Digital marketing for accountants

Why digital marketing is key for accounting firms

Word of mouth is crucial for accounting firms when it comes to marketing and new business, or so it was. Now, as technology advances with automation of tasks and we can communicate wherever and whenever, incorporating digital marketing into your lead generation marketing strategy is key today. Relying solely on referrals won’t necessarily generate the business you need to grow your firm.  

Marketing automation 

A key thing for accounting firms is freeing up time. We know that accountants are time poor managing many client relationships and ensuring the client experience is top notch. So, anything that can take over everyday activity will help. Whilst we’ve seen innovation in financial accounting to free up time from repetitive tasks and manual data processing, this is adding digital marketing to the mix can enhance your offering further.  

Asking visitors to your website to sign up to a regular email newsletter or download a helpful template you already have an idea of what the visitor is interested to know more about. With automated emails and knowledge of website users interest you can create emails that reach people at the right time. With connected website analytics to your email marketing platform you can really target messages to your client base.  

You can also schedule email messages to your clients or prospects so that they don’t go too long without hearing from you. Following a download of anything from your website it’s essential for follow up and that’s where email automation comes into its own as it can do this automatically for you.  

Linking this with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform will provide you with great insight across your firm of interaction with clients and prospect to help improve client retention and increase new business opportunities.

Website chatbots 

Chat bots are a great way of answering typical questions and fielding enquires to the right funnel. The customer experience is also a lot smoother as well as freeing up time as it fields enquiries to the right department. The chat bot can essentially provide all the advice needed that the visitor is looking for.  

It’s a truly interactive marketing tool for your website as the visitor feels like they are being welcomed to the website and shown around. Rather than being left to their own devices.  

Content marketing for accountants

These are just a couple of examples. What’s key is having good quality relevant content that can be seeded out through various channels tailored to your target audience.  

With quality content you can repurpose for various digital marketing channels. So, when you write a blog or an article it’s making sure that you shatter this information into bite size chunks for other digital channels. Therefore, it’s not just one article but perhaps 10 different tips you want to get across all originating from one source on your website.   

If there was one message we would want to get across to accounting firms, it’s that your website is the centre of your digital world. So, any activity you do elsewhere online whether that’s paid-for advertising or social media, your goal is to push viewers of your content back to your website.  

It’s also important to remember that it takes approx 7 views of a brand for a potential customer to become aware of the message. So, ensuring that digital marketing is accounted for in your overall marketing strategy is essential.  

Developing an inbound digital marketing strategy 

We provide digital marketing agency for accountants in Croydon. By offering an initial consultation we can get to the bottom of what your goals are so we can develop a digital marketing approach that’s ideal for your accountancy firm.

It’s not a one size fits all approach. So, if your accounting practice is looking to attract quality clients and qualified leads, perhaps now is the time to explore the options of digital and inbound marketing.

Digital marketing resources

inbound marketing

8 website tips specific for Accountants in London

With the top 15 accounting firms in the UK based in London having a strong online presence is key, this means having a website that focuses on the USPs of your practice. This is not only important to attract new clients but also to retain your current client base.

So, we’ve gathered a few top tips on what accountants should consider for their website. Whether you’re looking to refresh what you have or wanting a brand-new website, here’s some thoughts for accountants to factor into their digital marketing strategy.

SEO

Search engine marketing is critical; you want to be found online when clients search for your business. Therefore, a well optimised website is the first trick of the trade. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) takes time but some essentials to cover off with your web developer will be:

  • Make sure images are the right size and you have completed the alt tag on the backend
  • Complete your H1, H2 headers etc., this helps search engines work out the theme of the page to return the right answers to the searcher.
  • Complete your meta descriptions – this neat little paragraph is what is read when you search online.

Easy navigation

Review your current site map and if you’re starting from scratch make sure that it’s clear and call to actions are bold. Be obvious about what you’re asking a visitor to your site to do. Is it easy for them to find your list of accounting services? Help them move around your website with ease. On top of being clear and concise it shows good customer service for anyone visiting your site.

Blog

As an accountancy firm, you probably think that a blog isn’t relevant to you. Think again! If you don’t have a blog or news page, now’s the time to introduce one.

If you already have a Content Management System (CMS) this should be relatively easy to add to your menu. The importance of this page is that it’s a great place to keep content fresh on a website and search engines like new content.

