For some time now, Google, Bing and Yahoo have mixed the “Local Pages” in with the organic search results when a region or city name is used as one of the keywords searched. All throughout this year Google have stepped up the game by offering “Blended Search Results”.

I noticed the absence of the Big 4 accounting firms completely by accident while I was doing keyword research for a client. I expected there would be stiff competition from all of the Big 4 firms but to my surprise they weren’t anywhere to be found in the first 5 pages of search results.

The firms that were being displayed on the search results were primarily smaller firms whose websites made it very clear that they operate in the town or city searched for.

Here are a few tips to help you take advantage of this;

• Create (or claim) and optimise a google places page for your accounting firm places.google.com Google will send you a verification code by post which usually arrives in a couple of weeks.
• Put a small image of your places map (linked to your goolgle places page) along with your accounting firms name, address and telephone number in the footer on every page of your website.
• Make sure that you are listed in any trusted local web directories / yellow pages sites.
• Ensure that the “Geographic target” for your website is set correctly in Google Webmaster Tools.
• Get reviewed! Google Bing and Yahoo each have review sections associated with places pages. Find the link for adding a review and send it to some of your good clients and ask them to add a good review for your accounting firm.
• Make sure that you select the correct categories on your Google places page
• Use the EXACT same name, address and phone number on your website and Google places page.
• Complete your places page! Take some photos and upload 10 of the best, add video if you can, put in your website address and a compelling description of your accounting firm.

Thats about it at a basic level, doing this wont give instant results but you will see your position improve over a few months.

Imagine for a moment that a national TV station was doing a business affairs piece and wanted some commentary on a topic that’s firmly within your specialty. Are you the person they call? If not, why not? Your more than qualified, you have the experience and the knowledge. Imagine what it would do for your business development and client acquisition strategies (not to mention your career) if you were the publicly recognised authority in your area of accounting and business strategy. Regular TV, radio and newspaper appearances, speaking opportunities at business events and conferences, people referencing you on the web, etc, etc…

So! Go do it! Set yourself the task of becoming the recognised “go to person” in your specialist area”.

My job is done here…. Wait, are those excuses I hear?

Q. Why me?
A. Why Not? (how many people can you name who could do it better)

Q. But isn’t it going to be impossible to do that?
A. No. (It might not be the easiest thing you’ve ever done, but its perfectly do-able)

OK, so here are my thoughts on the subject of individual accounting experts.

In the old days it was very difficult to become a publicly recognised expert on any topic, those that were, usually had to have achieved some spectacular success in their given area. For example, if you were in sports you had to win a major title, if you were in many other fields you had to have a best-selling book or if you were in business you had to lead a fortune 500 company. Even if you had these credentials the large media companies acted as a kind of a clearing house for “subject matter experts” and the whole affair was entirely out of your control.

Whats stopping you?

Look at the keyboard that is sitting right in front of you (go on look at it), that keyboard is connected via the internet to some 2.1 billion people around the world. If you have something interesting to say and the guts to say it (and I bet you do) you no longer have to wait to be anointed by some clearing-house in order to demonstrate your expertise.

Take the case of Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary, the son of a Russian immigrant transformed his fathers small discount liquor store in New Jersey into a large scale retail wine business. Fueled by his dislike of the stuffy nature of existing wine critics he started to run a daily video blog called “Wine Library TV” in 2006. Gary’s video blog is a low-cost production that is full on, in your face and he describes wines in very plain language. He recorded more than 1,000 episodes of Wine Library TV, each episode lasted 4 to 5 minutes and he had more than 100,000 loyal viewers. Gary’s video blog scored him features in Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal and GQ magazine as well as appearances on the Ellen show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

More recently in addition to his other pursuits Gary signed a 10-book deal (his first book entering the NYT bestseller list at #2) and hosts a satellite radio show. The thing is that nobody anointed Vaynerchuk with expert status, he just went out and demonstrated his expertise.

Old media is struggling, Newspaper circulation and readership is fading away, TV and radio audiences aren’t fairing out much better. New media, the internet however is exploding. Gary Vaynerchuk is just one example, the web is full of similar examples from Robert Scooble to Leo Laporte, who have audiences in the millions right down to individuals who establish themselves as experts among niche audiences on a specific topic.

Here is the thing, the internet is waiting for you to demonstrate your expertise. I am not aware of anyone in the accounting industry who has gone and done this, so why not you? Why not now?

Your mission “if you choose to accept it” is to share your knowledge with the world and demonstrate your expertise. Nobody said this is going to be easy or instant, it will require some work on your part and you may very well start out with an audience of “0″ (everyone starts out the same)

BUT

If you are an expert in your field of accounting (“I know that you are”) and you put in the emotional labour consistently over a period of time, I guarantee that you will suceed.

To discuss this further, you can contact or follow Finbarr on Twitter at @FinbarrMcCarthy

By comparison with today, in the pre-internet era most of us lived in relative isolation. Unless you were unusually adventurous the range of people you interacted with was probably limited to your family, friends, co-workers, clients and neighbours. Even if you were very adventurous the ways in which you could meet with and connect to new people were often limited.

At the same time, most pre-internet media could be largely described as broadcast media. Television, radio, newspapers and magazines were mostly produced and distributed to the “mass market” and consumers often didn’t have much choice in terms of the channels and publications they consumed.

Your choices for growing your accounting firm under these circumstances were limited to;

• Networking

• Referrals

• Advertising

• Direct Mail

A shrinking minority of accountants believe that these methods are “tried and tested” and continue to rely exclusively on them to try and maintain growth at their firms. In the middle ground, the vast majority of accountants appreciate that the internet has become ubiquitous but struggle to convert the promise of the internet into tangible business wins. Meanwhile, some accounting firms have adapted their businesses to the “new” reality and are thriving even in these turbulent times.

The problem, as I see it is that, the accountants who are trying to leverage the internet unsuccessfully are mostly falling into the same trap. The trap is that they are trying to use the internet’s new marketing tools to do the same job as the old tools with which they are comfortable. For example, they consider email-marketing to be the same as direct mail, just with free stamps. They may also consider online banner advertising as a direct replacement for ads in a trade magazines or the local press and they have most likely created what I consider in derogatory terms as a “Brochure-Ware Website”. This approach is clearly not working.

To understand why this isn’t working you need to consider how the traditional approaches listed above worked and then compare that with what is happening in the new internet connected world.

