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by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
gear up for growth: the marketing trends manual for accountants
the american economy is booming, the tax code is changing, and there’s a lot of new and expanding business for tax and accounting firms to serve.
so it’s no surprise that firms are ramping up their marketing efforts to compete for the bounty that’s out there.
about 73 percent of firms are planning additional increases in their marketing efforts, according to “gear up for growth: the marketing trends manual for accountants,” conducted in collaboration with capstone marketing. barely 4% are cutting back.
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this new escalation comes on top of the 53% of firms that were already accelerating their business development activities in the past year.
“effectively a larger and larger amount of time needs to be allocated toward sales, marketing, and high-value projects vs. mundane work,” says travis raml, head of ramlcpa in columbia, md.
expanding the clientele
getting new clients is by far the most common marketing goal, cited by 75 percent. client retention—almost the same thing—is cited by 47 percent.
some, however, are planning to grow by other means.
improving the clientele was also a common goal, or, as richard l. patterson, owner of a local firm in greensburg, pa., puts it, “attempting to reduce non-profitable client work and developing clients with needs beyond tax preparation.”
anna morgese, marketing manager at eder, casella & co, with offices in mchenry, barrington, and gurnee, ill., says her firm is going to grow by improving the firm itself with “soft skills and business development training for staff, creating a system for onboarding new clients.”
more social media marketing
the variety of marketing efforts is all over the map, but the most common increase in efforts, planned by 55 percent, will be on social media.
a cpa in west jordan, utah, offers a comment that summarizes many others, telling us, “more social media marketing and expansion of services to included more value-added services, and less emphasis on compliance-related services.”
albert harrison, a brooklyn, n.y., cpa, reveals what is probably the most common reason for weaponizing social media, telling us, “doing free online marketing because of cash flow problems.”
“thought leadership” was a marketing weapon almost as popular as social media, expected to be deployed by 50 percent of respondents. through blogging, publishing articles, speaking engagements, videos, and similar displays of expertise, professionals will be honking their intellectual horns to secure current clients and entice prospects. a quarter of the respondents plan some kind of video for their website, blog, or other venues.
in san jose, calif., a supervised registered tax preparer, is “hoping to create informational videos and conduct more in-person training for my specialized clientele, so they are better prepared for the current and coming years.”
but 51 percent are going the round-about way to expanding clientele—greater brand awareness and firm visibility. forty-two percent plan to upgrade their website, with 37 percent planning to optimize search engine optimization.
and look at the brave new world of advertising. only 13 percent will be using print ads, while 43 percent will propagate their ads online. while only 15 percent will use direct postal mail, 25 percent will use direct email. while more than a third will issue e-newsletters, barely a twentieth (6 percent) will use print newsletters.
though clearly and predictably the shift to online marketing is going strong, the internet didn’t come up much. look at some of the responses we get when we ask, “what’s working?”
- “referrals,” says thomas j. mackedon in belleair bluffs, fla., echoing what was definitely the most common word encountered in answers to this question.
- “one-on-one marketing,” says a cpa with abv and cff certifications at a local firm in sacramento, calif.
- “networking and building relationships with referral partners,” says laura canales, a boise, idaho, cpa.
- “word of mouth works best,” says tim reinhard at cambridge bookkeeping and consulting in gratiot, mich.
- jana walker in woodward, okla., agrees, saying, “i just started to market my business. word-of-mouth, up to this point, has been all the marketing i’ve done, which has doubled my business since starting.”
and then one managing partner at a small-town firm in west virginia admitted what many others did not: “we need to develop a plan.”