Content marketing

You need to be thinking about content that will be useful to your potential customers that they start to use you as a go to site for information. Go into detail about the services so people understand whether this is something they should have and this also has a great effect on search results too. Talk about key accounting deadlines in the year, remind people of them too. Also keep them up to date with latest changes to legislation and tax rules. Content can be published in the form of blogs, email campaigns, website pages, or social media marketing (for accountancy marketing LinkedIn would be a appropriate platform to you.).

Be image led

Business owners may think this isnot relevant for an accountancy firm. But images are a key part in any digital marketing campaign. Why? They not only create stand out, but they provide consistency to create a holistic marketing campaign. A good mix of images and video placed on your landing pages alongside your content and relevant keywords really brings a webpage to life. Plus, you can repurpose your images to share on social media to really help your posts stand out.

And, if you follow our tips about optimising your images then it helps with search engines finding your site.

Understand what your website visitor wants

Downloadable information such as ebooks or forms to complete to be added to an email database are great ways to know what your visitor is interested in for when you next engage with them. This helps to build rapport and to move them through your pipeline from lead to client.

We’re a hubspot partner firm and would be able to guide you through the benefits of a lead generation Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution for your marketing services so your firm can prevent data silos allowing different teams the ability to see what’s in the pipeline to work effectively on leads and to grow existing clients.

Be safe

Most CMS provide modules to allow you to back up and to make safe against hackers. Unfortunately, with web robots (automated programs) checking thousands of websites a second for weaknesses to exploit the owner it’s important to do as much as you can to make it safe. Talk through the options with your web developer such as the SSL certificate and captcha forms for your website

Free website review

Smart Cow is a digital agency for accountants. This is just a small overview of digital marketing for accountants in London. If you have questions about online marketing or would like a free website review which will highlight any areas that may need work on, get in touch.

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Digital Marketing for accountants in London

Is your accounting practice looking to attract more quality clients and qualified leads? Digital marketing for accountants is key.

A digital inbound marketing strategy could be the answer to help you reach potential Clients and retain existing ones.

Attract and retain clients

With the top 15 accounting firms in the UK based in London alone, having a search engine marketing strategy in place to help your website stand out is vital to lead generation.

Ultimately you want to generate traffic for potential customers, nurture those leads and then convert to a client. This journey is very rarely a one-stop shop. Your prospects will have done their research, checked out you and your competitions services and read online reviews.

But first things first, to generate traffic you’ll need to take a few steps for your firms website to be found using online marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Through optimisation of your website and a good digital marketing strategy you can help generate traffic and attract good qualified leads from business owners who are interested in your services.

Read our blog post about what SEO agencies should offer London firms to help you review your current website and implement some quick win optimisation tricks.

Content marketing  

As part of your accountant website review, take a look at the content. Is it easy to read, to the point and simple to navigate? Offering tips on accounting services and advice on new regulations helps position you as a thought leader to your client base. With fresh blog content, search engines have new content to find you for and that can easily be shared on social media.

But one review you can make is your use or keywords – are they relevant? For instance are you using such phrases as ‘accountants in London’? This all helps search engines find you and show you in relevant search results.

Pay Per Click

This digital marketing tactic offers a truly targeted way to reach potential prospects.

Pay Per Click campaigns (PPC) mean you can focus on geographical areas, pinpointing areas of London and Greater London as well as choosing demographics to fit your target audience.

Be succinct and to the point in your ad messaging as you only get a limited word count to play with. Test out your messaging too. The beauty of a PPC campaign is you can tailor and continue to tweak ads depending on results. In doing so you can really begin to see a Return on Investment (ROI) with a Google AdWord campaign.

Our blog on tips for setting up and running PPC campaigns will give you more insight to set up a specific campaign.

While a remarketing campaign provides that all important brand awareness as those ads will follow visitors around the web. Understanding how remarketing can grow your business has more helpful tips for you to consider for your accounting firm.

Lead nurturing & automation

Even if you have a good conversion rate, you’ll still need to be managing hundreds of leads through the life cycle. To make this efficient, you may want to consider applying several automation tools. From email campaigns, sequences and workflows, automating repetitive tasks can help free up time.

A good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can also pull teams together to work effectively on leads and clients.

Looking for leads?

There’s no doubt that optimising your website will help create stand out and help you be found for your services. However, as you’ve read, there’s a whole host of ideas to consider, and more. So, if you feel you need support in attracting leads to grow your accounting firm, then get in touch with Smart Cow, a digital agency for accountants, and we can look at creating a digital marketing plan specifically for your practice.

Book a Free consultation.