Companies the world over, including accounting firms, very often replaced their direct mail campaigns with email campaigns. This worked relatively successfully in the early days but the mere fact that the cost was almost nil enabled email campaigns to spiral out of control to the point where more than 90% of the email sent across the internet is now considered SPAM.

Many otherwise sensible marketers look at email campaigns and are satisfied if 2% of the recipients take any action based on what they have sent. Personally I would consider this a 98% failure. I am not knocking email campaigns, they are a great tool you can and should use to market your accounting firm but your email campaigns must include valuable, unique and personalised content and should only be sent to people who anticipate and welcome what you have to say to them.

Take advertising as another example, advertising in the traditional world is almost exclusively interruption based. You are interrupted halfway through the evening news on TV to be fed adverts, if you are watching a show on TV your viewing pleasure is interrupted every ten minutes for a dose of adverts, reading the news paper, listening to the radio – don’t think advert – think interruption. The objective for most advertisers was to interrupt as many people as they possibly could afford to and hope that a small percentage of those people took note of what they had to say (or sell). Considering that it was impossible to target your advertising in any meaningful way, this “spray and pray” approach often didn’t deliver the results needed so advertisers invariably started to shout louder and more often (have you ever had to turn down the volume on the TV during commercial breaks?)

There are broadly speaking two advertising models on the internet;

• Intention based advertising
• Demographically targeted advertising

Intention based advertising

Let’s take a quick look at each of these models for a moment, intention based advertising is serving an advert to someone who is interested in, or seeking information about a specific topic, product or service. For example when somebody goes to Google or Bing and searches for “Chartered Accountants in London” if you are a chartered accounting firm in London it would be good to have your advert shown to that person, they are demonstrating clearly what they are seeking. You might think that the number of people who search for that exact term is small and be tempted to consider some way to reach a wider audience but you would be wrong. On Google alone the term “Chartered Accountants in London” in searched approximately 3,600 times per month, you can research other search terms at;

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

(check it out, there are literally millions of people searching around the world for accountants every month, start with a broad terms like “accountants” and then try accountants in x)

Demographically targeted advertising

Demographically targeted advertising is where you serve your adverts to a specific demography. LinkedIn and Facebook have very powerful platforms which will enable you to display adverts based on any combination of a person’s age, job title, interests, location, qualification, educational level or even the company that they work for. As an accountant if your potential clients are CFO’s or Entrepreneurs in a given area, you can now target these people exclusively without interrupting the rest of the world. (You can check out Facebook advertising at http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ and LinkedIn advertising at http://www.linkedin.com/advertising )

Both intention based and demographic targeting have advantages and disadvantages. For example just because someone is searching for accounting firms in London you cannot be sure that that person is going to be a decision maker and conversely when you target your advert to a given demographic you cannot be sure that that person is going to be in the market at a given time for your service. However both of these approaches are significantly more efficient, affordable and desirable to the traditional approach of broadcasting your message to everyone indiscriminately.

In essence these two approaches enable anyone on the web to connect to anyone else on the web regardless of geographic location or social connectedness but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Social Media and Your Accounting Firm

Consider the power of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. LinkedIn in particular and Facebook to a slightly lesser extent have pretty obvious benefits to every accountant. Both these tools allow you to extend your network reach and more importantly “persist the connection” i.e. once you connect to somebody you can stay connected. In the past it was often difficult to stay connected to somebody you met at an event but LinkedIn enables you to connect and stay connected.

On the surface Twitter doesn’t seem like an obvious tool for accountants but I have used Twitter to start conversations with and connect to a very wide range of people around the country and across continents. Many of these people are CEO’s and founders of companies where in the past I could never have gotten beyond the switchboard operator if I tried to contact them the old fashioned way. In particular in the tech industry I find that I can get an answer much more quickly to a question by tweeting someone than I can emailing them, are you on Twitter? Many of your potential clients are!

I don’t see the value of networking, referrals or recommendations diminishing anytime soon, in fact if anything they are becoming much more important. This isn’t to say that networking and referrals are the same as they always used to be, they have changed dramatically and can now be super-charged with the correct use of many free tools on the internet including LinkedIn, Facebook, Cardcloud and Twitter. We will discuss how to use each of these tools in great detail in a future post.

To discuss this further, you can contact or follow Finbarr on Twitter at @FinbarrMcCarthy

Its easy to imagine the future being just like today with cooler gadgets. If you look closely you will notice that something bigger is happening. The landscape that shaped business and commerce and accounting firms for the last century has changed so significantly that we might as well be on an alien planet.

The Internet has been mainstream now for about 15 years. Most of the time, despite the promise the internet makes, accounting firms just like yours fail to benefit. They don’t get traffic, visitors and new clients.

“They don’t fail because the internet and digital marketing doesn’t work, they fail because they are trying to use new media (the Internet) the same way they used old media.”

The new media doesn’t work for everyone and its not a like for like replacement with old marketing. I am often asked “How can we make the internet work for our accounting firm?” The short answer is “Maybe You cant” or if I can be more specific the question should be “How can we become an accounting firm that thrives because of the internet and new media?”

Uncomfortable Yet? Good

The rules have changes, you can, you must! transform your accounting firm to thrive in this digital revolution. If your accounting firm isnt growing the way you would like it to, how and what can we change to enable us to flourish in the world of digital marketing?

If your accounting firm depends on growth from traditional sources I have some bad new, newspapers, trade magazines, yellow pages and anything else that depended on cutting down trees to spread your message are all in trouble. Accounting firms wont thrive if they rely on digital marketing to do their old marketing for them.

So what do you do? On the one hand frustration is growing with many accountants who are finding it challenging to use all this new digital marketing stuff to attract new clients and on the other side there are small nimble firms who are already being propelled by the tactics they have adopted with digital marketing.

There are a dozen trends that are reshaping the world of business. These same trends are transforming accounting firms that adopt the right approach, yet they are crippling firms that are stuck and unwilling to change.

Your accounting firm is where it is today because it evolved and adapted to work perfectly the way the world was, but if you consider for a moment that the ground has shifted permanently ask yourself what will happen to you and your firm.

The 12 Macro Trends that are changing the world;

1. Anyone to Anyone Communication & Connections


2. Amplification of Individual Experts


3. Need for Authority as Clutter Increases


4. Shortening Attention Spans


5. The Long Tail


6. Outsourcing


7. Google


8. Explosion in Communication Channels


9. Scarcity and Abbundance Reversed


10. New Ideas


11. Mass Marketing to Personal Marketing


12. Realtime

We will be covering each of these trends in the upcoming blog posts.

