Referral marketing

You may have plenty of work, but is it the right kind of work?

Get working on it now, before the filing season rush begins.

Firms need to focus on actively encouraging client referrals.

The old model of the lone-wolf extrovert who drums up business single-handedly is changing, with roles for more and more members of the firm in business development, says Sarah Dobek of Inovautus Consulting.

Setting up your firm to focus on serving the accounting needs of a specific industry, or special service, is a powerful way to set your accounting practice apart from the rest.

You must understand what your business wants to be and where it wants to go in order to market it effectively.

Are you using a flawed approach to market your accounting firm?

Only after you have empirical validation that something new could work should you make major changes at your firm.

Word of mouth was once an accounting firm’s primary means of gaining new clients, but these days, your prospective customers likely rely on search engines.

Improve the odds of successfully starting up a new accounting practice from scratch and avoid the school of hard knocks.

Take back your reputation.

Many colleagues I talk to have as many or even more ideas than my partners and I had, but they are afraid of not succeeding with them, so they do not try.

While you will never find these commandments on two stone tablets, they should provide you with direction as you seek to develop your practice.

It’s tough to stand out as a professional services firm these days, especially in a field like accounting.

What’s holding your accounting firm back? Chances are it’s not your marketing, your business model or your methods holding your firm captive.

How many times does your target audience need to be exposed to a message before it triggers a response?

Many colleagues and clients get tangled in the daily merry-go-round that consumes much of their time while pushing aside creative, innovative and big picture thinking about their business, how they got there and where they are going.

When you start marketing your firm using a variety of marketing tactics at once, you will soon realize that all leads are not to be treated equally.

It’s one thing to take the time and effort to create a well-conceived marketing program designed to grow your accounting firm and it can be quite another to get critical stakeholder buy-in.

Marketing success, or success in any endeavor, does not just appear. It needs deliberate planning and execution.