marketing is the totality of your efforts to get additional business.
by ed mendlowitz
call me before you do anything: the art of accounting
i like to wear shirts with my firm’s logo. we have an arrangement with land’s end where we can order what we want from their catalog and have the withum logo applied. it is a very easy process.
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when i had my own firm we let staff freely choose what they wanted from the land’s end catalog, and we ordered it for them. it shows pride in the firm, is a walking billboard advertising your firm, and presents an appearance of a “together” firm. it is a low-cost method of promoting your firm and strengthening your brand and culture. in instances in which clients asked for shirts, we willingly provided them. there are other vendors, including local suppliers, and this is not restricted to land’s end.
another thing you can do is send wall or desk calendars, teddy bears and other promotional products. these all create goodwill and are long-lasting symbols of your firm.
another form of promotion is informative trifold brochures explaining a service you perform, providing reminders that you can be called for further information. these lead to additional revenue and added client awareness of services you perform. this is very inexpensive advertising. i suggest including one with everything sent to a client, including bills. each month you can send a flyer for a different service.
for the past few years we have included a three-page client survey with every client deliverable. the first two pages ask about the client’s satisfaction with our service, personnel, performance and value received. the third page lists additional services the client might need. when these are checked, the client gets an immediate call from a partner to discuss the client’s additional needs. this is a very successful way to get feedback about our service and to garner additional business.
marketing is the totality of your efforts to get additional business. there are many novel ideas, but these are some tried-and-true methods you can easily and inexpensively adopt. try some of them – they work!
i used all of these, and many more!