You can follow Finbarr on Twitter at @FinbarrMcCarthy

In the early days of the World Wide Web most websites were published using a language called html (hyper-text mark-up language). Where web pages had static content this worked fine but the downside of html websites was that you needed a programmer or a web developer to make even simple changes to a page.

An important step which enabled the web to expand into the mainstream was the developed of content management systems (CMS). Content management systems enabled non technical users to create, edit and maintain web sites and web pages with the same ease as writing a letter in a word processing application. The main problem with early CMS’s was the price tag which usually ran into tens of thousands of euros/pounds/dollars and sometimes, hundreds of thousands.

Good websites are very expensive to build! – Think Again!

Here is a little tip for you, what if I told you that you could have the same content management system that powers The White House, Economist.com, Fast Company, The United States House of Representatives, Digital Dollhouse, Warner Brothers Records, The World Economic Forum plus countless other great websites for free. You might think I am a little mad, after all you are a trained accountant and you know to be suspicious of such ludicrous promises.

Think again, all these websites are all built on a platform called Drupal and it is part of a new generation of open source software that is absolutely free.

Here is another tip for you, instead of spending $100,000 to have somebody re-invent the wheel and design and code every last detail of your website you can buy a spectacular looking, thoughtfully designed, fully working pre-built theme for Drupal for as little as $50. Of course there is the possibility that someone else somewhere in the world might use the same off the shelf theme that you have chosen so you will spend somewhere from $500 to $1,000 to have a designer customise the theme with your logo, colours and fully customise the theme to your exact specification.

There are those who are critical of “website templates” and in part they are right, but like every other product in the world there are good ones and bad ones and believe me when I say that some of the good template creators are spectacular.

Here is tip number three. You can have your website powered by the same infrastructure that Amazon.com uses for as little as $20 per month at your choice of location across the US, Europe or Asia.

Here is the catch “THERE IS NO CATCH”

Simply put, what would have cost you potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to achieve on the web just a few years ago can now be achieved for less than the price of a good night out. For clarity we are not talking about using outdated technology at a knock down price, this is leading edge in every possible way and if you implement this you will be years ahead of all your competitors.

Of course there are still plenty of web agencies who will try and separate you from buckets full of your hard earned cash and try to convince you that need to build every last detail of your website from the ground up. These guys are either delusional for doing their work this way or rip-off merchants for essentially doing what I have just described here and charging you through the nose for it.

To illustrate this point consider the last time you bought a car. Did you?

A: Hire a team of designers and engineers with whom you spent countless months tied up in meetings discussing detail after detail. Get excited when you all agree on an acceptable design and specification. Pay to have every last component of your design created from scratch, tested and assembled before finally getting to drive your new car. Literally re-inventing the wheel.
Or
B: Go to your local dealership, decide what make and model suited your needs best and then decided on the colour, finishes and optional extras that you wanted.

There is no excuse anymore for not having a great website.

I should mention that there are a number of other great open source products available similar to Drupal including WordPress and Joomla but I have a strong preference for Drupal.

The important stuff

Once you have your all singing and all dancing Drupal or WordPress website in place, it will look great. Now the important work begins.

The work you do as an accountant is complicated, this is why you spent several years in college and many years more training in practice before achieving your qualification. No matter how hard you try you will not be able to explain all the detail of what you do and how you do it in a few pages on your website, so don’t even try.

If you can tell it, you can sell it

What you need to do is educate your prospects in a way that they will easily relate to and demonstrate how you can help solve their problems. The way to do this is to use a story. Stories have motivated people to take action for millennia and are just as powerful today as they have ever been. We are all much better adapted to making an emotional connection with a story than we are at making that same connection with facts or data. Better still we have the ability to picture ourselves within a story if it is relevant to us. If your prospects make an emotional connection with your story they are far more likely to remember it, to tell the story to others and to take action if you prompt them.

Your website should have a dedicated section for each main strand of business you want to promote. You should open each of these sections with the appropriate marketing message you created earlier and simply continue down the page telling your story about who you help, which problems you solve and the results you achieve for your clients. This should not be a 100 page essay, it should be relatively short and engaging and where necessary supported by additional sections which you can link to. It is worth keeping in mind that most website visitors spend very little time on a given page so it makes more sense to keep your story short and memorable.

The Dreaded About Us Section

As far as your accounting firm’s website is concerned there is a bit of a paradox when it comes to the about us section. One of the main messages we have been driving at is that your website should be more about your prospects and clients than about yourself or your practice.

However keeping in mind that one of the main functions of your website is to help to create and foster relationships with your prospects it is inevitable that the conversation will need to include something about yourself.

When created correctly, the about us section of your website is a great way make an emotional connection with your prospects. Instead of doing what most of your competitors do and stuffing page after page with impressive but boring facts and details you should instead tell interesting and engaging stories covering topics like how your firm got started. Add a human face to your firm by including pictures of the partners and senior staff, start your bios by including some personal interests and passions about the people involved and include some of the professional detail afterwards (if you must). Remember that people are already going to assume that you have the qualifications required to do your job to a professional standard and very often it can simply bore them to tell them nothing but the obvious.

You can experiment with how far you are comfortable pushing this point but my experience has thought me that prospects are left with a longer lasting and more positive impression of you when you focus on one or two passions or hobbies that you have before or instead of the other details.

Consider the following;

“Jeffrey Sommerfield FCA qualified in 1974 and became a partner in Bramley & Cox’s London office in 1983 before establishing Sommerfield & Sommerfield with Susan Sommerfield ACA in 1995.”

or

“Jeff is an avid golfer and yachtsman. When he is not at the office you will most likely find him teaching some of our client’s sail trimming on his yacht off the west coast. Fuelled by his passion for helping startup technology companies Jeff jointly founded Sommerfield & Sommerfield with his wife Susan in 1995.”

As a prospect I would far prefer to speak with and do business with the second guy, he seems far more human, more fun, how about you?

Your homepage

Many people get stuck on the idea of creating the structure and content of their website homepage before working their way through the rest of the website content. This approach is as understandable as it is flawed. It would be the equivalent of trying to create a P&L before you understood a business or had access to their transaction details.

Your homepage should include most of the obvious things you can think of, your name, your logo and your marketing message. Beyond that you can really think of your homepage as a collection of some of the more important pages on your website. Each of these pages should have a short but interesting intro on your homepage. Of course you will need a good menu structure on your website as well but the really important stuff is organised on the homepage and enables people to quickly scan the page and get to the specific section that is most relevant to them.

