What Kind Of Web Do You Weave?
If we look at how far marketing has come in the public accounting profession in the last 20 years, we will see a lot of progress.
We can advertise, we can telemarket, we can entertain and network, and we can use the internet and new and social media to find new clients.
Indeed, the web has changed how we all, not just public accounting firms, market ourselves. One thing that still amazes me is how many firms still do not yet have a website for their practice.
Maybe you've secured a domain name and use @yourfirmswebsite.com for your email for your team, but you haven't yet got around to having a site designed and put online.
Maybe you haven't even done that yet.
The fact is, that clients and potential employees expect you to have a decent website these days. Not having a site in 2011 is akin to not having a telephone in the 1980's.
A decent website will also help you to focus on the right type of clients. Let me explain...
If I assume that you want to develop your firm and have fewer simple tax return clients (nothing wrong with tax return clients, don't get me wrong - but churning out return and after return is a tough row to hoe, and there are better ways to make money from your heard-earned designation) and more corporate clients, then please, treat this article as a heads-up.
If the above applies to you, then you simply MUST get a website.
Why? Well, I think that the best way to explain is to talk through a somewhat typical scenario.
Let's assume that you're out there networking, going to business functions and looking to meet potential clients, develop a relationship with them over time, and eventually get to the point where they want to look you up and check you out before picking up the phone and making an appointment to come as see you.
You've put in the hours to attend these functions, you've spent some quality time with a prospective client, and over time have managed to keep their interest alive by sending them useful information over maybe 18 months or so. Maybe they now get your monthly newsletter, you've invited them to a seminar or two, a social function or two and you've been generous with your own rolodex (real or virtual) and make some helpful introductions for them.
At some point in time, they might be ready to switch firms, and due to the good work you've done thus far, they're ready to validate their decision to meet you and they want to look you up online.
They dig out your business card. There's no mention of a website on it. They 'google' your name and your firm's name, and find simple directory listings, but no website.
Here's the kicker - if they are a potential client of your firm, do you not think that other firms are also in touch with them and marketing to them too? Of course they are. These prospects may well have three of four alternative suppliers in mind, and you might have been their number one draft pick, but because you have no website, you're now out of the frame, and they'll often move on to look at the sites of your competitors and ultimately move their account to one of those firms instead of yours.
So in the end, all the hard work you have put into developing that relationship comes to nothing. Yet it could, and should, have been so very different - if only you'd had a decent website.
There's another important reason why a website is so important.
Think of today's university students. Tomorrow's new CAs.
They spend half of their lives online. Indeed many students today do not have any memories of times when there was no internet! They rely on it as their main source of information - news, current events, study resources, social interaction with friends (on facebook, myspace and similar sites) and, job hunting!
If a student is looking to apply to a CA firm for a position, then they'll search the internet for suitable firms and make applications to the ones they find online.
If you're not in it, you can't expect to win it!
A website is a virtual recruiter for you. Indeed, I see many mid sized firms posting video clips on their sites now and using their websites as precisely that - a recruiting tool. They create short, snappy videos showing students how wonderful the work is, the environment, work/life balance, and all that good stuff, and it works!
Of course, if you don't have a website, you can't do that either, so you're losing out on two important matters. Recruiting and Marketing.
Let's get back to the marketing aspect.
Please, if you don't already have a website, get one as soon as you can. Make it a priority.
But, be careful. There are several 'cookie-cutter' solutions available, and to the first-timer, it looks like a no-brainer. CAUTION: cookie-cutter websites always look and feel like cookie-cutter websites.
If you're looking for good quality corporate clients, they want to be advised by professionals who are leading edge, not trailing edge. Your online presence can portray either the right or wrong impression to these prospects. Which would you rather do?
I see so many accounting firms buy-in to a ready-made web service, and almost all of them fail to tailor the look and feel and the text on the site. As a result, they almost all read exactly the same.
If you're developing a relationship with a prospect and they go to your website, only to find that most of the text on it is exactly the same as their present firm's website, guess what?
They make an instant decision that you're no different to their existing firm, so why change to you, when their perception now is that you're just the same as their current firm, so there's no point in changing to your firm.
A cookie-cutter website does you more harm than good, unless to take the trouble to tailor it to your firm.
With portals becoming more and more important in the next few years, that's another reason why you'll need your own site.
Delivering our end product - the tax returns and financial statements - will soon, I believe, be mandated that we cannot deliver these by e-mail for security reasons, and the portal will be the way to go.
If you don't yet have a website as a marketing tool, a recruiting tool or a delivery tool for your end product, you'll soon be seen as a dinosaur, and finding the right clients (and even keeping your good ones) will become an uphill struggle.
© 2004-2011, Steve McIntyre-Smith.
|
|
