Marketing has always been fast-paced, but over the last few years, it has gone into overdrive. Anna Stella outlines seven key marketing trends you should follow to stay ahead of the curve.
Marketing is in a continual state of progression, escalating rapidly through the post-pandemic era. Thriving in the business landscape of today calls for a new approach and a shift in understanding client needs underpinned by a more accomplished customer experience.
Here are seven marketing trends you need to be aware of to ensure your practice stays ahead of the curve in the fast-paced world of marketing.
1. Digitise your services
While e-commerce has been around for decades, it is now becoming more relevant to business services due partly to the pandemic and a shift to virtual and hybrid working models.
Accounting practices can and should consider creatively digitising their services, reinventing new online services that can tap into unchartered geographies and sectors of their market.
2. Outsource your marketing
Recent years have seen unmistakable demand for multi-channel activities and tailor-made service marketing growing in complexity. As a result, marketing strategies and activities have become more diverse as part of the complicated process of winning new clients.
Small accounting firms lacking in-house expertise and resources are increasingly outsourcing their marketing to boost efficiently and productivity.
3. Automate your marketing
Automation does not require an advocate – it makes its own case – yet small firms can sometimes fall behind here.
Automated technologies streamline marketing efforts by using a single platform for multiple channels— e.g. social media marketing, managing adverts, and reducing time spent on repetitive tasks.
According to Nucleus Research, a Boston-based research institute, marketing automation can deliver a 14.5 percent increase in sales productivity and a 12.2 percent reduction in marketing overhead overall.
4. Customer-driven engagement
While winning new clients is essential, most businesses make the majority of their revenue from existing clients and recurring contracts.
Customer engagement is all about building a solid relationship with your customers, fostering loyalty and winning referrals.
Strategies for busy practices include building and sharing your brand voice, using relationship marketing, personalising your customer experience, and creating content based on your customer history.
5. Content marketing
Content is not just words strung along in a row – there must be a purpose. Your content must represent your firm's values of credibility, knowledge, trust, and integrity, encouraging confidence in your abilities.
Successful content requires the 'right stuff' – writing according to the client's needs and within the right time frame.
It must be fresh, relevant, appropriate, and brief. Trending content marketing formats for accounting firms include industry and tax updates, thought leadership, and case studies.
6. Digital communication
Another area impacted by the global pandemic has been the way we socialise and communicate.
With in-person gatherings and meetings severely limited under social distancing measures, we went from face-to-face interactions to digital communication.
This opened up a myriad of opportunities in digital communication for accounting firms. To really reap the benefits here, you must think strategically.
Marketing must focus on the strengths of digitalisation to better reach new clients and potentially upsell to existing ones.
In a recent study by McKinsey, business-to-business clients were shown to have a minimum of six interactions across various marketing channels before committing to a purchase.
Before a client gives you a call, they might Google your business, read through your social accounts or visit your website. Your digital footprint must be pristine, therefore, and your marketing targeted appropriately.
7. Social responsibility – a paramount priority
Sustainability is one way an accounting firm can be recognised as a different kind of organisation.
If you demonstrate fervent and genuine public support of sustainable practices in business, clients can be influenced to discover their own green footprint.
Aiding in the race to meet climate goals, your firm's sustainability legacy will stand alongside eco-influencers and content creators in raising awareness of the need for change for the next generation.
Anna Stella is CEO of BBSA, a marketing outsourcing agency.