You can follow Finbarr on Twitter at @FinbarrMcCarthy

When I discuss the topic of websites with many accounting firms I commonly hear a variation on the following statement;

“Our website simply isn’t working. It is just not delivering results.”

This is often a very sensitive issue with accountants as many of them have buried tens of thousands of Euros. Pounds or Dollars into a website and have not benefited from any return whatsoever.

Is your website working? Is it delivering results?

If not, here are three questions that I ask every client who seeks help with their website;

1. Who do you want to visit your website?
2. What do you want them to do once they get there?
3. Why will they come to your accounting firm’s website vs. your competitors?

If you have been reading carefully you will have noticed that these questions are similar to the questions we worked through a previous post “Creating Your Marketing Message”.
Experience has thought me that if you want to build a successful website for your accounting firm you need to use these questions to guide your website strategy and you also need to ask these questions about every page on your website as well as every piece of content you use. When you do this the results are simply staggering.

Why Most Accounting Firms Websites Don’t Work

Conventional wisdom used to dictate that when you design your website you start out by creating a hierarchical sitemap. In simple terms your sitemap looked like any typical organisation chart with the homepage at the top level and several sections branching out beneath this. In turn each of these sub sections had several more sections branching beneath them and so on….

Normally this approach led to having a layer of secondary sections or pages underneath the homepage with titles such as products, services, locations, about us, etc, etc.. In turn each of these sections would be further subdivided into their relevant parts.

In the case of accounting firms this led to a whole generation of generic websites with a homepage, and standard subsections covering “Services”, “Sectors”, “Offices or Locations”, “About Us”, etc, etc.

At this point the graphic designers would have become involved and created a visually pleasing design that the structure mentioned above was fitted into. The homepage on this generic website would typically include a dull and boring description of the accounting firm, its history and credentials and a whole bunch of other content that gave the website visitor the impression that there was a large committee involved in every decision.

This approach to creating websites is flawed in several ways. Firstly it assumes that all your website visitors are the same, that they will all enter your website at the homepage and drill their way down through the content in a structured way. It also fails because the website is entirely focused on the accountancy firm instead of being focused on the problems prospects and clients face and how the accounting firm might help to solve their problems. Ironically it is filled with factual information in a structured format but very few people are going to spend the time on the site to learn that.

If this website was compared to a person at a party he would be well learned, well dressed and very lonely, standing in the corner with no one to talk to because he had no other way of talking to people without boring them to tears while incessantly talking about himself and insisting that everyone listen to him.

Remember a few of the lessons we learned in the post about “Creating Your Marketing Message”;

• “Attention spans are short”
• “It’s not all about you, it’s about your prospect”
• “People do business with people they know and trust”
• “You are not going to sell to someone on their first visit”

Once you learn how combine these lessons with the three questions above which ask, who you want to visit your website, what do you want them to do once they get there and why they should visit your website you will be well on your way to creating a website that delivers results beyond your wildest expectations.

Where to start with your Website

Building a website that works is going to require some emotional labour on your part. Once you grasp the points we have raised above you can use these as a compass to guide you through your journey.

Every accounting firm is different so there is no one size fits-all approach to creating your website. You will have identified what makes your accounting firm different in the previous post and you will now use that insight when creating your website.

What you need to do is create your website with your clients and prospects clearly in mind and specifically address the problems they face and the solutions to those problems that you provide.

If your accounting firm covers a very specific niche your job is pretty straight forward as you will be addressing only a limited set of prospects, problems and solutions. However, it is more likely that you will have a number of different areas that you will want to cover off.

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to cover everything on your homepage. When considering your home page it is worth keeping in mind that it will be one of the most used entrance points on your website, but you will also need to create specific entrance pages (or landing pages) for each of the main streams of business that you want to promote. The homepage will take care of itself if you consider it more like a group of pages as opposed to a page trying to cover many topics.

Each of those individual sections must be valuable from your clients point of view and be self contained to the extent that you are not reliant on your website visitors to go to any other section of your website to learn what they need to know and to be satisfied that they must take the next step – whatever that me be.

Compared to the “generic accounting firm website” we discussed previously you must make a subtle but important change in the structure and approach of your website in the following ways;

• Change from “Services” to “Problems we solve”
• Change from “Sectors” to “Who we solve those problems for”
• Focus more on “About our clients” than “About our accounting firm”
• Where possible don’t tell people how good you are – get client testimonials and have existing clients tell the world how good you are.

Each individual area of business that you want to promote will have its own section on the website. It needs to include your marketing message or the customised marketing message that you have created for that specific strand of your business and address your clients or prospects in the most personal way possible.

Don’t use terms like “most business people know”.

Instead

Do focus on who that particular section of the site is focused on e.g.

“As an experienced accounting professional in practice you will know.”

Each section of your website should be to the point, tailored to your prospect, focused on the problem they face and briefly highlight the solutions you offer for this problem. If you need to get into more detail you can do that in sub-sections which you can link to.

Remember that this is very similar to the etiquette you would use while speaking with a prospect face to face, you want to introduce yourself (your marketing message), address them personally, briefly outline how you can solve their problems and give them the opportunity to dig a little deeper into a specific area that is of interest to them.

The layout of your homepage will largely be influenced by the number of sections (business strands) in your website. If your accounting firm has three or four business strands you can easily highlight each of these on your homepage but if it many more than that you will need to use other mechanisms to channel your visitors to the appropriate section.

Who do you want to visit your website?

To build your website successfully you will need to be very specific about who your target audience is. You will have seen that each section and page of your website is to be focused on a specific target audience. Having detailed knowledge about your target audience will also be important in an upcoming post I am doing on promoting your website.

To identify your target market the best place to start is with your existing client base. If you use a CRM solution that has your customers coded or tagged you can extract the information from there, if not, draw up a list of your existing clients in excel in one column and in a second column input as many specific keywords to describe each client that you can think of. Start with obvious areas like location, size and industry type and consider extending your reach with other attributes such as the type of problems you solve for these clients.

Once you have completed your list copy all the keywords you created and paste them into a “Tag Cloud Generator”. There are many tag cloud generators available in both free and paid versions on the web but one of my favourite ones is called “Tag Crowd” and it’s free to use at http://tagcrowd.com

Your tag cloud will display all the words that describe your clients in varying sizes with the most frequent words appearing in a large typeface and less frequently used words appearing in a smaller typeface. Once you have your tag cloud created you can save it to your computer for later use.

