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Who's going to kick it off?

21st Oct 2009
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Smaller accounting firms generally provide services to the SME sector, but how do they approach the activity of lead generation and business development? what works and what doesn't?

How many practices rely on the tried n trusted routes of word of mouth referral and good old fashioned networking, and how many have embraced technological advancements and experimented with search engine optimisation, social media sites such as twitter, or targeted email marketing?

I’d like to hear from small practices how they generally develop leads and new business, but also more significantly, which activities from the below do they feel could be rewarding and would they like to do more of but haven’t, whether due to prohibitive cost, lack of technical knowledge or simply not enough time in the day.

• good old fashioned face-to-face networking,
• relying on word of mouth referrals from current clients,
• hard copy, direct mail through the postbox
• targeted email marketing
• outsourced telesales for activities such as securing appointments
• SEO strategy to generate incoming leads via a website
• Creating a community via social media sites such as facebook, twitter and linkedin

I look forward to some healthy discussion, debate and examples of where people have failed or succeeded

Chris Chapman
Owner, Sopris Ltd
www.sopris.co.uk

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By chrischapman5
23rd Oct 2009 11:10

Waste of a website?

How many of us have spent money on a website but dont use it for anything other than to point people towards that we meet and to put on our business cards?

Given a small amount of time there's an enormous amount of work that can be done to increase the visibility of your website on a Google search. For example, would you have thought that there were 4,400 searches on the exact phrase "Accounting Cambridge" in a 30 day period? and a further 1,800 searching for "Acountancy Cambridge"? plus 1,600 "Accountants Cambridge" and 800 "Accountant Cambridge". Those together make up approximately 8,600 searches from people who are looking for some form of accounting services in the Cambridge area. just think how many of those 8,600 you'd need to grwo your business significantly and how many of them you could have brought to your site if it was on the first page of search results for those phrases?

Now, many amongst us know that there is a real science behind getting your site high up on the natural rankings, but at the same time there's a lot that you can be doing yourself that shift things significantly in your favour.

If you're anything like me, you just dont have time to do it, but at the same time don't want to spend money on one of the numerous companies out there who say they can do to for you. If you want to grow or secure new business then get off the fence and go either one way or the other, but don't stand still while others leap ahead of you.

Who has experimented with optimising their site and how successful have you been?

Chris

www.sopris.co.uk (not very well optimised!)

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