Marketing for Accountants: 3 Strategies for Making It Happen ... Deadlines! (Part 1 of Article)

Michael Carter - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

If marketing your accounting or advisory firm is such an easy thing to postpone (see previous blog post here), how can you introduce some urgency to your marketing?

Much of what an accounting firm does is driven by deadlines. We all know that. So, ask yourself ... what type of deadlines do you tend to keep? Or, on the flip side, which deadlines tend to slide on by, without any (immediate) consequences?

I know which deadlines and commitments tend *not* to be kept, for many people.

Those we make to ourselves.

And that's tragic, in the truest sense of that word.

Why? Each time we make a commitment to ourselves and we don't keep it, we erode a little bit of self-trust. This is the trust we place in ourselves to do what we say we'll do, to follow through on our decisions.

Each time our self-trust diminishes, our power to achieve diminishes.

The good news is this self-trust can be regained, re-built, one step at a time, one action at a time ... until we form our habits.

Our habits shape us. Each of us is the sum of our habits, in every area of our life: health, relationships, money, business.

In light of that, in terms of marketing your firm ... how can you start to form some habits that will shape your firm and get your growth rate on the up and up?

Following are 3 strategies I use, and which I also embed into how we work with clients in our Clientshare™ Academy program ...

Strategy 1: Go Public: Public deadlines where you lose face with clients

The key here is to make the deadline one that matters. I'll give you one that doesn't. I see it time and time again on websites of firms: The "Monthly" Newsletter.

Now, hats off to you if you do consistently achieve the publishing of a monthly newsletter to your clients. That is brilliant, and please share (via the Comments link below) how you resource that and make it happen. There are a few options for achieving that. (And by the way, <shock>, your clients do not care to read the generic 'copy and paste' newsletter articles full of jargon and TLA's** that proliferate the accounting industry. You need to produce 'authentic content', but that's another topic for another day.)

For the vast majority of firms the Monthly Newsletter is 'monthly' in name only. In speaking with firms who have touted a regular newsletter and then not achieved it, their initial thinking is typically, "I figured that promising it monthly and promoting that to clients would help to make it happen."

That's good thinking on one level, but it is missing a vital ingredient ...

If you miss a deadline to get a newsletter out, your clients won't be put out. They won't complain. You won't lose face.

This deadline has no leverage on you.

It can slide on by with an, "Oh well." And that's precisely what happens for firms where I see on their website a section headed something along the lines of "Past Newsletters" and the most recent one was over a year ago. Ouch. One type of deadline that has enormous 'you-will-make-it-happen-no-matter-what' leverage on you is live events for your clients (and for 'your hopper' in general***).

Traditionally these types of client education events have been at a boardroom briefing, workshop or seminar level where the presenter or presenters are together in a room with a group of people in the same room. And that's nice. Do that.

But do you know what's even easier, and just as (if not more) effective for live events?

Webinars.

We've all attended them. But have you presented one?

They are far easier than traditional events for a number of reasons: No venue cost or organising hassle, no catering, no stress about 'filling the room', only one (but preferably two) staff members are required to deliver the event, easier to record to create a permanent resource (video) for later replay, more interactive through the use of live polls, registration surveys, 'hands up' function, live chat and Q&A via the keyboard, ability to 'unmute' specific attendees (kind of like talk back radio!) to discuss their questions, and so on.

You don't even have to do your hair.

In short, webinars rock. (Hey, I'm over 40. Am I allowed to use words like that? Oh well, I just did.)

And here's a key point: If you have done the preparation for a traditional event and put together some slides to support your presentation (note, I said to "support", not to *be* your presentation) you have pretty much done everything you need in order to run a webinar as well.

Keep in mind that there will be plenty of people who are interested in attending a traditional event who simply can't get to it, for a variety of family, business, timing and sheer convenience reasons. Webinars give them a simple option.

At Practice Paradox we have trialled many webinar platforms over the years. We recommend GoToWebinar. Strongly.

I have conducted many dozens of webinars that, combined, comprise over one thousand slides (I realised that number only recently). I have sold over $1.25 million in services and technology using webinars. All without leaving my desk. Last year Citrix Online (the GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting people) flew me to Santa Barbara, California to be one of 6 clients globally to sit on the Customer Feedback Panel at their annual team summit. I tell you these things only to emphasise that I have been around the block a few times with webinars.

And they work wonderfully well ... *if* you use them well.

Why they work as a brilliant deadline for you with your marketing is that all you need to do is:

1. Pick a date and time for the webinar,
2. Decide on the topic based on a service or issue you want to educate your clients about (Academy members refer to your Clientshare Matrix),
3. Come up with a good title for the event (Use the 'F.B.I. Formula' for headlines for that if you're in the Academy -- that's in the class for Module 3 - Your Fuel),
4. Come up with half a dozen dot points of the sub-topics you will cover,
5. Be crystal clear on the call-to-action (what you will invite people to do) at the end of the webinar (Academy members and Masterclassers, think 'gradient'!),
6. Load that information up into GoToWebinar (get a free 30 day trial -- it's then USD $99/month), and
7. Promote the webinar via email to your clients and 'hopper'.

Tip: Give yourself a 4 week lead time from when you promote it, to the date of the webinar. This gives you enough time to pull all the slides together, and you can be fairly sure that peoples' calendars are clear a month out.

As that date approaches, the leverage (a.k.a. pressure to deliver it) will build, and you will make it happen.

You cannot just 'not turn up' to your own webinar!

There's no, "Oh well," about it! You won't want to lose face. So you'll do it.

And do you know what will happen as a result of delivering your webinar? You will have educated your clients, you will have grown in confidence by presenting the information, and you will have moved a number of the webinar attendees one step closer to an engagement with you, regarding the service you explained.

One final tip to crank up the leverage that webinars give you even further ... promote to your clients a series of webinars on a regular basis. Start with at least quarterly intervals. If you can manage bi-monthly, even better. For most firms, monthly webinars would be a stretch, unless you have a 100% dedicated Marketing Director who can drive it.

So that's only 4 to 6 webinar topics you need to come up with for an entire year. Easy. Just think of 4 to 6 optional services that you know many of your clients would benefit from -- think about "What's in it for them" and how the services will improve their life.  

In the next blog post, I'll explore 2 other strategies for making your marketing happen.

Please post your comments and questions below regarding any aspect of using deadlines or webinars in your firm's marketing.

**Three Letter Acronyms!
***Your Hopper is a module of The Clientshare Academy program where we teach firms to change the front end of their marketing activities *away* from client acquisition, to something much simpler and more effective.