This simple visual categorisation of your client base delivers an interesting and useful insight into your client base and many of my clients have found it helps them to identify previously unrealised strengths that they have. Of course it is also a great starting point for identifying your target audience.

If you have otherwise identified additional areas that you actively want to target, you should add them to your target list at this point.

What do you want visitors to do once they get to your website?

I have reviewed the websites of countless accounting firms and I am repeatedly amazed that so few firms have obviously asked, or answered this question.

One of the most obvious symptoms of this lack of planning is on websites where users are shepherded down a dead-end and have to resort to using the back-button or fumbling around complex menus to proceed, the result, users get frustrated and leave. In advance of creating your website, you need to define the specific outcomes that you want each visit to achieve. This is a complex task because each visitor may be a first time visitor to your site and may not be familiar with your accountancy firm or they may be a returning visitor or even an existing client.

The process will no doubt be made easier because your website will have specific areas to target client’s specific needs and problems but you will need to work out in advance what the aim of each visitor type is going to be and provide them with the experience they desire. Additionally because you are going to use your website to ultimately create leads and clients you will want to carefully consider the best time to ask a user for their name and email address. Asking website visitors for their name and email address is an important step which we will cover in much more detail in a later post and can be considered as the virtual equivalent of exchanging business cards, suffice to say that its rude to walk up to someone you have never met and demand their business card but you don’t want to walk away from someone you have had an interesting discussion without exchanging cards.

At the most basic level, you will want to define a desired outcome and an appropriate path through your website for three levels of users;

• First time visitors
• Return visitors
• Clients

This will need to be replicated and customised for each section of your website ie. Each of your target markets.

Why will they come to your accounting firm’s website vs. your competitors?

There are many reasons why prospects will visit one website versus another, yours compared to your competitors. Not least among these reasons is visibility, or put another way how easily they can find a website that satisfies their needs. We will cover the mechanics of making your website easier to find in later posts but right now we are going to focus in on a few areas that will help satisfy visitors once they land on your website.

Delivering Value

The objective of your website is to give your visitors very clear comfort that you understand their problems and that your accountancy firm can reliably solve these problems for them. To deliver the maximum impact it must give them a lasting feeling along the lines of “This is the accounting firm for me”.

This might seem obvious but the mediocre nature of your competitor’s websites suggests to me that the fact is overlooked and provides an epic opportunity for you to stand head and shoulders above your competition. If like many accounting firms the majority of your new business comes from referrals this is a clear sign that you are ready to embrace this opportunity.

The simple truth is that there is a significant amount of business for accountants which start with a simple web search. For someone who is seeking the services of an accountant without the benefit of a referral they tend to start their search, pick a handful of possible firms and then research each of those firms further.

The services you provide might not be significantly different from your competitors. However, if you make the emotional connection at this stage and can demonstrate that you understand your visitor and are focused exclusively on their needs and problems as opposed to yourself this is going to convince your visitor that you are simply better than your competitors. Done right, it is almost an inevitability that someone who is seeking your services will remember you clearly above your competitors and is likely to make the emotional leap that your firm is the one they will hire.

Of course they are not going to phone you up and give you the business on the spot, they must do their due diligence and probably meet a few other accounting firms too, but if you have gotten everything right up to this point the due diligence is merely an exercise that their logical brain is running in order to bring it up to speed with a decision their emotional brain made long before.

To illustrate this point consider the guy who has just seen an advert for a new BMW car, he thinks to himself “I would look great in that” and before you know it he is at home trying to convince his wife what a great investment it would be based on the fact that it is German engineered, has great resale value and would be a very safe vehicle to travel in, etc, etc. There is probably a Ford available for half the price that would be equally as safe, have less depreciation etc but he has made the emotional leap already.

I am not suggesting that accounting services will be the subject of pillow talk anytime soon but you should not ignore the importance of first impressions and making an emotional connection with your prospects.

In addition to showing your website visitors that you understand them and have the ability to solve their problems one of the clearest ways to help build a relationship with them is to deliver value from the outset. Depending on what areas your firm specialises the specifics of this will vary but the core idea is that you share some of your knowledge and expertise with them, without charge.

The information you share could be a white paper on how to deal with a new legislative issue or a special report on the top five ERP’s or you could conduct a webinar on a burning issue – but in any case will be appropriate to your prospects problems. This approach has a dual benefit, firstly everyone likes getting a gift or something for free, secondly if you give something great away for free your prospects will be likely to think to themselves – “Gee if this crowd give this information away for free imagine what you get when you pay them”.

Of course you won’t be giving it away exactly for free, you will require your visitors to sign up with their name and email address to receive the information and this is valuable information that you will use later to further the relationship and ultimately convert your prospect into a client.

You can follow Finbarr on Twitter at @FinbarrMcCarthy

Creating a great marketing message takes time and a good deal of creativity. Once you have picked the message you are most comfortable with it is time to test it out.

Testing Your Marketing Message

Try out your message with colleagues, family and friends. Once you have used it a few times you need to answer the following questions;

• Are you comfortable using the message yourself?
• Do people quickly understand what you do?
• Does it help start conversations?
• Does it prompt people to ask relevant questions?

Take the feedback you get and make a judgement on whether you need to tweak your message or not. In most cases it will need tweaking, maybe your message is too long, too short, or needs some other fine-tuning. After any tweaking and fine-tuning be sure to re-test your message.

Multiple Marketing Messages

If your accounting firm provides a wide range of services that you can’t capture in one marketing message, you may need multiple marketing messages. Once you have created and tested your main marketing message you can easily customise the original message or if necessary create an entirely new message to cover additional strands of your business.

If you have multiple marketing messages and you don’t know which one to use with someone you have just met, you should ask a couple of questions first to decide which message is going to be most relevant to that person.

What questions could you ask to decide which marketing message to use?

Where to use your marketing message

When you have created a marketing message that helps people know what problems you solve, use it in person, on your voicemail, email signature, business card, stationery, website and any other marketing material you use.

In Person

Where appropriate use your marketing message along with your name when you are introducing yourself. “Hello I’m Sam Browne; I help global companies to reduce their tax bills.” Use it in the elevator, at networking and industry events and even at parties or in your social circle when someone asks you what you do.

When you leave a phone message

Give prospects a reason to call you back. Leave your marketing message along with your name and telephone number.

On your voicemail message

When people call you and get your voicemail, they should hear your marketing message along with details of the best way to contact you.

