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Why Smart Cow became a HubSpot agency

05/06/202102/21/2020 by scmarketing

We know that a sales journey is very rarely a one-stop shop. Your customers and prospects will have visited your competition’s website, researched your services and looked at online reviews long before they start speaking to you. As a result, you need to stand out from the competition and become a lead generation magnet.

This is why we became a HubSpot agency in London. We understand that the day to day running of your business will take up your time. So, we partnered with HubSpot so that we could provide our clients with the latest in Automated Marketing Software to help with your marketing strategy and help free up time.

What does HubSpot software offer?

HubSpot software allows you to track activity and leads from your inbound marketing such as social media, website or email marketing campaigns, and other forms of content marketing you use.

You can organise and nurture relationships to help you convert a prospect to a client in a timely manner, that’s suitable for them, this can lead to more client success.

Think about when you look at a website and you get a friendly chat bot appearing or what about the email you receive once you’ve downloaded a report from a website?

HubSpot provides the capability to automate these repetitive tasks to help you concentrate on managing your client relationships and target audiences.

All these automated touchpoints are vital for nurturing leads and can help up your marketing game against your competition. This is data driven and can show you the result of your inbound sales, and where your new customer acquisition originates from.

Discover the benefits of automation

As a professional digital marketing and inbound marketing agency in London, we’re offering you a chance to discover the benefits of the HubSpot software and how it can help your business. We’d be delighted to arrange a free test of this great sales and marketing platform.

Go ahead, book a free consultation. As well as this we discover what we can do for your business with our digital marketing services, inbound marketing strategies, social media marketing and much more.

8 Tips to improve marketing for accountants in London

05/06/202101/19/2020 by scmarketing

As an accounting firm, it’s easy to rely on repeat and referral business. However, if you want to grow, you need to turn to marketing your firm.

Marketing for accountants requires a bit more expertise to break through the noise and get your business noticed. There are more than 76,000 accountants in the UK. You have to work hard to get your business noticed online.

Keep reading to learn the latest marketing tips for accountants that will help your business grow.

1. Get on Google My Business

How will you be found on search engines if you don’t tell search engines that your business exists? You have to fill out a listing on Google My Business to show search engines that you have a legitimate business. It will also help your firm be found when people are searching.

2. Get Your Marketing Messages Right

How well can you communicate what sets your accounting firm apart from all of the other accounting firms in London?

You need to be able to explain to someone the services you provide, to whom, and why they need to go to your firm. That needs to happen in about 5-7 seconds.

If you do that well, you’ll be able to weed out the people who aren’t a good fit for your business and pique the curiosity of your ideal client.

3. Optimise for SEO

Millions of people turn to search engines every single day to find products and services. That includes searching for tax information and finding accountants.

Search engine optimisation is a great way to get your accounting firm in front of potential clients when they’re trying to learn about taxes or trying to find an accountant in London.

4. Content Builds Trust

Let’s say that someone is trying to find tax information. They don’t want to hire an accountant yet, but they want information on what capital allowances are and what qualifies.

You can write a blog post that addresses that very question. The goal is to optimise that post to appear in related searches for capital allowances.

The person wanting to understand what they are comes across your post, they read it, and they become more interested in your services.

Your content has to go above and beyond adding value and help people solve a very specific problem.

Marketing your accounting practice needs to establish trust with your target audience. The way you do that is by providing value and repetition.

The more people see your company, the more they’ll remember it. You want to be seen as a tax resource in London, not just another accountant.

Don’t be afraid to give away information for free.

5. Capture Email Addresses

In the example above, your website did its job to get someone interested in your accounting firm. Now it’s time to convert that person to a lead.

The best way to do that is to have them sign up to your email list. That allows you the opportunity to remain in communication with them until they decide to unsubscribe.

In order to capture an email address, you want to offer something of value. People aren’t really going to give up their email address because you want them to sign up for your newsletter.

