Marketing Using a Content Strategy Generates Leads and New Business

I just downloaded and read a publication by the International Federation of Accountants calledCompetent and Versatile: How Professional Accountants in Business Drive Sustainable Organizational Success. IFAC states the publication provides  “…a common model for understanding and explaining how professional accountants drive sustainable organizational success, encompassing the public and non-profit sectors.”

It’s a great read, and if you click on the link, above, you can get a free copy. The publication delivers insights on how and why accountants can “create, enable, preserve, and report sustainable value for their employing organizations in a rapidly changing economic and competitive environment.”

Although I have one criticism of the report that I’ll discuss below, as a CPA firm marketer, tools like this are heaven sent for my clients. The IFAC reports provides ideas for content that can be used for personal branding, blog posts, white papers, outbound e-mails, and more.

For example, based upon the report’s key themes, I could see creating blog postings on the role of accountants in developing long term sustainable strategies .. how to balance compliance with competitiveness .. the long term affordability of public services. All of these are discussed in the IFAC document, but what you must do is add your personal insight. Take the key thought, acknowledge its source, write your insight and a couple of hundred words later you’ve got a blog post showcasing your thought leadership.

Why is this important? First of all, blogging is critical for the inbound marketing strategies and tactics of any CPA or professional services firm. A blog showcases thought leadership, adds content to your website that will make it more appealing to search engines, and by optimizing the post, you’ll stand a much better chance of getting found first by prospects searching on line for solutions to their issues or needs.

Competent and Versatile also presents a discussion of 8 main drivers of long-term sustainable organizational success, and how CPAs can build on these drivers to help their clients “as creators, enablers, preservers, and reporters of sustainable value”.

Here’s my beef: marketing and sales is not mentioned as one of the 8 main drivers of sustainability! How can you have a viable, sustainable organization without sales? And, how can you have sales without branding, competitive differentiation, and the host of promotional strategies and tactics that marketers deliver?

Note to IFAC: marketing is driver of organizational success – please consider this in your next report! 

(Done venting. Back to the point of this blog.).

Inbound marketing is a powerful, new approach that will help accounting, consulting and other professional services firms grow their  top line. Inbound marketing is built around content strategies. And last but not least, there’s content everywhere, like the great report produced by IFAC.