In Your Marketing Materials and Stationery

On your business card and Letterhead

Use a short version of your marketing message on your business card, when you hand it to people you have just met it will remind them of the problem you solve when they look at the card later. You should also use the short version of your marketing message on your letterhead and invoice stationery.

On your website and in email

Your marketing message – “the problems you solve” is an extremely important piece of information on your website, if you have multiple marketing messages your website should reflect this with multiple sections each with their unique message.

Your email signature should contain, your name, your website address, your marketing message and any other contact details you want to include.
Your autoresponders (an automated email response and email broadcasting system – which we will cover in a later post) should prominently use your marketing message in every message.

On Social Media

Your marketing message – should be included in your profile on Twitter, your info on Facebook and your company page on LinkedIn. You should also use a short version of your message when greeting people for the first time on Social Media.

In newsletters, ezines, surveys, case studies and press releases

Include your marketing message in any publications you create both physical and electronic. Typically you would include your marketing message at the bottom of a press release and at the beginning and end of other publications.

Beyond your Marketing Message

A great marketing message will open doors and start conversations. Don’t fall into the trap of spending the next 5 minutes reciting a speech about yourself or your firm. If you play it cool there will be plenty of time for that later.

What you need to do now is get a little key information from your prospect. When you ask someone a question not only do you show your interest in them, you also help to control the conversation and maintain your prospects interest. People love talking about themselves, and once you get them started they will normally be very happy to share their relevant problems, wants and needs with you.

No matter how good you are, you are not going to convert a prospect to a client at the first meeting. If you try the shutters will come down and you will have blown a perfectly good opportunity.

Instead use the opportunity to demonstrate your ability by asking insightful and succinct questions and collect valuable information that will help later on when you are doing a targeted follow up. You should collect your prospects business card and make a few notes about any problems and needs discussed on the back of it.

When you are next at your office be sure to enter your prospects contact details and any notes onto your contact management system. It is also important to send them a brief email thanking them for their time and connecting to them on Linked In.

Relationship Building

You have done well, you have made a good first impression with your great marketing message and did everything right. What you do now will determine whether this is just another contact to your database or you will succeed in building a long term, mutually beneficial relationship.

Follow up with your prospects on a regular basis. You should try to share value with your prospects regularly. You can do this in a number of ways including newsletters, case studies and industry analysis; in all your communications you should of course use your marketing message. Done appropriately this will help reinforce the idea in your prospects mind that you provide solutions to their problems and will also help to establish trust.

Warning: Do this wrong and you will either end up annoying your prospects or in the spam bin or both.
We will cover this in much greater detail in a later post.

Doing More Business

Selling accounting services isn’t about convincing a prospect that they need your services. Selling your services will only happen when you and your prospect have a mutual understanding which involves identifying a problem or need they have and matching that with a solution you offer.

As an accounting firm, successfully selling your services will rely more on how much you listen rather than how much you say. When you first meet with a prospect you will have no idea what problems they face or what needs they have. Listen carefully and find common areas between the needs and problems your prospect has and the solutions you can offer.
It might be appropriate to consider whether you are in the business of “selling services” or “selling solutions”.

Occasionally prospects will initiate a conversation wanting to know how much you charge. If this happens, any price discussion will inevitably kill any potential of a sale because you are introducing obstacles into the process before you have even discussed the problems your client faces and the solutions you can offer.

Instead of first discussing price, steer the conversation with questions which identify the problems your client is facing and discuss potential solutions. Once you have had the conversation in that order you can then discuss price because at that point the focus will be more about value you offer rather than price tag.

Use thoughtful questions to gain a full understanding of your clients needs, give them the service they want, solve their problems and you will very quickly find yourself making sales instead of sales pitches. As a little bonus you will also enjoy the art of selling more too.

You will probably feel a little bit awkward the first few times you use your marketing message. After all you are talking about what you do in a whole new way. This is perfectly natural and once you stick with it you will quickly gain confidence and see the benefits of describing how you help your clients.

You can use your message to start a conversation and ask questions to keep it going. Your prospects will quickly understand the solutions you provide and ultimately you will attract more clients and more successful.

You can follow Finbarr on Twitter at @FinbarrMcCarthy

Firstly Here’s what not to Do!

Dont wear a label

Imagine a hypothetical situation. You were at an event where you were introduced to Bob. You knew that Bob runs a company which might use your service and Bob asks you, “So what do you do”?

How do you answer?

If you answered, I am an Accountant, or I am a Partner at X, or I am Tax Manager at Y or any of a hundred similar answers you may as well have just shot yourself in the foot. Chances are good that right after you shot yourself in the foot, Bob mysteriously disappeared and you were left standing alone, slightly confused, with a very sore foot.

Here is the thing; Bob wasn’t really overly interested in you in the first place. If he knew you a little better it might be different but as far as Bob is concerned “It’s not about You, It’s about Me” and even though on the face of it he did ask what do you do? what he really meant was “do you do something that is of benefit to me?”

Now imagine that your answer to the question was “Bob, I help companies like yours to dramatically reduce their tax bills” to which Bob replies “Really! How do you do that?”

Don’t answer what you do literally

At least not in the beginning, once you start down the route of describing the process or detail of what you do to a non accounting professional you will be greeted immediately with a blank stare, people will tune out and you will have lost the opportunity permanently.

Don’t try creating punchy taglines!

If you hire many marketing agencies they will gladly help you to drain your bank account, and then some, and talk to you endlessly about your brand, your tagline (slogans, mottos, catch-phrase or whatever else they might refer to it as).

They will gradually wear you down with creative briefs, the attitude, tone and voice of your brand and PowerPoint after PowerPoint showing you case-studies of famous companies with taglines such as;

“Just Do It”
“I’m Lovin it”

For good measure they will add in a few from your industry such as;

“Quality in Everything we Do”
“cutting through complexity”

Here is your tagline for those guys

“DONT DO IT”

(I should mention that the above phrases are trademarks and property of their respective owners!)

This was a great way to drill your message into the “mass-market” back in the 1950’s and 60’s when there was 2 TV channels and only a handful of newspapers in broad circulation (assuming of course that you had a huge advertising budget).

Otherwise there must be a dozen problems with this approach, here are just 5.

