Marketing to the unknown reader… (Part One)

Marketing and accounting firms - oil and water? I don’t believe so.

I am in the fortunate position of seeing many public accounting firms’ marketing efforts, and some of them are really good. Others, however, sometimes demonstrate that the practitioner still has a lot to learn.

The fact is, my friends, that we are always marketing, whether we realize it or not, so the question really is, are we going to do it well, or poorly.

As I write this article, our respective professional bodies are all trying to market their respective ‘brands’; the CGAs with “name your need”, the CMAs with their “salt & pepper (ordinary accountant) or spice rack (CMA)” and the CAs, in newsprint, on the radio and now on television, with their “CA advantage”.

A huge change since the mid-eighties, when marketing was still seen as ‘unprofessional’.

But what can individual firms do to attract new business – and, more to the point, is what they’re doing attracting the right type of business?

Well, on closer inspection, many accounting firms are still somewhat confused by what marketing really is, so let’s get it clear, here and now:

Marketing is the oldest profession known to man. Now there are some people who will tell you that something else is the oldest profession, but that’s just a subset of marketing!

Marketing can be defined simply as: “Any activity undertaken that creates the opportunity for a sale to take place.”

Another fact to keep in mind, is this: “Everyone in your firm has a role to play in marketing, but not everyone in the firm is sure what their role is.”

So what marketing activities are you involved in? What marketing activities should you be involved in? And what works best for an accounting practice?

Let’s look at some of the more traditional marketing tools used by accounting firms:

· Brochures
· Web sites
· Newsletters
· Attending networking meetings
· Direct mail
· Telemarketing
· Getting referrals
· Advertising
· Being published or quoted in the business press
· Sponsorship
· Lunches/dinners & entertaining
· Seminars

There are other marketing tolls available, of course, but the above seems to encompass the majority of activities that most firms consider.

The first question that needs to be answered is really: “Who should we be marketing to?”

Get that right, and many other answers seem to fall into place, such as when, how etc…

Get it wrong and you will always be scratching your head and wondering why other firms seem be more successful at marketing than yours.

Alright then, who should we market our services to?

Well, I would say that we need to ask ourselves a few more questions before we arrive at the answer to that.

We need to ask ourselves:

· What type of client do I enjoy working with the most?
· What type of client is the most profitable one for my firm to service?
· Which industries do we, as a firm, know most about?
· What type of services do we enjoy providing more than others?
· What is the ideal profile of the most attractive type of client?
· Where do they hang out?
· How can I get in front of them?

Once we have answered these questions, we should be ready to build a profile of the typical ideal client.

Of course, this is fine in theory, but the typical client does not really exist. We are looking for as close a fit to this profile as possible.

The next activity to undertake, is to examine your existing client base. Look at the type of client you already serve, and look at them from an objective viewpoint. Ask yourself:

· Do I enjoy working with this client?
· Do I make money serving this client at the fees I presently charge them?
· Do they value what I do for them?
· Do they come to me during the year for advice and input in their business decisions?
· Is there room to do more for them?
· How promptly do they pay the fees I charge them?
· Are they a high risk or low risk client, professionally?
· If money were not a consideration, and this client came to me for the first time, would I take them on?

By asking questions like these, and answering them honestly, you will be able to start to categorize your clients into 4 groups:

A) I love these clients and want more of them
B) I like these clients and they have the ability to become clients I love
C) They’re OK clients, but there’s no room for growth or providing additional services
D) This group is a pain in the backside.

When you have completed a review like this, you might see some disturbing results.

Do you ever see, on caller ID, which client is calling you and you decide to let it slide to voicemail because you don’t enjoy dealing with them?

Are these people not the same ones who moan and complain about your fees?

Are they the same clients who seem to take forever to pay you?

Then this is a group of clients you would truly benefit from by firing them as clients.

Too radical? I don’t think so. Let’s think about it for a moment. Typically 20% of our clients will create 80% of our problems.

These people are emotional vampires – they suck the will to live right out of you.

Bad clients do one very important negative thing in our day to day work – they direct the firm’s resources away from our A & B type clients who truly appreciate what we do, value our input and happily pay us a decent fee for the work we do for them.

While we’re putting out a fire for a C or D type client, a phone call from an A or B type client goes to voicemail. Effectively we are saying to our best clients “You’ll have to wait while I deal with this pain in the butt, I’ll get back to you.” Not the ideal situation.

Instead, we should consider letting go a number of our problem clients so that we can spend more time with our better clients, serve them better, provide more services to them, keep them very happy and make more money for ourselves in the process.

Our marketing effort is not only aimed at new prospects, but also at our existing clients, and these days, with good people being so hard to find, to potential employees too.

When we serve our clients, the client is evaluating in the back of their mind, how well we are doing. They’re thinking: “Did I enjoy that interaction with my accountant? Do I want to do it again in the future? Would I recommend these people to my family and friends?”

Hence the reality that EVERONE in your firm has a role to play in the marketing of your practice.

When people arrive at your office, how friendly and welcoming is the person in reception?

How long did they have to wait before they got in to see you?

How well did the meeting go, in other words, did they understand what their financial statements say and did they perceive value from the meeting?

We have to remember that we do not have a divine right that clients who used us this year will return the following year, we have to constantly work to exceed client expectations to earn the right to have them back next year.

Well, space constraints mean we have to end here, but next issue we will pick up from where we left off and continue our journey together.

MFA Group 2006