{"id":72990,"date":"2020-05-01t11:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-05-01t15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/48e130086c.nxcli.net\/?p=72990"},"modified":"2020-05-04t09:23:06","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04t13:23:06","slug":"14-marketing-activities-for-cpa-firms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2020\/05\/01\/14-marketing-activities-for-cpa-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"14 marketing activities needed now more than ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
bonus: you can do most of them from home.<\/strong><\/p>\n by marc rosenberg<\/i> here are 14 common marketing activities.<\/p>\n more: <\/b>how not to develop your practice<\/a> | 6 keys to developing new client prospects<\/a> | now is the time to activate your referral network<\/a> | does your firm recognize all its skills?<\/a> | protect and grow existing clients<\/a> | the 4 marketing disciplines<\/a> | 15 powerful niche marketing practices<\/a> | 19 takeaways from the history of cpa firm practice development<\/a> we\u2019ll list them here and then drill down on each:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n conducting seminars<\/strong><\/p>\n as a cpa looking to bring in business, you want to establish credibility with prospective clients and referral sources. customers of any professional service are always more likely to hire people who demonstrate their credibility and expertise, making them think: \u201cgosh, this person really knows his or her stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n public speaking and writing are two great ways to establish instant credibility with your prospects. it\u2019s funny how this works. you can meet someone at a networking event and walk away feeling \u201cthat person was very nice but not particularly impressive.\u201d but when that same person writes an article for a well-known publication with his or her byline on it, or delivers a speech at a conference, it creates a level of respect, credibility and admiration that can have a lasting effect on prospects. that\u2019s human nature for you!<\/p>\n the goal of putting on a seminar is quite simple: assemble an audience of clients, prospects and referral sources to attend a seminar convened by your firm and dazzle them by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise. this will do one or both of the following:<\/p>\n speaking at conferences<\/strong><\/p>\n the goal of public speaking, like that of putting on a seminar, is to wax eloquent in front of an audience of potential clients, dazzling them with your expertise and experience. this positions you to follow up with them to get business.<\/p>\n if business development in general doesn\u2019t come naturally to cpas, they are especially uncomfortable with public speaking, as are most people in general. here\u2019s where practice comes into play.<\/p>\n we\u2019ve mentioned malcolm gladwell before. his book \u201coutliers\u201d illustrates the importance of \u201cpractice makes perfect.\u201d gladwell posits that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become world class in any endeavor. gladwell writes that early in their career, the beatles played seven days a week for several years at small nightclubs throughout europe, playing the same songs over and over. those early performance opportunities enabled the fab four to amass 10,000 hours or more of playing time. that was certainly a big part of the reason the beatles became the greatest band in rock history. bill gates became the epitome of high-tech success by spending 10,000 hours or more playing and experimenting with computers beginning in his teens. of course, there is no magic in the number 10,000; the point is that if you continuously practice almost anything, over an extended period, you will get exponentially better at it than when you started.<\/p>\n this principle holds true for public speaking. find ways to speak wherever you can, regardless of the quality and size of the audience, the smallness of the venue and the lack of remuneration. keep practicing. the more speeches you give, the better you will become and the less anxious you will be. once you develop a modicum of effectiveness, you can then be choosier about the speaking venues you select.<\/p>\n in planning your presentation, carefully consider focusing on a niche or specific service line if your audience consists of people who would find this appealing.<\/p>\n public speaking is not for everybody, but i strongly suggest that cpas give it serious consideration as a marketing tactic before rejecting it out of hand.<\/p>\n writing and publishing articles<\/strong><\/p>\n another great way to gain credibility in your market is to write and publish journal articles. as we said earlier, it\u2019s human nature for people to read articles and assume the authors really know their stuff, even though we don\u2019t know them and have no proof of the article\u2019s factual correctness or of how much the editor added to it.<\/p>\n so publishing articles is a great way for cpas to market themselves. a cool thing about publishing is that it provides the author both short-term and long-term benefits:<\/p>\n we three authors have published more than 500 journal articles in our careers. here are some tips based on our experiences:<\/p>\n we have written hundreds of articles and obtained a great deal of new business from them. every one of the articles provided concrete, doable solutions to the issues we wrote on. we think people continue to read our articles because they know we will reveal our \u201choudini secrets.\u201d prospects reading your article will be impressed by your solutions, but many will lack the ability and self-confidence to implement the solutions on their own. they need your help.<\/p>\n we recommend that you select a topic you really like and write the article before<\/strong> you contact editors. then you can ask the editors what they want but make it very clear that you have already written an article you would like to submit to them.<\/p>\n like public speaking, writing is a skill that many don\u2019t possess. but it can be delegated or ghostwritten. many technical articles are written by people short on detailed knowledge of the content but long on writing skills. if you have neither the skill, desire nor time to write an article, find a skilled writer \u2013 either in your firm or a freelancer \u2013 to draft an article for you to review.<\/p>\n leading a roundtable group<\/strong><\/p>\n this tactic works particularly well for niches and specialties. people always like meeting those with whom they share common interests, especially in business. here are some tips for roundtable groups:<\/p>\n writing blogs and newsletters<\/strong><\/p>\n blogs and newsletters are very common ways for many businesses, not just cpa firms, to stay in touch with their clients and gain name recognition with prospects and referral sources. when surveyed, clients often state that it\u2019s important to them for their cpas to keep them updated on issues and events affecting their business. blogs and newsletters are a great way to do this.