As the unofficial end to summer approaches it’s time to refocus your marketing efforts. Here are six smart marketing habits to start now.
1. Arrange your referral source lunches. When I was an internal CPA firm marketing director I worked with a partner who didn’t allow himself to go home on Friday afternoons until he arranged his referral source lunches. This was a wonderful goal and an efficient use of his time because he rarely found himself without lunch plans and he was consistently meeting with people who could refer him business. Create a list of people who have referred business to you and those contacts you’d like to add to your network. Spend 30 minutes each week to arrange your referral source lunches and watch your referrals received increase.
2. Check in with your current clients. One reason why clients leave their CPA firms is lack of attention. Your clients want you to be more proactive and make them feel important. Which clients have you not spoken with in a while? Spend one hour each month talking with these clients. You’ll be amazed at the good will you’ll generate as well as extra projects and referrals.
3. Update your profile and participate in LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 175 million members. Spend 15 minutes each week updating your profile and participating in LinkedIn. This can include updating your experience, sharing articles, providing and asking for recommendations, participating in group discussions, expanding your LinkedIn network, and asking and answering questions.
4. Update your website. You’ve heard it a million times – you need to give your website visitors a reason to come back to your site. This means that you need to add content. At least once a month add an article, blog post, links to resources, links to your firm’s archived enewsletters, or PDFs of your print newsletters.
5. Review the status of your marketing plan execution. If you have a marketing plan, that is. Creating your marketing plan is the easier part of the equation. Execution is the difficult part. Review your plan’s goals and strategies on a biweekly basis. Follow up with your team members about the commitments they’ve made. This will keep your marketing momentum moving forward and enable you to realize positive results.
6. Expand your marketing knowledge. With access to so much information we can easily become overwhelmed when deciding how to expand our marketing knowledge. Yet, it’s important to spend time each week doing so. Read an article, a blog post, or a book. Attend a seminar or webinar. A few websites to check out, in addition to www.capstonemarketing.com, of course, are www.accountingmarketing.org, www.marketingprofs.com, www.hubspot.com, www.marketingsherpa.com, www.inc.com/newsletter, and www.jillkonrath.com.