1. I am assuming you don’t have the $1.7Billion annual marketing budget of Nike or $1.4Billion in McDonalds case.
2. You are going to feel like a complete idiot when you are answering Bob’s question about what you do with any of the following;
   1. “Hey Bob, I Just Do It”
   2. “Bob, I’m Lovin it”
   3. “Bob, I do Quality in Everything we Do”
   4. or “I am glad you asked that Bob, I’m cutting through complexity”
3. Any of these taglines are so generic that they really don’t help anyone get an understanding of what it is that you or your accounting firm are all about. Think of two or three different unrelated industries and apply these taglines to them yourself, it doesn’t work.
4. They are not properly focused on solving your prospects problems.
5. These taglines are more about YOU, YOU, YOU than ME, ME, ME.

Don’t make life more difficult than it needs to be. When you are asked what you do avoid responding with job titles, labels, taglines or lengthy descriptions of processes that people will not understand or remember. Instead you need to always immediately clarify who you help and what problem you solve. Your marketing message must be simple and provocative. It must easily roll off your tongue and be informative and memorable so as it sticks in your prospects minds. Seth Godin, a brilliant marketing mind and bestselling author coined the term “Ideas that spread win”. Your idea (marketing message) will have a much better chance of spreading and winning if it follows these principles.

A few points to think about before creating your message;

What value do you bring to your clients?

Many accounting firms are competing with you for the same business. Understanding why your existing clients deal with you or your firm is a very good starting point in defining what your value proposition is. Can you define the reasons your clients deal with you and not your competitors? If so write down all the reasons you can think of – remember what we discussed earlier, these reasons should be from your client’s point of view and focused on both the benefits they receive and the problems you solve for them.

Don’t beat yourself up if you are having trouble making a list, it can be difficult to get into the right mindset to do this at first, think about it for a while, leave it and come back and try again later if you don’t make progress right away. Once you get started it gets easier.

When you come up with the list of benefits you bring to your clients, or problems you solve, you might need to get a sense check on the list you have created. A couple of ways you can do this are;

1. Ask a couple of trusted clients their opinion on your list – they may also have other suggestions that you can add
2. Run a survey of your existing clients and have a question built in to elicit their answer to this question. We will cover the topic of surveys in a later post, but suffice to say that the feedback you get can be extremely valuable.

In an ideal world the list of benefits you bring to clients / problems you solve would be truly unique to you and your accounting firm. In the real world however, chances are good that many of your competitors bring similar benefits to their clients. Try work through your list and focus in on any item that are unique to your firm, if you are having trouble with this, the following examples might help you to get started;

• Does your vast experience within a particular industry position your accounting firm to bring extra value to your clients in a certain way?
• Is your firm bigger or smaller than the majority of your competitors? Bigger might enable benefits to your clients because you have a broader cross-section of expertise, or the scale to handle larger clients. Smaller might be beneficial because it often enables a more personalised service.
• Is your practice a general accounting practice, or specialist in a given way? There are benefits in both.
• Is your location a notable benefit?

The list can be pretty endless but it’s worth spending some time on this.

Did you come up with a list of unique benefits? If you did “Great” if you didn’t, i.e. you have created a tangible list of benefits to your customers – but you can’t vouch for their uniqueness, that’s OK too. Just by virtue of implementing the ideas we are discussing you will stand out amongst your competitors, though it would make an even greater impact if you re-visit this section at a later date and work out what your unique “Super-Power” is.

Crafting your marketing message as you may have figured out by now is going to be hard work, it is however a critical first step in the journey you are about to undertake to transform your accounting firm into a firm that clients will understand and gravitate towards.

Remember, your objective is to come up with a concise statement of how your services will benefit your clients and the message will reflect how you want your clients to think of you and your accounting firm.

Steps to creating your marketing message

To be effective, your marketing message must get a prospects attention, explain how you help them, and prompt further discussion, all in a single sentence. This is a tall order by anyone’s measure and one which most accounting firms will either never try or never achieve. Instead they will be lazy and use labels, taglines or worse turn away prospective clients with boring and long winded descriptions of what they do.

People tend to scan content and conversations, seeking out information that is relevant to their particular needs, wants and problems. People quickly tune out when the subject or content is not relevant to them. The very fact that you will create and use an effective marketing message (and most of your competitor’s will not) will help to ensure that you will get your prospects attention and ensure they engage with your accounting firm by continuing to read the rest of your message or starting a meaningful conversation.

You may find that the hardest part of creating a compelling marketing message is knowing what not to say. To create a brilliant message, you will in all likelihood have to comb through your draft message many times removing clutter, insider terms and jargon at each pass. Creating an effective marketing message is going to challenge you creatively, there is no point in pretending otherwise. You are the person who is best suited to doing this because of your accounting background, your client knowledge and the unique knowledge you have built up within your firm. In any case, you will be the person who uses this message on a continuous basis and you will be more comfortable and successful using a marketing message that you have created and believe in.

Use these steps to help you create your message

1: Focus on your prospects

Include a word or two in your marketing message to identify who you help. If someone can identify themselves or someone they know in your marketing message it will have a much greater chance of grabbing their attention.

Questions to consider;

Who are my current clients?
Do my clients share characteristics (size, industry, location, structure,etc)?
Who are your prospects, are they similar to your existing clients or different?
Create a list of your existing and potential clients. Work through the list to create a concise description of your clients as a group. When you include a description of your prospects and clients in your marketing message it will more easily catch their attention as well as demonstrate that you are focused on them.

Who are my clients and prospects?

2: Identify what problems you solve

One of the most common and costly mistakes accountants make while marketing their firms is focusing their marketing message on themselves, the services they offer and their industry or academic credentials. Prospects will become clients only when you can convince them that you can solve a problem they have.
Remember that your prospects and clients are far more concerned about themselves than they are about you. Your objective is to clearly show that you understand their needs and wants and demonstrate what you can do to help them.

Questions to consider;

What problems do your clients/prospects face?

What problems does your accounting firm solve?

3: Define the results you achieve

Prospects become clients when they have a problem which they believe you can solve for them. To satisfy your clients you obviously need to deliver results. Most clients will be very content once you deliver on the promise you made, as an aside it’s always worth considering how you can add a little something extra that your client wasn’t expecting – this can be a great help with client retention and often turns otherwise passive clients into your best sales people. Answer the following question from your clients perspective.

What do you help your clients achieve?

4: Differentiation

There are probably countless other accounting firms that offer the same, or similar services that your firm offers. What differentiates your accounting firm from your competitors? It may be your size, location, industry specialisation, your clients or the results you achieve for your clients.

How do you differentiate your firm from your competitors?