However, a guide that outlines 5 tax saving strategies for small business owners would be a great way to get people to sign up to your list.

Whatever you have as your trap, so to speak, it has to be relevant and useful to your target audience.

6. Follow up With Retargeting

Not everyone will want to sign up for your email after they visit your website. You don’t want to lose that lead for good, so you need to find a way to keep your brand in front of them once they leave your site.

A retargeting campaign can do just that. A retargeting campaign uses tracking cookies to present your display ads on websites and social media networks once someone leaves your site.

Retargeting does “impact consumer behaviour” and it can help you get more clients to your accounting firm.

7. Take Networking Online

How often do you spend time at networking meetings? They can be incredibly valuable and provide a great source of referrals. You can take the same approach to a networking meeting and apply it to social media. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are great places to connect with other professionals and individuals who could benefit from a good accountant. It’s another way to engage with potential customers and establish credibility and trust.

8. Measure Results and Adjust Your Campaign

Once you start a marketing campaign, you can’t let it run on autopilot. It needs attention and tweaking, which can be difficult when you’re trying to manage client work in the middle of tax season.

You need to measure the results of your campaign to see what tactics are working well and which ones aren’t. That will give you enough information to make an informed decision about your marketing.

For example, you look at your analytics and see what you’re getting traffic to your site, and they’re reading your content. However, they’re not converting to email leads or scheduling appointments.

It could be for a variety of reasons. The visitors may be early in the buying cycle and need more touches before

It could also be that your lead magnet isn’t compelling enough to drive signups. Good marketing takes patience and testing to get it to be perfect.

Marketing for Accountants

As an accounting firm, if you want to grow, you need to do more than rely on repeat and referral business. You need to learn the latest ways to improve marketing for accountants and apply them to your business.

There are plenty of ways to market your firm from content marketing to SEO. To be successful, you need to be consistent and be willing to measure and test your campaigns.

Do you need help with marketing your accounting firm? Contact us, digital marketing and SEO experts for accountants, today for a free consultation.

7 stats for great inbound marketing

05/26/202210/28/2019 by scmarketing

With quality content forming a key part of any inbound strategy, we take a look at some of the top tips from a all-round digital marketing agency to think about when you next create a blog or think about social media for your business.

Tips for your website

The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words (Backlinko, 2016)
Strategic landing pages are used by 68% of B2B businesses to acquire leads (Marketo, 2018)

Think about your web design, it’s worth remembering that you want to reduce bounce rate from your website and that you need to engage with a reader within 3 seconds. So, if you’re running a PPC campaign, make sure you have a dedicated landing page from the search engine for any lead generation– if 68% of businesses are considering this to acquire leads, it must be a good idea.

Tips for blogs

Titles with 6-13 words attract the highest and most consistent amount of traffic (HubSpot, 2016)
Using statistics in blog posts improves consumer trust (Forbes, 2018)
36% prefer list-based headlines (IMPACT, 2019)

The next time you embark on drafting a blog for your website, really take a moment to think of the content marketing and whether it is of interest to your audience. This can help you hone a much more meaningful article when thinking of the reader. Now, while stats may indicate that a healthy length of a first page result on Google search as 1,890, we wouldn’t see this as a necessary guideline for a length of a blog. What is key is that your content is relevant, interesting, informative and fresh. Don’t regurgitate content just because you think the length of the article should be longer. Everything you write has to have a point and if it’s said in 600 words, so be it!

LinkedIn is the most effective social media
platform for delivering content and securing audience
engagement (LinkedIn, 2017)
47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content
before engaging with a sales rep (Demand Gen Report, 2016)

The importance of inbound marketing

The old marketing adage of it taking 6-8 touch points for a brand awareness to be built, is still true today as it ever was. And, now with the raft of communication avenues available the possibilities for your business are endless, but also the competition is rife. This is why it’s so important to keep content fresh on your website so that you can continually educate new and returning customers as well as consulting with an inbound marketing agency.

