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Business growth with inbound marketing

Your inbound marketing guide for accounting firms

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Inbound marketing is focused on lead generation to attract quality clients from qualified leads interested in your accounting services.

An inbound marketing strategy is about building brand awareness and trust through thought leadership content. Certainly, in the current COVID-19 situation it’s about sharing insightful content that will help your potential customers.

Adding context to your marketing activity that’s relevant to your audience is key to success.

Inbound marketing strategy for accountants

We recommend that you take time to understand who you are selling to. An accounting practice will know from experience who their main clients are. Therefore, create an imaginary persona based on this. What are the challenges that your target audience faces? Empathise with their requirements and personalise your content.

It’s all about appealing to your relevant prospects to reach those quality leads interested in your accounting services.

Think of your overarching message and USP – why should someone come to your accounting firm as opposed to another? What are you offering that’s different and make is specific to your target audience?

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to help you create your marketing strategy.

What does inbound marketing include?

There’s no one size fits all to inbound marketing, even for an accountancy practice.

There’s a number of inbound marketing tactics that a digital agency will draw on to create a strategy to generate traffic for your accounting firm. Here’s an overview of digital marketing tools.

  1. Website design and development
  2. Search Engine Optimised website 
  3. Blogs
  4. Social Media Marketing
  5. Pay Per Click (PPC)
  6. Remarketing / Banner advertising
  7. Email Marketing
  8. Video
  9. CRM and marketing automation

What to do first with inbound marketing

  1. Your website is at the core of your business, it’s your shop window. So, a review of your current site is a key first step to take.
  2. Think of the keywords you want your accounting firm to be found for. If your expertise lies in outsourcing services such as bookkeeping, payroll and VAT returns, then make sure you have content that answers questions for your potential clients covering these topics.  
  3. Make sure your website is easy to navigate. A lot of websites these days are Content Managed Systems (CMS) so you can generally make quick fix updates yourself. If you have trouble updating anything then get in touch with a digital marketing agency that manages web design and development. We offer free consultations and can provide a proposal based on your requirements.
  4. Have you completed your Google My Business page? It’s free to do and is the ultimate directory to be on providing quality links back to your website.
  5. An ongoing content marketing plan is also key. This will help position your accounting firm as a thought leader in the sector. So, think of adding a blog to your website or more up to date articles as this provides great new content for a website. Having already implemented your keyword research, including relevant phrases in your new blogs will help search engines find your practice.   

Working with an inbound marketing agency in Surrey

As a digital agency for accountants, we would look at your business, understand your objectives to then tailor an inbound marketing campaign for your firm encompassing the tactics that are right for your goals. 

Why not contact us for a FREE consultation? If you’re looking to grow your business, talk us through your current position, where you would like to be, your target audience and objectives and we can work on a proposal for you.

In the meantime, Download The Beginner’s Guide to Generating Inbound Leads.

Business ruler

Attract the right online enquiry to convert leads

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Maintaining good quality leads through your website is key to business growth. For a professional services firm, such as accounting, this is vital to continue business through the current COVID-19 situation and ongoing service to your existing clients.

But to get quality leads to your sales funnel in the first place is the trick. So, here we give a little overview of some of the digital marketing tactics you can employ to help with online lead generation. 

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to help you create your inbound marketing strategy to attract quality leads. Read on for a quick summary to get you started.

Quality content 

You’ll be hearing quality quite a lot from us. If you want quality leads then you need to attract clients with quality, tailored content.  

During this time of uncertainty, your content needs to be offering advice to your clients. Keep them informed of legislation, company changes and support through your blog, email marketing, social media channels and webinars.  

Email marketing  

Whilst you may feel that new business is not happening right now, maintaining presence is vital to be certain you will be remembered in the coming weeks when society picks up its pace to the next stage of ‘normal’. 

So, if you don’t already have a newsletter sign up box on the homepage of your website then add that. Capture email addresses and keep in touch with these people who have opted in with regular email marketing campaigns. They clearly want to hear from you so make the most of it.  

Just remember to be GDPR compliant and ensure that you tell people what they are signing up to and make it easy for them to opt out of communication.   

Get quality leads in your sales funnel  

But what should you do to attract the right type of enquiry? 

Make sure you have created a positioning statement about your company, your goals and target audience.  

Create an online persona of your target audience. This simple document will give background to a typical client of yours and provide answers to their challenges.  

Through targeted and relevant content you attract your audience to your website through blogs, optimised website (SEO), social media marketing and Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. It’s worth noting that 89% of online consumers use search engines when making a purchase decision. 

Once a visitor reaches your website, it’s about engaging with your target audience. From the initial landing page with bold calls to action or forms to download ebooks. To close the deal, it’s again about relevant emails and nurturing contacts through a well-managed CRM system.  

Reviews 

Once you have secured a contract with your new client, asking for a testimonial to add to your website or to your Google My Business page can help with gaining further quality leads. With 88% of consumers having read reviews to determine the quality of a local business, it makes sense to add this action into your marketing plan. 

Smart Cow is a digital marketing agency in Croydon. Whether you’re looking for a complete digital marketing strategy or standalone PPC campaign with Google adwords management book a free consultation and we can discuss our marketing services with you.

Digital marketing Croydon resources 

Search Engine optimisation keyboard

6 SEO tips to improve search ranking

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the key digital marketing tactic working invisibly and effectively in the background to help improve your visibility in search engines.  

