5 Basic Inbound Marketing Terms that CPA Firm Marketing Partners Need to Nail

Get Committed to Learning the New Language of Digital Marketing

So let’s say that you’re the lucky (or not so lucky) partner responsible for the firm’s marketing program.

Here’s what makes you lucky or unlucky depending upon your perspective: digital and inbound marketing means it’s a whole new ball game for accounting and professional services marketing efforts. And you get to hold the reins over what can be a breakneck ride, so you can either be thrilled or terrified by the new opportunities on your table.

First things first, you need to get serious about learning the new strategies, tactics, and lingo of inbound marketing. Otherwise, you’ll be laying a perspective onto the firm’s marketing activities akin to using a Princess phone in an era of Smart phone technology.

Here’s 5 terms – and a few questions to ask your marketing team – that can help you move a few rungs up the inbound marketing literacy ladder:

Get Found First

This term refers to the strategies and tactics designed to drive prospects to your website before they visit your competitors’ sites. This is all about “searchability” and covers areas ranging from keyword strategy and search engine optimization to how the firm uses offsite channels like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to grab the attention of someone’s who is looking for answers or information about a problem or situation they have.

The question to ask your marketing team: What is our “get found first strategy” and how well are we doing?

Conversion Rates

In the digital marketing environment, we can measure everything. Everything. If you’re interested in knowing what the return on your investment in marketing truly is, you’ll want to always be measuring a number of key performance indicators like conversions of recipients to open/click rates re email; visitors to leads on the website, visitors to sales on website, and effectiveness of different media channels on lead generation rates.

The question to ask your marketing team: What do our KPI’s look like this month and in comparison to last month/quarter/year?

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation refers to a strategy and technology for automating a series of timed emails to prospects that have shown an interest in the firm. While marketing automation is the new, sexy ‘n cool buzzword in marketing, and while there’s powerful technology like HubSpot that can make it happen, it’s not for the faint of heart. Automation requires strategic thinking about why, when and how you will be sending drip emails to move a prospect through the sales funnel; a ton of content to make the automation work; and constant vigilance over the metrics to determine if you’re doing it right.

The question to ask your marketing team: Are we prepared – strategically, creatively, technically, and from resource perspectives – to develop and manage a marketing automation effort?

TOFU/MOFU/BOFU

I know that partners really get inbound marketing when we start talking about TOFU, MOFU and BOFU in our strategy meetings. These terms refer to the different types of offers that move a prospect through the sales funnel. Top of the funnel offers (TOFU) are educational, middle of the funnel offers (MOFU) are a combination of educational and advertorial, and bottom of the funnel offers (BOFU) are mostly designed to get in front of a warm and receptive prospect.

The question to ask your marketing team: What’s the TOFU/MOFU/BOFU strategy for each of our niche practices and how does that work into our marketing automation efforts?

Call to Action and Landing Pages

In order to make inbound marketing work, you need to convert website visitors to leads. That’s done with two elements. First, there’s a call to action button like the one you see at the bottom of this blog. It’s basically a graphic to move people to the next item, the landing page. A landing page is where an offer (TOFU/MOFU/BOFU) is presented, along with a form to capture the prospects contact information. Once that information is gathered, that prospect can then be put into your marketing automation system and nurtured over time.

The question to ask your marketing team: Are we using CTAs and landing pages, and how well are they performing?

Get Committed to Learning

I’ve interacted with nearly 1 gazillion CPA and other professional service firm partners during my career, and I am in awe of how smart and dedicated they are ... expect when it comes to marketing and their willingness to take the time and effort to achieve the type of marketing literacy that’s necessary to manage the firm’s investment.

Of course, you can run your marketing efforts just like you were taught by the partners who came before you. Or perhaps you believe that your role is shaded more towards protecting the corporate coffers than using marketing dollars as an investment to grow the company.

We are in an era full of new and complex ways that marketing resources need to be expended and managed, and that requires a commitment to learning the basics of inbound marketing.

For at the end of the day, what you don't know will always hurt you.