Re-Think and Shift Your Marketing Budget Priorities 

For many accounting and other professional services firms, it’s that time of year when marketing budgets are getting discussed and finalized … and slashed (once again) given all of the horrible news about the economy.

So now, more than ever before, it’s time to ask a couple of critical, fork in the road types of questions about your marketing program and its budget:

• Is your budget laser focused on generating leads and a return on investment?
• What are the sacred cows in the budget that can and should be eliminated because they don’t produce ROI?
• What niches, partners and programs deserve budget dollars because they represent growth opportunities for the firm’s overall top line?

CPA firm marketing programs will be facing more unprecedented pressure to “do more with less”, but exactly what does “do more” mean? (We get the “with less” part!).

My guidance: “do more” means generate more leads, nurture those leads and get more measurable results from your marketing program in terms of new business dollars. It’s time for accounting and other professional services firms to spend less on branding and more on hard core lead generation tactics and campaigns because new client acquisition is only going to get tougher and tougher.

It’s time to re-think and shift your marketing budget priorities, and inbound marketing may be just the change your firm needs to grow their top line.

Here are 7 inbound marketing-related line items that should be in your marketing budget next year that will make it work harder to produce leads, top line growth and ROI:

• Install and learn how to use software like HubSpot to provide you with the critical infrastructure for lead capture and tracking
• Optimize your website for search engines so you can get found first by prospects searching on line
• Hire internal resources whose mission includes managing the firm’s social media platforms and programs
• Devote dollars to developing a comprehensive, clean and up to date marketing database
• Outbound marketing tools like an e-newsletter and e-blast capabilities
• Content in the form of a blog – this can be outsourced or you can hire internal resources to do this
• Content in the form of whitepapers, e-books, webinars (outsourced or internal)
• Four to six integrated lead generation campaigns, including both inbound and outbound marketing tactics

Yes, inbound marketing comes with costs for infrastructure like HubSpot and consultants  to help install the program. But here’s the difference: inbound marketing is laser focused on lead generation and ROI, not building a brand or worrying about vanity marketing issues like what color your logo should be.

It requires participation by partners, subject matter experts and marketing departments, and a willingness to invest resources in thought leadership and development of content.

But when you look at your budget, and get rid of what you’ve been spending on branding and those sacred cows, you just might find that you don’t need to add budget dollars – you may just need to  re-direct them into a new type of marketing approach that represents nothing less than a transformation in the way that CPA , consulting and financial services firms market their services and products.