Accountancy Firm Advertising

GAAP

Hi

I am stressing myself about how best to market my Accountancy practice and I am looking for some help and guidence. Basically I am totally lost I do nit have a clear strategy and at the moment I am just working week to week with whatever business is coming through the door. Because of this lack of business advertising and marketing budgets are seriously effected.... its a catch 22 situation!!

Can you offer some advice or ideas to raise the profile / awareness of my company ???

Thanks

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Look there's absolutely no point in you advertising, the big 5 have a massive advertising budget and you just can't compete in their arena. You should be more focused on asking your current client base for referrals, realistically that's how most people would chose their accountancy firm not by some glossy ad.

Work out your average clients net marginal worth to your firm, then send out a mailer to your existing customers saying your looking to expand and will be offering them a discount of X hundred euros from their fees for EVERY customer they refer to you.

Join a few networking associations and offer discounts or free first time consultations to small companies who have potential to grow into big companies quickly.

Spinnaker

1. Quid pro quo work may be a solution i.e. Accountancy in return for a marketing campaign established for you by a local marketing company/ professional. Of course there will always be actual fees payable to any media identified in a campaign.

2. Perhaps identifying outline objectives, target market and actual budget here will attract practical answers here.

Mosey101

Hey there,

I work for a marketing agency and we did some work recently for a Solicitors. . . very similar from a Marketing point of view to an accountants. A couple of bits of information that might help you.

1. Unless you have the money (which i'm assuming you don't) don't bother with advertising as it's short lived and ineffective

2. In order to get new clients you've got to think where people will be looking for you. The internet is a key place where most people will look. Ideally having a website is the best way to go which is properly set up to be easily found on Search Engines. This is known as Search Engine Optimisatoin (SEO) which i could go into but it would take hours to talk about.

3. You could also do some Google Adwords that will show up in related searches. YOu only pay for what people click on which links directly to your website and you can set out a daily budget as to what you are looking for

4. Leaflets in your local area. I'm not sure how accountants work geographically but you could target local businesses with a well designed creative mailer offering your services. Given this climate, you would have to focus on price and offering. Sometimes like a free consultation can work pretty well as a hook.

5. Keeping in regular contact with your market is important for any company as it's so easy for your name to slip from someones mind.

6. PR can be used to promote yourself in publications however this can cost a lot by using a PR agent.

They're just a couple of things that i came up with. If you want to talk more about it, i can give you a free consultation of my company can offer. Just send me a PM. (Is this regarded as Spam? - if not i'll repost without this last line)

Cheers

dbran

GAAP wrote: »

Hi

I am stressing myself about how best to market my Accountancy practice and I am looking for some help and guidence. Basically I am totally lost I do nit have a clear strategy and at the moment I am just working week to week with whatever business is coming through the door. Because of this lack of business advertising and marketing budgets are seriously effected.... its a catch 22 situation!!

Can you offer some advice or ideas to raise the profile / awareness of my company ???

Thanks

Hi GAAP

I am in the exact same situation as you being a newly established practice wondering where the next job is coming from. It is very easy to panic when you are in this position and to loose faith in yourself and your own abilities.

But you must bear in mind that this is the "silly season". People are on holidays, thinking about holidays, waiting for their collegue to go on holidays, or just back from holidays. There is no decisions made at this time unless they are red hot urgent.

As for strategy, I have adopted the one of networking networking networking and more networking...... I believe that when it comes to accountancy, advertising can only do so much. People will change only if they have confidence in the persons abilities. Almost as important for a client is their ability to be able to get along with you, and that you are an accountant who really takes the time to understand their business. They want to know that they can sleep at night without the worry that they are being neglected or not looked after. Advertising does not usually convey this easily. Word of mouth and getting yourself out there does.

There are a lot of very good networking groups out there which are very cost effective. Join your local chamber of DCEB or LINK group.

It will definately be a long hall and a lot of hard work. Then again we both knew this at the start.:)

Hope this helps and remember to keep faith

Regards

DB

finisklin

Just want to echo the comments on the previous poster regarding networking....the more you can network the more your networth will improve!

Look at any trade, business associations you can join such as chamber of commerce, lions club, rotary and there even a popular netwroking group called BNI whihc is quite useful.

On the net, maybe linkedin might be useful to have a profile on and to use the questions part of the site as developing an expertise in accounts and business effectiveness.

Best of luck with it.

superhooper

Fancy Dresser wrote: »

Look there's absolutely no point in you advertising, the big 5 have a massive advertising budget and you just can't compete in their arena. .

Depends on the market segment your going for.Most sole traders/small companies aren't going to touch Big 4.

shindig-jp

superhooper wrote: »

Depends on the market segment your going for.Most sole traders/small companies aren't going to touch Big 4.

I agree, It is surprising the amount of convert accounts you can pick up from a parade of shops around the country.