8 Tips to improve marketing for accountants in London

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.

SEO croydon

8 tips on setting up and maintaining SEO

To
help your business grow, you need to tell people that you exist. These days
your shop window is a virtual one – it’s your website. However, just like a
bricks and mortar premises your website needs to be found, it’s just that these
days that means via a search engine. Just as you would have a sign on your
window advertising your products and services you need to let people know where
you are.

So, this is when you may hear about the term Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In a nutshell, SEO is a marketing strategy about a set of processes that make it better for a website to be found through search engines and build your online presence so that you rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Here’s our top tips on setting up and maintaining SEO to help your business rise in organic search.

  1. Know your audience that you’re marketing to: For this you need to create an online persona. Think about the goals or challenges of your target audience. Start with their job role, imagine their personal goals such as business growth, saving the business money or a future promotion. Then imagine what challenges they face and start to note solutions for these and how your product or service can help them. Already you can start to see a personality form in front of you.
  2. Draw up a list of your keywords and phrases: Website optimisation involves looking at how your website is built, the keywords within any content creation, on your website as well as understanding your target audience and their search behaviour. Armed with this background you can build a strategy to improve your rankings in the organic (non-ads based, natural) search results. Most online searches start with a few words relevant to what you’re looking for. So, if you’re an ‘accountancy’ practice in ‘Brighton’ then you would likely be interested in your company showing up on page one of a search relevant to these keywords.
  3. Longtail keywords: Think about being very specific on keywords, which are sometimes given the term ‘long tail keywords’. For example, if you are searching for an accountant you may search for “Accountants in Croydon”“Accountant for business start-up”“Chartered accountant in Surrey,” or “Accountant for SME Tax Return”. It’s likely to be a lot easier to rank for this as there will be less competition, but, while you may see less traffic to your website as not many people will search such a specific phrase, it will help it to be targeted.
  4. Meta descriptions: This is the short paragraph that sits beneath the company name when you conduct a search online. By completing the meta description when you upload content to your website, you can create a succinct paragraph which includes keywords to helpfully direct prospects to your website. Meta descriptions are a website’s way of telling Google and other search engines exactly what each of your pages are about, what to display and how to display it in the results.
  5. Alt tags: Complete the description of your image in the ‘Alt Tag’ box when you upload it to your website. You can be descriptive about what’s in the image but also relate back to a relevant keyword if you can.
  6. Headings: Think about whether you can add keywords to your blog title. Or at least in your subheadings. The h1 tag is also key and should not be missed on any page as it should contain information about the content of the page. Search engines check the keyword consistency between the header tag and the content on the rest of the page.
  7. Try local search: Decide on the geographical areas you want to target to find new clients and use that for your future digital marketing campaigns. Think about your content on your website, is it specific for the location you’re targeting? Have you mentioned that you are offering a service for people in a specific area anywhere on your website?
  8. Populate Google My Business: This is a free tool to use and well worth the time and effort to complete. Google is one of the most popular search engines after all, so you may as well let them know about you by filling out as much about your company as you can. The very basics to complete are your website URL, opening times, address, contact number and email as well as a short paragraph about your company. But it is worth exploring what else you can complete as this will all help Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and your company being seen in search, further optimising your website.

Get in touch with us at Smart Cow today for you Free Consultation on improve SEO in Croydon and beyond.

Digital marketing resources:

Word dictionary search SEO

Quality website content that improves business

To help you make the most of your online presence, here we take a look at content and how it can improve your online visibility in search. This in turn will help your business grow as more and more potential clients find you and engage with you. Looking to ramp up your website design in London? Get in touch here for a Free Consultation.

Who are you targeting?

Before you embark on any fresh content for your website or if you’re updating your current website, make sure you have a target persona created. You need to understand your audience and their challenges, wants and needs before you can know how to write relevant content that will make them listen and engage with you. Take a look at our blog about setting up the identity of your target audience to help you create a persona for your business.

Content is and will always be king 

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it a thousand times, content is king. Relevant content for your target audience that is succinct, to the point and carries good call to actions will not only help with engagement and ease of navigation, it will also help you rise in the rankings in search. Why? With a well-tailored Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign you can help your business be seen by ensuring you are using the right keywords and phrases.

Read our blog on SEO to help you improve your content and impact on where you appear on a search engine results page (SERP). Remember that 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search* so it’s important to ensure you have great content that helps you move up the rankings and support your goal to appear on the first page of search.

Watch your tone

We would also advise that you draw up a list of how you would like your content to sound and come across to your audience. This means that you have consistency across your website as well as other marketing channels such as social media and email marketing. It also means that if you have a number of contributors they can write in a similar manner so you can maintain consistency of brand.

Book a Practice Growth Session

If you feel you need some support in getting your website Search Engine Optimised then get in touch with us today.

We also run Practice Growth Sessions which are tailored for businesses 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.

Sources: *Search Engine Journal

SEO Agency

Why website optimisation is key to business growth

Why website optimisation is key to business growth

Your website in the online world is the equivalent to a business premises in the real world. What it looks like, where it is found, how up to date it is and how easy it is to navigate are all crucial factors to its success. A tailored Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign will help your business be seen.

What is SEO?

SEO is a collection of processes that make it better for a website to be found through the search engines. Most online searches do not start with the company name being typed into the search engine, it’s usually a few words relevant to what you’re looking for. So, if you’re an ‘accountancy’ practice in ‘Guildford’ then you would likely be interested in your company showing up on page one of a search relevant to these keywords.

Website optimisation involves looking at how your website is built, the keywords within content on your website as well as understanding your target audience and their search behaviour. Armed with this background you can build a strategy to improve your rankings in the organic (non-ads based, natural) search results.

Target audience

You’ll already have worked out your online target audience persona to create the content for your website. But if not, it’s not too late. Look at our blog to help you create a persona. Then think about what tweaks you may need to make to your website content or call to actions to make it engaging to this audience and worth their time visiting your website. Think quality over quantity when it comes to content on your website. This will stand you in good stead for optimising your website.

Outbound, internal inbound links

As part of the ranking process, search engines consider the quality of links, awarding scores based on the usefulness and relevance of those links. Internal links can ease navigation within the website itself, this includes making sure it is mobile friendly. While, incoming links to your website provides an indication of how useful your content is to others as people share posts on social media. Less links will have an impact upon where you return in a search result for a given term.

Meta descriptions

Think about when you’ve recently searched online for something. You see a return of results where companies have great headlines and a paragraph of well written copy that entices you to click the link instead of others. Behind the scenes you can create these paragraphs or meta descriptions on pages on your website – these are really good when it comes to blogs you may upload. Meta descriptions are a website’s way of telling Google and other search engines exactly what each of your pages are about, what to display and how to display it in the results.

Tip: Google My Business

Check out our blog on completing a Google My Business page. One of the first things to do when your website is live, and to help it be seen in search, is to fill out as much as you can on this page – it’s Free to do!

In a nutshell the benefits of SEO are:

  • Enhanced brand perception and online presence through better ranking
  • Better rate of enquiries due to improved visibility
  • Prime and prominent visibility across Google Maps
  • Attraction of closely related audiences through better use of popular search terms

Book a Practice Growth Session

Smart Cow assists in website design in London and Surrey. If you feel you need some support in getting your website Search Engine Optimised, then get in touch with our web design team today to create you a bespoke website.

We also run Practice Growth Sessions which are tailored for businesses 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.