The Essentials of Marketing for CPA Firms

Marketing for CPA firms, while often overwhelming, is the best path to predictable growth. It puts you in front of potential clients and helps you stand out from the noise.

With the market size of the accounting industry increasing 6.3% in 2022, your accounting services are and will be in high demand.

Let’s take a closer look at why marketing for accounting firms is important and the essentials of accounting firm marketing so you can leverage it to grow your firm.

Why Marketing for Accountants is Important

Marketing is a valuable tool for any business. In simple terms, it’s a way of getting your message to your ideal client. When it’s done properly, it will help you find new clients, grow your business, and cultivate success.

However, marketing for accounting firms extends far beyond these surface-level benefits. When you properly leverage marketing for your accounting firm, it will:

Help you differentiate your accounting firm from competitors
Set you apart as a thought leader in your niche/industry
Help you establish credibility and build trust with your clients

Those three benefits are the drivers behind a CPA firm’s success.

So now the big question is: how do you leverage your marketing efforts for your CPA firm?

Basics of Accounting Firm Marketing

Below we will cover some of the key steps every accounting firm should follow as they work to build a marketing plan.

1. Identify Your Ideal Client

First and foremost, you need to identify your ideal client.

Before you start brainstorming marketing ideas and creating content you need to be clear about who you are trying to reach. Ask yourself questions like:

What niche/industry do I enjoy working with most?
Who are my favorite clients?
What do I like most about them?
What characteristics do I not like when working with certain clients?

The more specific you get in this area, the better. Specifics let you tailor your message to resonate with the clients you want to work with most.

Think of it this way:

Not knowing your ideal client = closing your eyes, firing, and hoping you hit the target

Knowing your ideal client = aiming, firing, and hitting the target every time

Once you’ve identified your ideal client, you can then begin building a content strategy.

2. Build a Content Strategy

Crafting a content strategy is key to accounting firm marketing. Because content marketing is a marketing strategy that takes time to develop results, you have to build a firm foundation and maintain consistency.

This is where planning a content strategy becomes an essential piece of the puzzle. With a content strategy, you can ensure your content is valuable to your ideal client and is shared regularly.

Your content strategy will include things like:

An outline of your buyers’ journey
- They will move from awareness to interest to making a buying decision. Map out this process.
A call to action
- Be clear about what you want your client to do once they’ve interacted with your content.
Keyword research
- Find out what terms your potential clients are searching for and how competitive ranking for those keywords is. SEMrush is a great tool for this.
Social research
- Use tools like BuzzSumo to find out what topics are trending within your target audience.
A plan for networking/promotion
- Figure out where your target audience gets their information and where they spend most of their time then create content based on this.

Once you’ve put together your content strategy it’s time to start creating content that converts.

3. Create Content that Converts

There are many forms of content you can create to grow your marketing firm.

At Full Stadium Marketing we recommend choosing two or three content types and really focusing on those. This gives you the opportunity to master each of them and build the content foundation we mentioned earlier.

Below are some content types and reasons why they can benefit your firm:

Blog Posts

Blog posts are a great way to establish yourself as a thought-leader in your industry and help your audience better understand a topic. Aside from webpage content, blogs are the best way to boost SEO (search engine optimization).

We suggest writing 800-1,000 words based on a trending topic or keyword. For the best SEO results, each blog should include data and statistics, visuals, internal and external links, and clear next steps.

Long-form Guides

Long-form guides take blogs to the next level. They come with all of the same benefits of blog posts but, as the name suggests, are longer. This means more opportunities to answer your audience’s questions and use more SEO-boosting keywords.

Guides should be between 1,000 and 1,500 words and go into greater detail about a topic within your niche/industry.

Social Media

Social media is full of opportunity and you’ve likely already tested these waters in some way. The key here is consistency. Consistent posting keeps your brand top of mind.

While they may not need your services now, social media helps you to remain present in the mind of your potential clients so that when they do need your services, they know who to call.

Social media is also a great way to funnel your other content types to your target audience. For example, you can post a graphic recapping the main points in your latest blog and share the link in the captions. This informs your audience and drives traffic to your blog and website.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is still a great way to grow your accounting firm. However, your emails should be purposeful and direct for the best results.

Like social media, email marketing is a great way to share other content types with your target audience. Just be careful not to overload your audience with too much information, they won’t read it and your email will fall flat.

Case Studies

Case studies are emerging as one of the best ways to explain how you are serving your clients. They are essentially in-depth client testimonials that include the problem your clients were facing and how your product or service corrected the issue.

These can take the form of infographics, videos, or even a similar format as a blog and are a great tool to attract new clients.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a quickly growing content type. Even if your podcast is only 5-minutes long, it still gives plenty of opportunities to share valuable information with your audience and establish yourself as a thought leader.

Podcasts also give you the opportunity to work with/interview other business owners in your industry which can create additional opportunities down the road.

4. Be Flexible and Open to Change

While you should always stick to your marketing plan as closely as possible, it’s important you are open to new ideas and adapting to trends.

For example, short videos have taken over social media over the last two years. If your original marketing plan didn’t incorporate short videos in its social media strategy, you should rework your plan to mix in this type of content.

This will get your firm better results and show your target audience you care about creating content they enjoy.

Ready to Boost Your Accounting Firm’s Marketing?

Full Stadium Marketing can help your accounting firm check all of the boxes for building a marketing plan.

We will help you identify your ideal client, do all of the legwork for putting together a content strategy, are experienced in creating content that converts, and stay on top of marketing trends so our clients can appeal to their potential clients at all times.