Marketing “The 21st Century Audit”

New Business Strategies for CPA Firms

One of the most challenging marketing jobs faced by CPA firms is to market their audit services, but here’s an idea that originates in a front page story recently published in Accounting Today called “The 21^st Century Audit” that designed for top line growth.

While the focus of Bill Carlini’s story was about the audit headaches that CPA firms confront in the face of new regulations, standards, technology and commotion, I’m a marketer - not an auditor (dammit, Jim!), so I have a different take. A “21^st Century Audit” is  an opportunity for an accounting firm to do some creative marketing and re-positioning for promoting their audit practice in a differentiated way.  

My objective in this blog posting is show that with a new perspective and a dash of strategic and tactical creativity, your firm can differentiate your audit products and grow your audit practice’s top line, regardless of whether your target is public, private, government or nonprofit/tax exempt.

Carlini writes, “…the amount of new regulations, the increasing complexity of today’s accounting standards, the pressure to reduce audit fees, peer review, and the dangerous sophistication of audit fraud have made it exponentially more difficult to successfully perform an audit engagement.”

As I dove into the story, my take was that in order for a firm to deliver a “21^st Century Audit”, it needs to have:

• An understanding of the entity’s system of internal controls and a tailoring of the audit program to be responsive to those control strengths and weaknesses
• A tailored, not canned audit program
• Audit tools that takes the auditor though the engagement process and links it out to relevant guidance
• The ability to produce an audit product faster and of higher quality
• A streamlined audit planning process , providing a start to finish audit management process
• Awareness, responsiveness and (eventually) a means to accommodate the globalization of accounting and audit standards
• 3^rd party training programs on technology and software
• A  continuous audit approach

These aren’t just issues faced by the CPA firm – they represent a combination of prospect/client pain and expectations, and where there’s pain and expectations, there’s a new business opportunity.

So, from the lens of a marketer, I don’t see those bullet points above as merely  structural elements of a 21^st Century audit - I see them as copy points. I see collateral material, opportunities for thought leadership, opportunities for lead generation, and more.

I see possibilities for re-positioning, re-packaging, and marketing a branded “21^st Century Audit” product. This simple re-naming alone suggests an audit process and outcome that’s up to date, state of the art, and technologically sophisticated.  And best of all (at least from a marketer’s perspective) it delivers a way to realize competitive differentiation from all those other firms doing those … ahem …  “old fashioned 20th century audits”.

So, how can you take this opportunity and make the cash register ring?

(1)    Productize it, and get a service or trademark

(2)    Write new copy about your 21^st Century Audit – features and the benefit of those features

(3)    Use that copy in your marketing collateral, website and proposals

(4)    Optimize your website, as appropriate, using “21^st Century Audit” as a key word

(5)    In fact, make this a separate page on your website, and put eyeball to lead conversion mechanism on that page so you can capture a lead (see # 6)

(6)    Do a lead generation campaign, featuring a report card that lets a CFO assess whether or not they’re getting a 21^st Century Audit from their current auditors

(7)    Write a series of blog posts, dedicating each one to a different feature of the product, like “Why You Need a Tailored Audit”

(8)    Do a non-advertorial press release or a feature story about the difference between a regular audit and 21^st century audit and why companies need a 21^st century audit

(9)    Do a whiteboard/video that you can post on You Tube describing the features/benefits of a 21^st century audit

…. and so on.

Whether you think this idea has merit or not, the key point in this blog posting can be summed up as follows: ideas for differentiating and marketing your audit practice can come from a little bit of creative insight coupled with great marketing executions. Buying motivations are based on a prospect’s perspective on whether or not you can deliver a solution to their pain or issues, like the 21^st Century Audit that promises to deliver an audit product faster and of higher quality.

So Bill, thanks for your unintended marketing tip, but I also liked the one from Robert Pozen’s piece in the assurance column on page 16. Hmmmmm….anyone out there who wants to build a product around helping build better boards?