“you have to be able to acquire and retain, and you have to have both happening at the same time.”
by jody grunden
i bet you can imagine that marketing a virtual accounting firm is different than it is for traditional brick-and-mortar accounting firms. when you’re only serving your local area, you need to focus on things like signage, local advertising, the yellow pages, your website, google my business, yelp, chamber of commerce and word-of-mouth referrals. those are all great ways to get noticed by people in your area who would benefit from the services you offer.
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when your customer base isn’t confined to a specific location, however, it changes the game a bit. you still want word-of-mouth referrals and you still need a website, but it becomes even more important to focus on search engine optimization (seo) and thought leadership – developing your online platform, publishing articles with industry publications, speaking, etc. – to help people discover your services.
instead of signage and local advertising, you have to think on a much larger scale. people aren’t going to be driving by your office and seeing your sign, and you’re never going to reach a client in california if you’re putting an ad in a local newspaper in indiana.
thought leadership becomes the key to reaching a much larger audience. michael brenner, ceo of content marketing strategy company marketing insider group, defines thought leadership as “a type of content marketing where you tap into the talent, experience and passion inside your business, or from your community, to consistently answer the biggest questions on the minds of your target audience on a particular topic.”
i love this definition. there is already talent, experience and passion within your business. thought leadership is about tapping into those existing resources and sharing them with your target audience – those who would benefit from the services you offer.
when we first started offering services virtually, we were picking up a few clients here and there. it was going well, but we didn’t have the kind of rapid growth i was envisioning until we started getting in front of a captive audience. we started going to workshops and conferences to educate companies on how to use dynamic forecasting models and key performance indicators for long-term financial health.
it was a win-win situation. business owners were getting information from us that was really helpful in learning how to scale their business, and we started signing on clients at a much faster pace, which led to rapidly increasing revenue. you can have all of the right people and the technology and the processes in place, but if you don’t have the revenue stream coming in, then it’s not going to work.
when it comes to marketing, with our model, the two main areas we want to focus on are acquisition and retention. retention comes through people, tools and process because you’re delivering a really great product, but you also have to be able to acquire new business in order to grow your company.
you have to be able to acquire and retain, and you have to have both happening at the same time. if you’re acquiring but not retaining, there’s something wrong with your model and long-term that failure hurts your credibility. if you’re retaining but not acquiring, then you’re not growing. without growth, there’s no healthy change or opportunity for growth within the organization, such as internal promotions.
becoming a thought leader in our industry through speaking engagements, published articles and our website has helped us gain credibility. we don’t have to talk people into hiring us, and they aren’t hiring us just because we’re a virtual cfo firm. business owners come to us because they know that we understand their industry and we understand them. this has resulted in us currently picking up two to four new clients every month.
so, what is your niche? where might you be missing an opportunity to tap into the thought leadership resources within your firm? these are the most important questions to think about now so that you can position yourself for the growth you’d like to experience. it certainly worked for us.