Incorporating SEO into your overall marketing strategy is important right now especially as we’re reliant on the virtual world to shout about our business attributes. What’s key is about generating leads. You don’t want just anyone visiting your site, it’s about quality leads.

To help you achieve this, we’ve gathered together our top tips to kick start your SEO campaign and some refreshers for those businesses who need to revisit this.  

1. Review website navigation 

To have any success in Google search your website needs to be easy to navigate. This is not just about your menu, it’s the internal links that you include on web pages to help the search engine crawlers to use links and understand the content of your page. Conduct a review of your website to see if you have good quality links directing visitors around your site.  

2. Fix broken links  

Make sure the internal links on your website work. Think of a search engine as your visitor, it doesn’t want to be sent to a ‘404’ page as much as an actual visitor. It won’t be marked well for you. We can conduct a FREE Website review which will indicate errors such as broken links that you can then fix.  

3. Keywords 

If you don’t already have a list of words that you want to be found for, then now is a time to conduct keyword research. Spend some time really thinking about what your target audience is searching for to find you. What’s your business offering? How are your services solving a problem for your customers? These types of questions can help you get to those keywords and phrases (longtail keywords) that you then use to create content to optimise your web pages.  

When you review your current content against this new list of keywords, there’s a few tips and tricks to implement that will help you stand out in search engines. Use the keyword in the title of your page and if possible, the URL – however this may be too difficult if you have a lot of backlinks already to the pages so you may not want to change them. We would usually aim to place a keyword within the first paragraph.  

It’s also key to have your meta description completed and with keyword included. This is the short phrase that you see below the website URL in search results.  

4. Review web page URL  

Don’t be clever with the name of pages on your website. The URL of your pages should in effect ‘do what it says on the tin’. If you’re an accounting firm and one of your pages is about tax advice, then that should be the URL. It’s the keyword you want to be found for. 

5. Link building  

You may have articles or comments on other websites which include a link back to your website – in other words a ‘backlink’. Google monitors links reviewing quantity and quality. This helps build a websites’ authority. However, be careful, you don’t want links placed on any website, the emphasis is on quality and relevance to your website.  

6. Local SEO

Local SEO can help you target local clients and prospects. Create content that includes information about the specific geographical areas you’re targeting. Also complete your Google My Business page. It helps Google verify your business.   

Digital marketing agency  

This is just a short overview of just some of the search engine marketing tips you can conduct for website optimisation. If you need help from a digital marketing agency to kick start your SEO strategy and improve your online presence then get in touch with us for your free consultation.  

Website updates accountants

8 website updates for accounting firms

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With all the change and uncertainty right now, as an accountancy practice your main concern is servicing your existing clients offering the most-timely advice as and when updates are announced by government that could assist your client base.

Importantly it’s also the key time to maintain your presence online to continue building that groundwork that is the necessity of any lead generation strategy. In time, when circumstances change, and businesses start to grow, it’s the firms and suppliers that have provided helpful advice that will be remembered and be seen as the go to company for new business.  

So, what can you as an accounting firm do to optimise your website to help maintain your position in search rankings? Here’s our top website tips to help you kick start a great Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign for your business to get your website seen. 

1. Is your website easy to navigate?  

Check that your accounting services are clearly visible in the menu so that there is an easy path for visitors who reach your homepage. Show your key services on your homepage and a call to action to read more, download information or get in touch.  

2. Do you have enough internal links on your website?  

This is another navigation tactic. Make sure that you are making it even easier for visitors to find information on your website. Embed links into keyword phrases.

3. Complete your H1, H2 headers 

This helps search engines work out the theme of the page to return the right answers to the searcher. 

4. Complete your meta descriptions 

This neat little paragraph is what you read when you search online. Keep to under 160 characters and make sure it’s relevant to the content on that web page.

5. Be image-led on your website 

Help create stand-out with good photography and video content. But, make sure images are the right size and you have completed the alt tag on the backend as this will help site speed and prevent visitors leaving your site.  

6. Create a content plan  

A solid basis for any website optimisation strategy is to develop a content marketing plan. This should include a regular schedule of information such as blogs that can be drafted and uploaded onto your website. Search engines love fresh content. It helps position you as an authority in your sector.   

However, ensure that you are using good keywords within your content. By this, we mean phrases that you want to be found for when people search for you. If you include these important phrases in content, in particular headings, then it helps you to be found when people search. Such as ‘Annual Accounts for construction firms’ or ‘Tax returns for a sole trader’. Think of who your target audience is and write content for them.  

This has only touched the surface, so if you want to delve a little deeper into SEO as part of your digital marketing strategy then do get in touch for a free consultation via Zoom.

7. Calls to action

Calls to action (CTA) should form a key part of your content marketing strategy. These are best placed above the fold, the space before the visitor has to scroll down. Make sure you have a bold CTA so that it stands out and use design to make it clear that it’s a clickable link.   

8. Get a free website review 

With so many factors affecting whether and where your website will be found on google search, complete our form to get a free website audit. This free review provided by Smart Cow Marketing will provide you with some interesting results to help with your inbound marketing. 

Navigating your digital marketing journey 

If you want the task of fixing these issues taken off your hands, then we’d be happy to assist you further with your digital marketing. Just get in touch about what your digital marketing requirements for your accountancy practice. 

Smart Cow marketing specialises in digital marketing for accountants helping firms improve online visibility to attract potential clients through online marketing.

Digital marketing resources 

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