From Peter Saxton
After looking at all the offerings I have made a decision on my marketing:
Website software - NetObjects Fusion £85
Email - G-Lock EasyMail7 £130
Blogging - Coffee Cup Flash Blogger £25
Electronic signatures - Adobe Sign £115 per year
Social media - Hootsuite £96 per year
I pay about £1,000 per year for internet, telephone, website hosting and domain names.
I pay about £3,000 per year for Digita software.
I'm quite happy with the above. The social media software is quite cheap and it enables me to stay in control. People will realise that what I send out is all my own work - for good or bad - paying for newsletters and websites doesn't give any value because it's obvious it's got very little to do with the individual.
Has anybody got any ideas that may make me change my mind?
Replies (27)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
Hi Peter,
I agree with your approach of making things personal - that's got to be worth something.
I know that Glennzy re-did his own website, and it appears to be getting some good results.
The ability to schedule messages is key - so they don't get lost in all the noise - hence hootsuite sounds good.
My wife runs a small design business - so we are doing similar things with her marketing etc.
Good luck,
Hi Peter
That will take up a huge amount of your time. I chose to outsource all of this and I'm glad I did.
I use Your Firm Online for my website:
https://www.yourfirmonline.co.uk/
Pretty happy with the result. Costs £99 plus vat per month, they will do any updates (text content, links) that you ask for usually same day, no extra cost.
They also send out monthly newsletters to clients/contacts and have up to date factsheets/budget reports etc added on the website.
I use a local marketing company for Twitter and Facebook - cost about £80 plus vat per month. I spent some time with them to help get the tone of the messages right.
Thinking in terms of cost/clients - it only takes 2 average size new clients to cover the cost for the whole year.
Website software - NetObjects Fusion £85 - Try Wordpress for the blog and site. There are a lot of free templates out there. It's free.
Email - G-Lock EasyMail7 £130 - You won't beat Google Apps?Domains
Blogging - Coffee Cup Flash Blogger £25 WordPress is free or there are a range of other free software easy to use. Any decent website hoster will have scripts which does the hard installation work for you
Electronic signatures - Adobe Sign £115 per year
Social media - Hootsuite £96 per year - why not do it manually?
I pay about £1,000 per year for internet, telephone, website hosting and domain names. - Website hosting shouldn't cost more than £5 per month with someone reputable like Vidahost
Hi Peter.
I just bought a Wordpress theme and worked with my pal who is a bit more tech savvy than me to put website together. It looks ok but lacks content and I am working on an updated version with a bit more to it. Also you need to get it to work on mobiles and make contact me button easy to use.
I don't have any built in news feeds or calculators on it, as question how much they are used against the cost.
I did pay a few quid to get some basic SEO which has got me top of google for my home town for accountant and first page for tax advisor in Durham.
That's worth further investment IMO.
I currently get 1 referral per week from website, but feel I have barely scratched the service with this.
I went on social media course and use hootsuite to bring it together to point all activity towards website.
It's a bit hit and miss for me I may well outsource the social media side this year. My worry is that if outsourced they may just do the same for half a dozen accountants so not much use.
Looking at maybe buying in newsletters that Kent mentions now that data base is expanding.
My prices achieved are probably same as yours Peter.
Limited Co is from £900 minimum - average is around £2000.
Contractor - from £1000 per year.
CIS contractor - £300
Looking to get fees up this year.
Xero based fee packages are on par with local firms.
I will take on board your comments though and look to review the market in greater detail over next few months.
Unless you have significant experience in web design, your website will turn out [***] if you do it by yourself.
You may think it looks alright, you may even think it looks good. The reality is, it will be [***]. You will have wasted lots and lots of time creating [***].
The market for website designers is massively overcrowded. A decent web designer can be picked up for a very reasonable sum. They will do a much better job than you will ever be able to do.
Get a good designer to do the build. You can manage it yourself after if you want to.
I see time and time again on here how clients have tried to do things themselves and made a mess then come to an accountant to sort it out...
It's the same for accountants! I'm not suggesting you'll make a mess Peter and you may be able to do it cheaper yourself, but it will not be as good as engaging an expert. Do the bits you can reasonably manage to a good level yourself and get outside help for the rest. And don't forget the opportunity cost- whilst you're building your website and managing social media you're not doing chargeable work...which is more valuable to your firm?
At the same time though, I think companies like My Firm Online take advantage of the little experience accountants have and then people think it is the norm to be charged such a high price. If you think the content is worth it, fair enough, but you could invest five months of that fee into a website designer and they will pull something more permanent for you.
You can even browse websites like themeforest and get a designer to customise it for you at a heavily reduced rate. Wordpress even comes with a back-end WYSIWYG editor like Word so you can easily see the output.
@Harrisson88 - £99 plus vat for me is money well spent. The real value for me is the newsletters sent to clients and having up to date tax information on the website.
@Glennzy - some of those prices do look low, shouldn't it say 'from £xx a month'. I know when we've compared fees we're actually not that far apart.
Yes the prices are very much from (and will be tweeked upwards with next revision, when I was talking with others (from South) at the Accountex get together they were suprised that we get similar fees to them up North.
Peter - I built my original website myself and did the SEO with some advice from a client. I spent well over 100 hours doing this, some of the time spent was rewarding, most of it was frustrating and a waste of my time.
Lets assume my average hourly rate is £80, that is a cost of over £8,000 (over a 3 year period).
Why not speak to a local marketing firm (web design, copywriting, SEO) to come up with the layout/format and you provide the basic content for them to work with. They then optimise your site and also do your social media.
This would cost far less than £8,000 plus you could spend the time saved converting the new leads you get and doing the work.
I can recommend rocket spark for building your own website. https://www.rocketspark.com/uk/
They also look atfter the on-going secruity which is really important.
My Wordpress website got hacked and thousands of emails were sent from my domain name. I updated the Wordpress version regularly, but it was some of the pluggins I had that had not been updated that made my website venerable to attack.
Definetly agree you should do your own newsletters, so many accountants have signed up to the same newsletter service, which I think is a big turnoff for clients when they're getting info that's not relevant.
I got a journalist mate to write the text for my website - from my input, obviously.
£125 - worth every penny.
I use hootesuite and it's fantastic for managing all my social media channels. For client newsletter emails I use mailchimp as it's free for me. I used to spend a good bit of money on PPC and someone to manage campaigns but after looking at the analysis that ROI wasn't worth it. Business gmail then for emails which allows us then to store files on Google drive which is super too.
Hi Peter - looking at doing a similar appraisal soon. But I'm very tight and will only pay for quality software and services.
Website: We did our own website using Joomla and an off the shelf template. I then built in a client portal and a webchat using add-ons. It's all very easy to do if you are tech literate and I would never dream of paying some of the costs that are quoted by web designers. Most clients comment that our website is impressive and sets us apart from the competition.
Social Media - Hootsuite is great. I'd use the free version first as I'm not sure you would need any of the paid for functionality.
Emails - Mailchimp is fantastic. Again the free version is fine at the beginning.
Blogging - Joomla has built in functionality and free add-ons can further enhance this.
We pay around £500 per annum for fibre broadband, VOIP phones, hosting and domains.
We use Digita currently, but may look at other options.
Also on our list this year is CRM, web analytics for follow-ups, our own app, robotics to automate tasks etc.
We might start cross-selling some of these services to clients, as most startups we see want an accountant, website and social media management etc.
A one stop shop with a fixed fee might prove attractive and help retention.
Ambitious - we will see....