Marketing Your Practice - Embrace the Wisdom of Success
by Gail Keith and John Chichester, Jr., CPA, PFS, CFP
For many CPAs, the time after April 15 signals the beginning of the business development and marketing season. If your practice has exceeded your business goals, thus giving you the personal time and lifestyle you desire, stop now. You already know what you are doing and you should take a few hours off to enjoy a game of golf. However, if your aren’t quite sure how you will achieve the next set of business goals, get that cup of coffee you promised yourself you wouldn’t have at this time of the day, pull out your highlighter and dig in.
In today’s increasingly competitive market, many CPA and Financial Planning professionals are keenly aware that if they do not market themselves, their competitors will quickly leave them behind. It would not be a stretch to say that many struggle to even define what marketing is with regard to their practice. Therefore, making a marketing investment feels much like they are purchasing smoke and mirrors.
Of course, marketing is as unique as the individual putting it into practical application. There are those who troll networking events overzealously shoving their business cards into the hands of anyone naive enough to introduce themselves. Some are innocently haphazard with their tactics, dropping off brochures here and leaving a stack of business cards on a retail counter there. A segment even considers marketing as behavior unbefitting a serious professional and they simply believe clients will find them when the time is right. While others commit the ultimate marketing sin—they do nothing at all—and talk of slow seasons and changes in the economy to justify their lethargic business trends.
Marketing, by definition, is the process of obtaining new clients and generating new business from existing clients. Embracing marketing wisdoms can make your phone ring, fatten up your bottom line and have your peers wondering what you are up to.
Four Wisdoms for Profitable Marketing
1. Make marketing the highest priority in your office.
• The first order of business when it comes to marketing is to take off the white-collar financial professional’s hat and roll up your sleeves and put on the business owner’s hat.
• Hold a monthly marketing meeting to identify marketing tactics that are practical, can be implemented based on where your practice is right now, and have a level consistency in order to track results.
• Educate your staff. Everyone who speaks of your business must use the same phrases, general language and terms. A consistent message from all corners of your practice is the tie that binds all of your marketing together.
It does not matter if you are a sole practitioner or have a large firm, setting aside time to plan marketing is the first step in producing consistent growth.
2. Provide ways for your clients to brag about you.
• Many financial professionals receive positive sentiments from their clients all the time. They are warmed by a note or card and derive great satisfaction in knowing they truly served someone well. Then, however, the note is carefully filed in the testimonial folder or proudly posted on a bulletin board that only internal office staff sees. Testimonials need to be shared. (Yes, ask permission before you publicly share a testimonial.)
• One quick and easy way to accomplish a number of marketing intentions, including sharing testimonials, is through a newsletter. Send it via hard copy or email; either way is effective. A newsletter provides a vehicle to stay in front of your clients and perspective clients, plus it’s a venue to share great testimonials, financial bulletins or upcoming seminars.
•Another tactic along the same line is a simple letter to put you in front of your audience in a more thoughtful and personal way. The letter does not need to be financial in nature or even informative, it just needs to convey a story of some kind. Sending a general “feel-good” letter to encourage clients to “stop and smell the roses” every once in a while, shows them how to keep their life in perspective and that you understand we are all more than just the sum of our net worth. Stay in front of your customers with authentic stories.
3. Convey why you are different from the competition.
• If a business card is the only marketing piece you have to help tell who you are and what you offer to your clients and prospective customers, you’re selling yourself short. Professionals who strategically brand themselves create a positive brand image, use that positive image to market themselves, and achieve success in their target markets. Creating and using a personal brochure or profile that highlights all you have to offer is critical to branding yourself and providing you with a competitive advantage. Make yourself stand out with a personal brochure or profile. Good quality paper and a sophisticated design show that you are a successful professional.
• Identifying your unique specialty (or “unique selling proposition” in marketer’s lingo) is a fast track to developing new business. For instance, do you prefer to provide services to a specific industry or profession? Maybe you have expertise that supports the financial needs of military officers or professional athletes. It could be you thrive on working with family-owned businesses that have locations in multiple states or countries. Whatever the case may be, identifying a niche definitely qualifies as a marketing secret that few businesses leverage and, therefore, gives you an edge.
• In order to identify your niche, think about the clients you enjoy the most (notice we did not say identify the clients who are the most lucrative) and then simply begin to tell the story of your favorite client to other clients, the people you network with and your other contact relationships ... you will be surprised how fast new business and your ideal business will come your way.
A niche is a vein of gold. You can manage the rock around the vein or mine the vein; it’s nothing more than a choice.
4. Create an aggressive online marketing strategy.
• The Internet is a vast landscape where it is just as easy to get lost as it is to be seen. Being seen requires a strategy and, oftentimes, professional assistance.
• Your online strategy should include a Web site with substantive content, meaning content that is relevant to a target market and packed with key phrases and words for search engine indexing. Post your Web site on directory listings with strong traffic in your geographical area and take advantage of additional “build out options” the directories might offer. Generate relevant links from other Web sites back to yours. This demonstrates your popularity to the search engines and should increase the traffic to your Web site.
• Working with a professional can help you to determine if pay-per-clicks, banner ads, email campaigns and search engine optimization will be effective for you and the level of intensity in which you should pursue any of them.
• Treat your online strategy the same way you would treat a full-time sales person, with ongoing attention, regular updating of information and quarterly evaluation of results. There are no magic formulas. The variables are great, but the benefits can be rich with an online strategy.
Creating an online strategy is not a matter of if you should do it, but rather when will you do it.
All and all, marketing can be as simple or as intense as you choose to make it. Embracing marketing wisdoms provides a solid foundation to build a marketing strategy over time and positions your practice to grow consistently and in alignment with your goals. Quite simply, marketing is about action.
Gail Keith is the owner of Gail Keith Marketing Strategies, a Phoenix-based marketing firm specializing in word-of-mouth marketing, hidden asset marketing and campaign management. Visit Gail on line at www.gailkeith marketing.com or call (602) 799-0662.
John J. Chichester, Jr., CPA, PFS, CFP, is the founder of Chichester Financial Group, a comprehensive fee-based financial planning firm based in Phoenix. He can be reached at (602) 224-3846 or jchichester@pfc.nef.com.
AZ CPA – June 2007
