Build a CPA Firm Content Marketing Culture: Step on the Gas for Leads and New Biz

A dozen key criteria for assessing your firm’s content marketing culture.

I’ve been thinking about CPA firm marketing culture and how content marketing is – or should be -playing a role in helping the firm move the needle in terms of putting leads into the top of the pipeline and then seeing them through to a new engagement.

Is it time to compliment your firm’s 1:1 marketing with content marketing?

You’ll want to start by building or strengthening your firm’s content marketing culture.

What Comes After the Leap?

For your next partner meeting, put this topic on the agenda: “How Can [INSERT YOUR FIRM NAME HERE] Build a Content Marketing Culture?”

I keep on making leaps of faith in my blog posts and I hope you’ll permit me to make another. Here it is: Let’s say that your firm’s managing partner, executive committee and marketing committee have bought into the realities of how, what, when, where and why content marketing is becoming crucial for getting your accounting firm more visibility, leads and new business.

If your firm hasn’t made that leap – and a lot of firms haven’t – then spend some time becoming more literate about the power of content marketing. 

The Content Culture Checklist

On the other side of the leap:

It’s now time to do an audit of the firm’s content marketing culture to get a snapshot of where you are and where you need to go in order to put content marketing into your accounting firm’s marketing playbook. The key points are listed below, but we’ve also put together a more comprehensive PDF that you can download (no form required) and bring to your next partner meeting.

Here are a dozen key criteria for assessing the content marketing culture of a CPA or any other professional service firm marketing program:

1. Partners and subject matter experts understand the value and need for content marketing
2. Content marketing strategies and tactics are tied into new business goals
3. Enough resources – time, budget, people – are put into the content marketing program
4. Content marketing is being used effectively to build the firm’s brand and the personal brands of its partners and subject matter experts
5. Content marketing is being used effectively to generate leads
6. The firm has a blog and marketing technology/infrastructure for blogging
7. Marketing technology and analytics care being used to measure the ROI of the firm’s content marketing efforts
8. Social media accounts are being used to promote the firm’s content and drive prospects and clients to the website
9. The results of content marketing activities are regularly communicated to the firm’s partners and subject matter experts
10. The managing partner and niche practice leaders lead by example and are active players in the firm’s content marketing program
11. The firm requires staff – at all levels – to be active in the content marketing program
12. The firm has adequate resources to help partners and subject matter experts develop and publish their content

Content Marketing is a Commitment

Let me make one point abundantly clear: content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.

There’s going to be more CPA firms that turn their back on content marketing than there are going to be firms that are willing to install a new content playbook for getting more leads and more new business.

The double mantras of “we’re too busy billing” and “we get our business by networking and word of mouth” will always and forever be the great divisor between those firms that are satisfied with their current growth and those that want to really step on the gas and grow using a combination of 1:1 marketing and inbound marketing anchored by great content.