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Time wasting marketing ideas for start-ups

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5th Sep 2013
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Mark Lee follows up his first article in this series with observations regarding popular ideas that may be more trouble than they are worth.

In an ideal world you would simply set yourself up as an accountant, tell a few people that’s what you are doing and then new clients would find you. But that’s just fanciful. Yet it’s clear from the repeated questions in Any Answers that some people have started in practice without thinking through how they are going to market themselves.

In the first part of this series I set out 14 marketing ideas that are likely to be the most fruitful and cost-effective for start-up accountancy practices.

In this follow-up article I am debunking some other popular suggestions and explaining why you probably won’t find them as worthy of your time and money as those on the first list. In my view the ideas below are typically overrated and distracting especially for start-up practices. I am sure plenty of marketing experts would want to disagree, but what matters are the experiences of start-up accountancy firms so do share these in the comments section below.

The final part of this series will follow on in a similar vein but with some more positive advice.

Key points

One thing I always stress is that you need to be clear about what message you are seeking to communicate and who you are targeting as a new client.

For example, do you want start-up clients who have never engaged an accountant before? Or do you want to win-over clients who are not satisfied with their existing accountant?

If you can afford to engage a marketing communications specialist who knows how to help you craft your marketing message that would be a good investment. And one you should probably consider before wasting time and money on the ideas below.

  1. Telemarketing - The general idea here involves you paying someone to cold-call local businesses to introduce you. These businesses may or may not be looking for a new accountant. Those who agree to meet you may simply be looking for someone cheaper than their current accountant. You need a good list and you need to be good at ‘closing’ the prospects introduced by the telemarketers. See: Can telemarketing work for accountants?
  2. Newsletters - In time these can be useful if they are relevant to your clients and prospects. As a start-up practice however you probably don’t need to devote the time, money or resources to producing or buying in newsletters.
  3. Direct mail - To make this work you need to secure a mailing list of serious prospects and then invest in an experienced marketing copywriter. There are so many elements to making direct mail effective and the majority of recipients will ignore it anyway. It’s likely to be an expensive route to market for a new practice. I wouldn’t recommend it.
  4. White papers - These tend to be focused documents that help prospects in some way and which also position you as an accountant with relevant experience and expertise. How you get your white paper into the hands of real prospects is a separate issue that you also need to address. Many of the same challenges follow as for direct mail.
  5. Seminars - Do you have the speaking and communication skills to present a short seminar that will help prospective clients recognise that you are more of an expert and more personable than their current accountant? Or maybe to become their first accountant? The challenge of course is how to promote the seminars which is significantly easier to do if you have built up a list of prospects already.
  6. Twitter - Much as I enjoy twitter myself I remain to be convinced that it is an effective place to market a start-up accounting practice – unless you have loads of time and are only really interested in start-up business clients. See: Ten things accountants should never do with social media
  7. Facebook - This may be worthwhile if you are already active on Facebook and if you are happy for your social life to overlap with your new accountancy practice. Otherwise I wouldn’t devote much time to trying to market your practice on Facebook. Is your target audience even active here? See: Examples of good facebook pages for accountants
  8. YouTube - Somewhat like the Facebook advocates you will also find some accountants advocating YouTube. I agree that having your own YouTube channel will help you to stand out from the crowd. And if you do it well, you may even create a positive impression. But until you have built up your practice I would suggest that it will be more of a diversion. As a start-up practice I doubt the possible benefits warrant the time it will take you to create positive professional looking videos. For more established practices there are some more positive suggestions here: Top video marketing tips for accountants
  9. Encouraging client referrals - This is only possible once you have some clients and when they feel that you are doing a good job for them. Then perhaps you can ask them who they know who might also benefit from your services. See: How to be remembered, recommended and referred
  10. Flyers and leaflets - This is a variation on direct mail – as you could post them. More commonly though promotional flyers and leaflets can be handed out at events and locations wherever your target clients can be found. As with other forms of promotional literature these need to be professionally written and printed, contain a compelling call-to-action message and make it easy for people to find out more. It’s easy to waste money here by just not doing it very well.
  11. Promotional goods - Investing in branded pens, tax data cards or more unusual products is likely to be an expensive option for a new practice. One reason for this is that you probably won’t have many people to give them to initially. Then again, maybe you can find a low-cost, unique and valuable branded gift that will get everyone talking and sharing it with their friends. But if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it!
  12. Public relations - Another time consuming and unfocused activity. If you are minded to devote time and effort here do focus on your local area and/or those journalists and outlets that are focused on your niche area. See: How useful is PR for accountants?
  13. Blogging - There are plenty of people trying to encourage all accountants to start blogging. I am doubtful though that many start-up practices can point to their blogging as having been an effective marketing activity. See: 5 blogging myths for accountants

