4 Crucial Objectives for Your 2014 CPA Firm Marketing Program

...and the key to getting marketing budget and buy in from partners.

Nobody ever said that being a marketer or the partner in charge of marketing in an accounting firm was going to be easy. But somewhere between lack of budget and lack of partner interest or understanding lies a path to aligning the firm’s marketing program with the firm’s growth and top line goals in the strongest possible way.

I would like to offer 4 crucial objectives for the marketing program that can be built into your 2014 planning and budgeting efforts: 

4 Crucial Marketing Objectives for Accounting Firms

(1)    Get more traffic to your website (and mobile platforms)

Your CPA firm’s website is more important than ever before for growing your firm’s top line, and it’s only going to become more important. According to Marketo, 93% of business buyers use search to begin the buying process, and if you still think that your website isn’t all that important, then consider this finding from DemandGen Report that 90% of business buyers say when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you online.

The math is simple: those who bring more traffic to their site are those that will see the greatest ROI from their investment in a website.

The keys to driving more traffic to your site is search engine visibility and high rankings. To get there, you’ll need to have a key word strategy and use blogging, social media, and optimized website pages.

(2)    Put more leads into the top of your sales funnel

The next crucial objective for the firm’s program is lead generation. While most leads will come in from referrals and networking done by partners, you don’t want to ignore the power of online lead generation - and that’s where accounting firm marketers need to become a lot more proficient.

Your website needs to be designed to convert eyeballs to leads with “top of the funnel” offers.  These are designed to convert a site visitor to a lead using valuable educational – not advertorial – content. Offers for items such as whitepapers, checklists, guides and so forth will not only give your firm an opportunity to showcase its thought leadership, but also, to get a lead from collecting prospect names and other contact information via a completed form.

(3)    Help partners move their prospects into the middle and bottom of the sales funnel

Here’s a sad research finding from MarketingSherpa that should make you wail, moan and gnash your teeth: 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance.

Just imagine the cheers and kudos from partners if the firm’s marketing program worked at all stages of the sales cycle – not just at the top of the funnel! Accounting firm marketing needs to address each stage of the sales funnel with quality offers that focus on prospects and what they may want to have at each stage of the buying process.

(4)    Upsell or cross sell to existing clients

Last but not least, if your marketing program doesn’t include strategies and tactics for upselling and cross selling, than you’d better run back to the drawing board. Firm wide education on products, services and how to recognize opportunities is absolutely critical to top line growth, and well as having tools and processes to help in this effort.

Online marketing and your website should pay a critical role in your upsell and cross sell effort. Here’s where content and different types of offers positioned to different stages of the buying cycle play a key role.

The Key to Getting Budget and Buy In

All of these objectives require resources, an adequate marketing budget and commitment from firm management – three things that are often in short supply in CPA firms. But nothing succeeds like success, right? And in order to showcase success, you need to have the tools and technology to measure and report on results.

Each of the four objectives is specific, measureable, attainable, relevant to firm growth, and comes with time limitations (SMART marketing). You need to define the stats you’ll want to use to measure progress, and report on progress on a periodic basis. Here’s a simple truth: show progress, and you’ll get more resources, budget and commitment.