Capstone Marketing Blog, Marketing

6 Smart Marketing Habits to Start Now

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.

Capstone Marketing Blog, Marketing, Referrals

12 Tips for More Referrals

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While our SevenKeys to Successful CPA Firm Management research shows new and surging interest in social media (57%), search engine optimization (32%), and related website upgrades (55%), old-fashioned personal networking remains the tactic that CPA firms rely on to find new business.

This makes sense since it costs approximately 400% more to close an unreferred prospect than a referred prospect.  And, it takes approximately half the time to close a referred prospect than it does to sell a nonreferred prospect.

Clients consider referrals important, as well.  Research tells us that clients are influenced by referrals more than any other marketing tactic that may sway their decision to choose a new CPA firm.

It’s clear that CPAs need to work their networks and generate referrals.  What’s the best way to do this?  How can you build your referral network?  Here are 12 Tips for More Referrals:

1. Identify the attorneys, bankers and other service providers of your current clients.  Then, make contact with these referral sources.

2. Evaluate your current referral network.  How are you keeping track of your activities?  Who is sending you leads?  This will help you prioritize who you need to spend time with.

3. Organize small scale networking events or mixers with referral sources you want to do business with. Invite a group of bankers (from the same bank) or attorneys (from the same firm) or both groups to your office or other appropriate venue to learn more about each other’s businesses and the types of desired new clients.

4. Provide networking skills training for your entire professional staff.  Then, reinforce the training by accompanying them to networking functions and referral source meetings.

5. Teach your entire professional staff how to build their networks.  Their base of contacts includes co-workers, clients, former clients, alumni, competitors, classmates, family, friends, neighbors, sports friends, parents and friends of their children, and church or synagogue contacts.

6. Collect client testimonials to use in your promotional materials, proposals, and website.

7. Remind your clients that you are interested in new business referrals.  The best time to ask is after receiving a compliment.

8. Add networking activities to the performance evaluations of your entire professional staff.  Reward them for success.

9. Research the organizations in your market that correspond with your client base and where you need to be seen.  Then, be seen.

10. Call people in your network to see how they are doing, invite them to lunch, or discuss a current event in your marketplace.  Haven’t talked to them in a while?  If you’ve worked together before follow up to ask about the results of the project.  Ask for their advice.  Or, simply say, “Something reminded me of you …”

11. Ask for leads!  Be sure that you have a description of the types of business that you’re interested in to help your referral sources.

12. Support your face-to-face networking with a LinkedIn profile.  Be sure to coordinate your LinkedIn strategy with your firm’s overall marketing strategy.  Be consistent with your firm’s description, etc.  Click on the links below for two helpful articles about LinkedIn published in the Journal of Accountancy.

Are You Linked In?

LinkedIn Tips for CPAs