<\/p>\n despite what you read or are told by marketing experts, blogs and newsletters are a lot more alike than they are different.<\/p>\n blogs<\/p>\n newsletters<\/p>\n for every blog or newsletter sent to a client, you should send three or more to prospects and referral sources.<\/p>\n blogs do a wonderful job of creating an image of your firm as a thought leader. but firms struggle with blogs because it\u2019s hard to find people in the firm with the talent, desire and time to write them. this is evidenced by the fact that roughly two-thirds of all firms either don\u2019t have a blog or have a blog that is not active.<\/p>\n newsletters are great, but a word of caution.<\/p>\n the 1977 bates decision spawned the newsletter industry. because this was before the internet and email, all newsletters were of the paper variety.<\/p>\n the reluctance of accountants to do business development and the ineffectiveness of many cpa firm partners at bringing in business are well chronicled. with the advent of newsletters, cpas across the country mistakenly thought that sending out a quarterly canned newsletter to their clients (many did not heed experts’ advice to send to more prospects<\/strong> than clients) would be the answer to their prayers for revenue growth, absolving them of the need to engage in business development.<\/p>\n even though most newsletters have evolved from paper to electronic and the bates decision occurred over 40 years ago, to this day many firms continue to send out newsletters and expect them to generate new business. it won\u2019t happen. the purpose of newsletters is to create name awareness, to do some branding and to communicate events and changes that clients should know about. these are noble objectives. but don\u2019t spend the money on newsletters expecting them to bring in business.<\/p>\n what businesses want from their accountants<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>this is from a 2016 survey by rob nixon, published in his excellent book \u201cremaining relevant,\u201d of 428 business owners:<\/p>\n what thought leadership is not<\/p>\n we mentioned that blogs and newsletters are a way to demonstrate your firm\u2019s thought leadership. but it\u2019s important to view this in the proper perspective. the following data is from a recent thomson reuters email marketing benchmarking report on cpa firm trends and statistics:<\/p>\n statistically, this means that if you email a newsletter to 100 contacts, only 30 will open the email and only 1.5 will click to open the publication.<\/p>\n is this the best way to demonstrate thought leadership?<\/p>\n newsletter tips<\/p>\n obviously, custom newsletters achieve a better impact than canned newsletters, but they too have many drawbacks:<\/p>\n creating brochures<\/strong><\/p>\n as you may know, there was a time when most firms created paper brochures, some of which won awards from various cpa industry organizations. the use of paper brochures declined dramatically with the advent of the internet.<\/p>\n but paper brochures have not gone the way of ice trucks. they always have been and always will be an important marketing tool. when accountants make a sales call on a prospect, it\u2019s still a nice gesture to leave something behind. it\u2019s a good security blanket for accountants. more importantly, the prospect has something to review and refer to after the meeting is over.<\/p>\n marketing pundits tell us that if you really want to maximize the use of paper brochures, don\u2019t simply conduct your two-hour meeting and then literally hand off the brochure to the prospect as you walk out the door, saying \u201coh, by the way, here\u2019s our brochure.\u201d use the brochure as a sales aid during your discussion, referencing sections of it that are germane to the points raised.<\/p>\n as an alternative to an elaborate color brochure that reads like a magazine, firms can produce tasteful folders with slots to insert materials:<\/p>\n sending out direct mail<\/strong><\/p>\n these periodic mailings that promote your firm may be brochures, postcards, letters or other promotional items. they may be online or paper mailings, though the latter are significantly less common today than they were years ago.<\/p>\n just as with blogs and newsletters, it\u2019s important to build a large, targeted database that has many more prospects and referral sources than clients.<\/p>\n two major ways to enhance the effectiveness of direct mail:<\/p>\n of all the various discipline 4 activities, direct mail is one of the least effective and most expensive tactics.<\/p>\n calling recipients of your mailer<\/strong><\/p>\n this is the hard one, the action few like doing and in fact, rarely do.<\/p>\n true story: a cpa firm hired us to organize a direct mail campaign. we warned them that if they were serious about making this campaign a success, the partners would have to call some of the companies receiving the direct mail. one of the partners was having difficulty getting started and asked us to coach him. so we picked one of the names on the list and called the contact. to the shock of the partner (and us), we had a great conversation with the prospect and arranged a meeting with the partner. don\u2019t expect this kind of result every time but calling people who attended your speeches or received your mailings can yield results.<\/p>\n advertising and news releases<\/strong><\/p>\n there’s not much to say here because 95 percent of cpa firms don\u2019t do much advertising or send many news releases. there are much better ways to spend your marketing dollars and time.<\/p>\n industry surveys<\/strong><\/p>\n not many firms conduct marketing surveys, but those that do find it very effective. these surveys are almost always conducted for a specific niche or specialty.<\/p>\n here\u2019s a good example: dean dorton allen ford, with major offices in lexington and louisville, kentucky, has a strong specialty in the equine industry. for decades the firm has tabulated surveys of horse operations. this goes a long way to cementing dean dorton\u2019s long-standing reputation as the authority in the equine industry, not only in the accounting and tax areas but in the consulting area as well. and for those of you skeptics who think that only big firms like dean dorton (annual revenue in the $30 million-plus range) can afford such an undertaking, it started the equine survey when it was a small fraction of its current size.<\/p>\n winning awards for best place to work<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nthe rosenberg practice management library<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
\nexclusively for pro members. <\/span><\/strong>log in here<\/a> or 2022世界杯足球排名 today<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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