With marketing automation capabilities today, you can also tailor and personalise your comms so much more. With a simple download of a document you can tailor a follow up email. Or you can personalise a chatbot for a returning customer. Personalisation is so important, as it also helps build trust with your audience as you need to reach them at least 6 times before a possibility of a lead through to conversion.

So, with these top stats, use these tactics in your content.
And, also ask yourself whether a LinkedIn company page should be part of your
inbound marketing strategy moving forward.

As a market leading digital marketing agency in London, we’ve got the knowledge of digital marketing services, marketing campaigns, attracting qualified leads to get your content noticed to drive traffic to your website and help you rise in organic rankings.

Source of all statistics in this blog: www.hubspot.com

Wooden dice with email symbol for digital marketing communications

6 Email marketing tips to grow your business

12/08/202010/19/2019 by scmarketing

How email marketing can grow your business

You may think that incorporating email distribution into your digital marketing plan as a bit old hat, but let us paint a picture on this cost effective marketing service for you. Think how you feel when you receive a letter at your home. You check your post every day and open letters addressed personally to you. You follow a similar process with your emails. Your phone is always at arm’s reach and when you get that notification you look to see what you’ve received – if anything to get rid of those red bubbles! But in doing so, you’ve clocked the brand – that’s helping with awareness. It’s then your choice as to whether you open and read, file or delete. But ultimately some impression on you will be made. But what makes an email campaign effective that can help to grow your business?

Newsletter sign up

First and foremost, you need a list of email addresses to distribute your content to. If you’ve already got your database sorted and it’s GDPR compliant then you’re all set.

But, if you do not have a list, one of the best ways is to make sure you have a newsletter pop up box on your website for visitors to sign-up to receive emails. But be very clear about what you’re capturing someone’s details for, as you need to be GDPR compliant (read about the ICO regulations).

You can also work with digital marketing agencies to help you with creating the pop-up box on your website or helping you to purchase a list. Create a CRM system too this will help you engage effectively with customers knowing their needs and and how bet to contact them.

Get to the point

So, with your GDPR compliant list you’re set to send an email. But wait, what are you going to tell your potential customers? Your content needs to be fresh, engaging and most of all worthy of someone opening the email and reading it. Really think about the news you are sending and question – “is it relevant to my target audience?”

The subject line is crucial. It needs to entice, engage, have meaning and stand out. Phrases such as “3 days left to save on your personal tax accounting fees” – it provides a hook to open the email.

Also, steer clear of keywords that will be caught by spam filters such as ‘free’ or ‘buy’.

Set the tone

By now you should have set up your target persona (check out creating an online persona to help with this). Therefore you’ll know the keywords and phrases you should be using, the tone should be a reflection on your accountancy firm.

Call to action

So, you’ve sent an email, so what. Make sure that the recipient knows what to do next. Make it clear and obvious what the ‘Call to Action’ is so they benefit from your email. Include trackable links to give you a picture of what’s popular and where leads have come from, e.g. links to blog posts, web pages, social media platforms.

Unsubscribe

You must always have an unsubscribe option in your email as well as a link to your privacy policy. While it’s sad that people may unsubscribe, see this as a positive. If people are not interested, then by making it easy to unsubscribe, you’ve cleared someone from your list that wasn’t going to engage anymore than that. Don’t alienate people by making it difficult, if they are not interested in what you have to say then that is their loss. Just focus on those who are interested. Remember, you need to be GDPR compliant, so transparency is important.

Images

Make sure your email template is easy to navigate but most of all you have enough pictures to make it interesting to look at.

Book a Practice Growth Session

To make a leading marketing campaign it makes sense to contact the experts; we are a email marketing agency in London. Get in touch to receive support in getting an email marketing campaign set up to help with your inbound marketing, then get in touch with us today.

We have expertise offering digital and email marketing for accountants and offer Practice Growth Sessions which are tailored for firms keen to grow and ready to invest in a digital marketing campaign to achieve their goals. You can book a session with us for £95.