5: Use simple language

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.” William Butler Yeats
Your objective is not to win The Pulitzer Prize. Using industry terms and other buzzwords may in fact turn prospects away if they are not familiar with the terms used.
Simple and creative use of language is a far better strategy for spreading your message.

6: Drafting your marketing message

You have now gathered the components of your marketing message. By combining the problems you solve with who you solve those problems for and the results you achieve into a single sentence you will be able to create a number of rough drafts of your new marketing message.
Remember, short sentences and simple language is best!
Create four or five versions of each message and do a little bit of editing.
To help you get started try creating your first drafts begin like this;
“I help… (the problem you solve) so that … (the results you achieve for your client)”.

Of course you can and should get creative at this point and your message doesn’t have to be structured exactly like this, however this format is simple, to the point and will achieve results.

You may strike it lucky and come up with a brilliant message immediately. In reality it may take much longer. If you don’t feel you are making progress at a particular time, go do something else and revisit this later.

7: Prompting prospects to get involved

Your marketing message can be used on the phone, in your marketing material, on your website, at networking events or whenever someone asks what you do. The main objective of your marketing message is to prompt people to seek more information about you and your accounting firm.
Your marketing message should motivate people to ask further questions, to tell you about a particular problem they have or continue reading your marketing material or website depending on the circumstances.

Does your marketing message prompt further conversation?
Do people relate to it and discuss relevant problems with you or refer you to people who might use your accounting firm?

When you use your great marketing message you will find it much easier to start conversations and get people’s attention. You will start to create many new opportunities and your accounting firm will prosper too.

The essence of a Great Marketing Message

• It is brief, believable and specific
• It tells people which problems you solve and the benefits you provide
• It is focused on your prospects and their needs and problems
• It uses plain language and not buzzwords
• It positions your accounting firm as experts who deliver client value

When you use your marketing message it should prompt further conversation. If it doesn’t you will have to go back to the drawing board and start again.

My guess is that you cant. But you can loose the attention of potential clients in well under 8 seconds. The thing is that we are all bombarded with telephone calls, voice-mails, advertisements, cold calls, email, spam, tweets, Facebook updates, text messages and a million other distractions during our day. In our modern “always-on” 140 character society we have evolved this great ability to shut out just about everything that doesn’t immediately capture our imagination or that is not of obvious benefit to us.

Attention spans are short and possibly even getting shorter.

If you want to grow your accounting practice the first thing you need to do is create an effective marketing message. Before you start crafting a message you will need to understand three things.

1. “It’s not about You; It’s about ME, ME, ME!”
2. People do business with people they know and trust.
3. Your marketing message is not about clinching a deal in the first go, it’s about opening doors by letting prospects know that you can be of benefit to them by solving a problem they have.

Let’s explore each of these statements in a little more detail.

“It’s not about You, It’s about ME, ME, ME!”

It might seem sad, but it’s true. Your clients don’t really and truly care about you – “they care about themselves”. Deep down they want to know “what’s in it for me”?

Clients don’t show up at your office having stayed up all night wondering if there is some way they can make your job easier. Even if one did you can be fairly sure that the motivation was self serving, probably to try and minimise your fee.

People do business with people they know and trust

As an accounting professional the majority of new business you generate likely comes to you through referrals, introductions and good old fashioned networking. In later posts I will be talking in great detail about social media, websites and digital marketing. The unfortunate mistake that many accountants make is ignoring these tools because they believe that “Real” clients are acquired through traditional methods. In part they are correct but the mistake is not capitalising on these digital tools to connect, build loyal customers and engage markets far beyond our traditional reach. Used correctly, practice websites, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all tools that help us super-charge our client acquisition efforts – online and off.

Social media enables us to start a conversation (before meeting), to continue a conversation (after meeting), and to ensure we are credible as professional advisors (when prospects look us up online).

Your message is not about clinching a deal in the first go

People like doing business with you (buying your services) when it’s of benefit to them. It is however very unlikely that the first time a prospect encounters you or your accounting practice that they are going to sign up as a client on the spot.

This is very obvious when you stop and think about it so why then would you broadcast a message that screams “BUY ME! BUY ME!”?

This “BUY ME!” message sometimes works for trivial items where the cost is low and the timing is right – say a shoe shine when you are going through the airport on the way to an important meeting or an ice-cream on a warm summer’s day. These types of purchases are called impulse buying. Sorry for stating the obvious but as an experienced accounting professional you are not interested in impulse buying.

We have all seen this approach in action in inappropriate settings; in fact we recognise it in a fraction of a second and usually deploy a complex set of defences to avoid it. You know what I am talking about! it’s the “sales man”. More often than not we associate words like loud, obnoxious, annoying, pushy and sleazy with the salesman. This is because he is a bad salesman; he is trying to sell us something and while we might like to buy, we definitely don’t like to be sold. He is the equivalent of “Human SPAM”.

Not all salesmen are bad! A good salesman is someone who succinctly lets us know how they can help us, takes the time to understand our needs and wants, builds a relationship and when appropriate lets us know how they can solve a problem or a desire that we have.

So with this in mind, the first and most important step you need to take is to create a compelling marketing message for your accounting firm. The objective of your marketing message isn’t to try and immediately sell your services; it is to capture the interest of your prospect by letting them know how you might be able to solve a problem they have.

In the next post we will discuss the detail of how to create your marketing message.

You have the confidence in your ability to solve any problem, add creative insight and bring value to your clients in a way that is unique to you and only possible because of the significant experience you bring to the table.

The clients you deal with everyday know this, which is why they seek you out day after day, year after year. You are instrumental in retaining your existing clients because they value your ability and they have the comfort of knowing that you will go that extra mile to ensure their success.

Both you and your clients know this to be true, the only issue is why can’t the rest of the world see this?
You might think that if only people knew how good you and your accountancy firm really were there would be a queue out your door and down the street with people eager to avail of your services and sign up as long term clients.

I certainly dont want to wast your time, so have a look outside your door, if there is a queue chances are I have nothing to teach you, however, if there is not, you should bookmark this site and come back often. Through a series of blog posts we will work through a number of global trends, facts and actionable ideas that will greatly help you and your accounting firm cut through the noise and connect with potential clients around the corner and around the world.

I want to thank you for taking the time to learn a little more about marketing yourself and your accountancy firm in this digital age and I hope that you find the ideas we discuss challenging, rewarding and above all actionable.

As always if I can assist you in any way please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Kind regards

Finbarr McCarthy