I am sure there are plenty of accountants who have adopted some of the ideas above. It would good to hear from those who did so when they first started out and how successful or otherwise their efforts were.

Mark Lee is consultant practice editor of AccountingWEB. If you like his articles, do check out his BookMarkLee blog and ebooks for accountants who want to stand out and be more successful. He is also chairman of the Tax Advice Network of independent tax specialists.

Replies (9)

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By carnmores
05th Sep 2013 18:15

marvellous article
Next one on established businesses

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Chris M
By mr. mischief
06th Sep 2013 15:41

I'll second that!

In fact if I could tactfully forward it to 20 or so of my non-accountancy clients I would!  Some people seem to love spending time on social media etc. which is fine so long as they have thriving businesses and are not kidding themselves that their time spent on social media is in some way building up their business.

So for any clients of any accountants who are reading this, if you are telling your accountant that you did not have time to prepare the VAT return until the 4th of September, but managed to post 20 blogs and 40 Twitter posts in August, just don't even bother with the excuses for your accountant.  Save it for someone gullible!

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By Gone Sailing
13th Sep 2013 12:32

Social Media & SEO

Agreed re social media generally - highly time consuming.

However I hear that some are good for SEO (YouTube, Google+).

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By David Winch
13th Sep 2013 12:33

But Maybe, Just Maybe

Great list, Mark.

As with everything else to do with marketing (OK, to do with promotion and lead generation), no-one can say for certain what will and won't work well for a particular firm or business.  All that can be said is that some things are more likely to work well and others are less likely to do so.

The answer is to 'test and measure'.  Try things out on a small scale, ensure you can accurately measure the costs and results (i.e. tracked all the way to profits for you) of every individual activity, and look at the returns on investment at this micro-scale.

From these results you'll know what is loss-making and not to take further, and what is profitable and needs scaling up.  But don't just look to scale up the one best performing idea; scale up maybe the top 20% best performing ideas - Yes, this does mean you need to be testing several!

But testing and measuring doesn't stop there.  You need to keep on trying to improve the RoI on the things you've decided to scale up.  Split-test a new idea against the 'benchmark' existing idea and when you've got some statistically significant results, drop the worse performing of the two.  Then keep repeating the process.  Take the view that there aren't any marketing failures, only test results!  Just keep trying to improve your best performance.

So, if you disagree with any of Mark's assertions in either list, try it out on a small scale and come to your own conclusions.  None of these ideas are guaranteed to work or guaranteed to fail.

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By carnmores
13th Sep 2013 12:42

@David

have you had a make over

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By David Winch
13th Sep 2013 12:52

There Is More Than One David Winch!

There's more than one David Winch!

I'm the Sales and Marketing Consultant from Cambridge, not the Forensic Accountant from the North-West.

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Replying to Matrix:
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By Caber Feidh
13th Sep 2013 17:12

You cannot have too many incarnations of David Winch

And there was I thinking that that the forensic David must be an even more incredibly prodigious worker than he actually is..

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By shoshana
13th Sep 2013 15:26

Cue chant from the football terraces

"There's only two David Winches, two David Winches....."

Sorry, but it is nearly the weekend and it has been a long week involving a business trip to and from Trinidad. Releasing the pressure valves.

Malcolm

Malcolm Greenbaum

Director, Greenbaum Training & Consultancy Limited

IFRS, US GAAP, UK GAAP, UK Tax and VAT

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Mark Lee headshot 2023
By Mark Lee
08th Oct 2013 09:49
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