the right strategies.

If you wish to improve your accounting practice, Financial Cents’ practice management software can help. We offer you an easy to use cloud-based management system that allows you to streamline your processes, including goal-setting and marketing. Find out more—start a free trial today!