Your accounting firm invests a lot of time and money in your marketing efforts. So it’s frustrating when your marketing message seems to miss the mark. Your email campaign’s click-through rate is low. No one is commenting, liking or sharing your social media posts, and the phone isn’t ringing. Why?
When we talk to firms about why their messaging is falling flat, it usually comes down to one (or more) of the following problems.
1. You’re talking about yourself too much
As a profession, accountants talk way too much about themselves in their marketing and not enough about their clients — specifically about their clients’ problems. If you want your clients and prospects to start paying attention to your marketing, start talking about the problems they’re facing.
Time and again, an accounting firm’s website will share details about the firm’s long history, its certifications and awards, and how many offices or staff members it has. That information is somewhat valuable and may be interesting to some people, but it doesn’t hold people’s attention. It doesn’t get prospects to reach out to you or get interested in working with you.
People like to talk about themselves. They like people who ask questions about their problems. So if you want people to pay attention to your messaging, presentations or business development conversations, talk about their issues and problems — not your history or qualifications.
2. You’re long-winded and use too much jargon
Unfortunately, many firms use too much jargon and too many words in their marketing, when using simple, straightforward language would help them get their message across more clearly.
When a prospect visits your website or reads an article, they want to find the information they’re looking for right away. If they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they go elsewhere.
If you’re not clear about your message, don’t expect prospects to understand what you do and why they should choose your firm over the competition. Using big words and technical jargon isn’t a measure of your intelligence. In fact, in marketing, it’s a headache.
If you’re not sure whether your message is clear, give it to your grandparent (or a teenager or college student) who doesn’t work in accounting. Ask them to read it and tell you what your firm actually does. If they can’t figure it out, chances are your prospects can’t either.
3. You’re not clear on how you solve their problems
All of your marketing materials, whether digital or print, should answer two questions: what you do and what your prospects should do next.
You can be the greatest firm in the world and provide tremendous results for your clients, but if prospects look at your website and have no idea how you can help them, you lose their business.
Every piece of marketing content you create, including your website, emails, social media posts and blogs, should help your clients and prospects understand how you solve their problems and make their lives easier. It should also include a call to action letting them know what they should do next, whether that’s signing up for your email list, scheduling a discovery call with you, or calling your office to make an appointment.
Every day, your clients and prospects are bombarded with marketing messages, and it gets harder and harder to compete for their time and attention. If your marketing efforts are getting the results you want, consider the three problems above and try a new approach. When you fix these three problems with your messaging, I promise your clients will start listening.
