For many accountants, offering advisory services is already enough of a stretch, but your clients won’t ask for these services if they don’t know you offer them.
So how can you get the word out about your advisory services without hiring a marketing firm or even spending a lot of money? Maybe you’ve never even marketed anything before! That’s okay - we’re here to show you how you can get the word out about your services and have clients knocking at your door!
Here are our top 5 strategies for marketing yourAdvisory services on a low budget:
- Know your target audience
- Understand your budget (and your options)
- Nurture client relationships
- Become an expert in your niche
- Refine your digital presence
Continue reading to learn more about how you can easily employ each strategy to start working for your firm and promoting your advisory services.
Know your target audience
You can’t start marketing your services without knowing who your target audience is. For many firms, it’s simply whoever requests their services. While this may help you “get by” as a firm, this is the wrong strategy for growth.
By identifying a target audience, you are ensuring that your marketing efforts are strategic and planned, not just throwing things, and seeing what sticks. Understanding your target also helps you to identify the problems that your target audience is facing, because they are all different.
A client in real estate will have quite different problems than a client running a startup business out of their garage, and your marketing efforts should be planned accordingly.
Understand your budget(and your options)
By understanding your own operations, you will know how much (if any) budget you must work with when marketing.
But what many firms don’t understand is that not all marketing is PAID marketing. There are endless options for lead generation and outreach that require nothing other than time.
Consider the following free options:
- Endless tutorials available for free on Youtube if you don’t understand how something works
- Free programs like Canva and Fotor to create graphics, logos, headers, and other marketing collateral
- Newsletter programs like Substack that are free to build your mailing list
- Social media platforms and groups like Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and Slack to grow and manage communities
If you do have a budget for marketing, you’ll need to weigh your options or work with an expert. This will help stretch your budget as far as it can possibly go to help target the right audience and employ the right strategies based on your goals.
Maybe your goal is simply to get more leads through your website and your sales team will convert them once they call/email. Or another goal could be to get referrals from existing clients.
Nurture client relationships
Bringing us to our next point: client relationships!
If you treat your existing clients right and help them grow their businesses, they will refer their friends to you. They likely have a lot of contacts in the same niche (which you’re already an expert in) and you will barely have to work for these new clients.
It’s way easier to take a referral from a trusted source than doing your own marketing to complete strangers, and it is just as beneficial for the client being referred, because they don’t have to research firms to find the one they like best.
Become an expert in your niche
If you have dealt with a certain niche or happen to know a lot about small business accounting, advisory for real estate, or working specifically with solopreneurs/freelancers, become the “freelancer advisor” or brand yourself/your firm that way.
You don’t need to change your current branding unless it is already targeted. But if not, simply start a social media account and blog and get posting. Your goal here is to provide value to your clients and potential clients, while showing the positive impact of your services.
If you don’t yet have a niche, choose one. Find a subject area (other than accounting/advisory) that you are passionate about and find out how advisory relates. This might take some learning on your part but there are endless free resources available online for you to start learning right away.
Refine your digital presence
Refining your digital presence can help establish expertise within your niche, as well.
Choose a brand color or use an existing palette if one is available, so that your clients can recognize your posts online.
Next, get started creating resources for your clients to provide value!
Create a guide on how managing cash flow can help your clients grow their businesses. Provide examples from your experience and share the guide on your mailing list, create graphics to distill information on social media, and get on camera to talk about the results.
You want to be engaging while expanding your reach and working on your digital presence. And the best part? It's free!
Takeaways
Marketing your services doesn’t have to be expensive or sales-y. It’s as simple as knowing your target audience, learning your own business to understand your budget, and managing your existing relationships to help grow your business. After this, you’ll work on establishing expertise within your niche and refining your digital presence.
Growing your business means investing in your business. It’s not just about investing money; it's about investing time in creating a business or practice that is your own. Your clients are coming to your firm for you, not just because of what you do but because of who you are, who you’ve branded yourself to be, and how you’ve helped their businesses through advisory services. Continue working on the growth of your business through implementing marketing strategies that make the most sense for your firm.
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