How to Ask for Referrals to Build Better Clientele [+ Free eBook]
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Effective marketing can help grow your accounting practice, but it can be hard to find time to do so. Here are some helpful tips for achieving this!
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In a recent survey we conducted of tax and accounting professionals, 71% of respondents said that they didn’t have enough time to perform effective marketing in their firm.
To get a better idea of who the respondents were, here’s the breakdown of the size of firm they work for:
Sole proprietor: 43%
2-5 employees: 45%
6-10 employees: 5%
11-20 employees: 3%
21+ employees: 3%
If you’re in the same position of not having enough time for marketing in your firm, we have some suggestions. The best way to make sure your marketing tasks get done (instead of pushing it off until “tomorrow”) is to schedule reminders for yourself. Here’s the schedule we recommend starting with (pulled from our Marketing Essentials for Tax Pros ebook).
Social Media: 5 minutes
Post on your social media channels and interact with your followers.
Referral Business: As needed
Asking for referrals should be integrated into all of your client and professional networking interactions. Instead of setting a schedule for referral requests, try setting a goal to ask for a certain number of referrals each day based on your expected number of appointments.
Online Reviews: 5-10 minutes
Check your review site pages (such as Google My Business and Yelp) and interact with any recent reviews.
PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertisements: 5 minutes
Look for any significant spikes or dips in ad performance and make needed changes. If everything is performing as expected, leave it alone.
Review and Evaluate: 10-15 minutes
Briefly review your marketing efforts as a whole for the month. Compile relevant numbers such as ROI. Unless anything needs obvious adjusting or follow up efforts, save the more in-depth analysis for your Quarterly and Annual reviews.
Website: 5 minutes
Quickly browse through your website to make sure everything is working as it should.
Email: 30 minutes
Write and send your monthly newsletter. If you’re using a service like TaxProMarketer, take a moment to add a personal touch to their monthly newsletter template.
PPC Advertisements: 30 minutes
Take some time each month to decide whether your PPC ads need to be updated. Particularly on Facebook, ads that run for too long can lose their effectiveness. Spend this time coming up with new ads you can use to replace ineffective or tired ads.
Review and Evaluate: 30-60 minutes
Three months is enough time to give you a good idea of what is working and what needs to be adjusted. Compare your monthly numbers against your yearly marketing goals and adjust your efforts as needed.
Review, Evaluate, Plan, and Budget: 5-10 hours
Evaluate the past year’s marketing plan. Take stock of what worked, what didn’t, and what you want to do differently going forward. Use this data to help you set goals for the year to come. Next, plan specific, actionable steps you will take to achieve your goals. Don’t try to hammer out your entire marketing plan and budget all in one sitting. Instead plan to take a few days, or even weeks, to put together your annual marketing strategy.
Want to read the rest of the report and find out how your marketing strategy stacks up to other tax and accounting professionals? Download the full Marketing Report for Tax and Accounting Firms 2019 here.
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Lauren Miller is a content writer for Canopy.
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