Marketing for Accountants 101
Growing your business doesn’t just mean getting new clients. You can also grow your income by expanding the services you offer current clients and ‘upgrading’ them.
Email marketing is an efficient and meaningful way to connect clients with service upgrades.
Understand your Services
Firstly, It’s a great idea to review how you structure services. Do you package them in a meaningful way? Basic, standard, and premium, or itemise specific ‘add-ons’, like ‘monthly cashflow projection’ or ‘xyz report’.
The more concrete your language around services, packages or add-ons is, the more relaxed clients feel about upgrading, and the easier it is for you to service. Everyone understands who gets what and how much they pay.
‘Packaged’ services are also easier for you and your staff to discuss with, or offer to, clients because of the reduced ambiguity and clear pricing. (If you need some help with defining your services in this way we can help!)
Email Marketing for Accountants: How it works
Emailing clients on a regular basis gives you another channel of communication to connect with them, aside from meeting once a year and a few phone calls. Regular email communication can also be a medium to provide or coordinate IT support efficiently, ensuring that clients are kept in the loop with any technical updates or solutions pertaining to your services.
These ‘marketing emails/promotional emails/EDMs(electronic direct mail)’ offer numerous opportunities:
- to explain additional services or packages
- to showcase other clients success due to your hard work
- share testimonials
- direct them to information or resources on your website or externally
- AND… offer service upgrades!
All of which you can do multiple times a year.
Won’t clients get sick of marketing emails?
This is where offering added value comes in…
Blogs Articles
Every month or two offer a short, useful article or resource to your clients via email, alongside, or independent of, your offers to upgrade their services.
Now, the key word here is ‘USEFUL’!
Regurgitating automated posts from the ATO is really not going to cut it.
Part of the equation of asking clients to pay more, is actually offering more value.
If you are offering them highly relevant, high-quality information free-of-charge, it adds great value to your proposition and builds on your relationship.
Give them ‘three quick tips to reduce admin costs’ or ‘how Cloud Accounting can genuinely improve your business’ or, if you focus on a specific sector, ‘five tips for tradies to stop profit loss’ – something that will actually be helpful for their situation.
Utilise your team’s own experience and expertise. No need to write an essay, just 300-400 words. The more genuine and realistic, the better!
Don’t have time? Delegate to someone who’s great with clients and understanding what they need. Or, palm it off to us and we can do all the hard work for you.
Offer Service Upgrades
Oh, and don’t forget to offer an upgrade, not in every email, but in some.
Don’t just copy and paste a list of services, you do have to make it sound relevant and attractive.
A great way to do this is by noting a common problem or stress-point you can ease, for example: ‘Avoid getting stuck for cash – sign up for our monthly cash flow projection today’.
Regular, relevant email contact with your clients shows them that you are interested in more than just their end of year submissions. It shows them a willingness to engage on a regular basis, keep communication open, and make a bit of extra effort to share useful information with them.
Nothing beats a conversation in terms of helping clients understand additional services, but you don’t have the time or inclination, email marketing is the next best thing.
Have more questions about email marketing? Feel free to contact us.
Keen to Get Started but Don’t have time?
If you are ready to get your business growing and increase your billings from current clients, but don’t want to do all the hard work, we offer an all-inclusive email marketing plan where we can do it for you.
Get in touch with us today.