Marketing tips for accounting firms in 2022

If you want your accounting firm to be seen in 2022, then it’s time to take another look at your marketing strategy and give it a revamp for the new year. 

You don’t have to do it alone, though. Here are some top marketing tips for accounting firms:

• Set clear goals
• Measure your progress
• Give your website a makeover
• Use online directories
• Improve your search engine rankings
• Don’t forget about email marketing
• Work on your public relations

It’s all well and good saying you want to improve your marketing strategy, but good intentions never do much on their own. 

• Who are you trying to reach?
• Where are you going to reach them?
• What’s your budget?
• Will you need outside help?

Answering specific questions like these will give you concrete goals to work toward and a definite metric to measure your progress. 

Think about the following two statements:

1. We’re going to improve online visibility
2. We’re going to increase website traffic from 25 to 34-year-olds by 10%

One of these statements is more helpful than the other. The first one doesn’t help anybody. The second one gives a clear direction. 

Measuring progress is the counterpart to setting goals. After all, how else are you going to know if you’ve reached your targets?

Thanks to data analytics, it’s easier than ever to see exactly who’s engaging with your business online. You can use all of these metrics to measure engagement across all your marketing channels:

• Website traffic
• New vs returning traffic
• Number of sessions
• Length of sessions
• Page views
• Conversion rate
• Social media engagement 
• Email open rate
• Return on investment (ROI)

This is just a brief overview. For a more detailed explanation of these terms and what they mean, check out our other article, How to measure the success of a marketing campaign. 

Be honest, when was the last time you updated your business website? Sure, it may still be functional, but an outdated style and layout won’t do you any favours from a marketing point of view. 

The look and feel of your website should reflect your brand identity. A few good areas to think about are:

• Your colour scheme and logo – what impression do they give?
• Your website layout – is it easy to use and navigate?
• Your copy – is it easy to read, and does it reflect your firm’s tone of voice?
• Your features – what level of customer support do you offer?

If you’re not sure, check out some of your major competitors and see what they’re doing – you might get some good ideas for your own. 

With around 4.5 billion users worldwide, it’s no surprise that social media is such an important part of online marketing. 

Most social media sites have a variety of marketing and sales features made explicitly for business profiles. Your strategy for each platform will be slightly different, so check out our individual social media marketing guides:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Twitter

Because so many people will be looking for an accountant online, you want to ensure your firm turns up in search engine results. 

Setting up a Google Business profile is a great place to start. It’ll make sure you appear when people Google search for accountants “near me” – and it’s completely free. 

There are also dedicated accountant directories, like LocalAccountantsUK. They provide a similar service specifically for accountants. 

Online directories aren’t the only way to get noticed online. There are a few basic strategies you can use to improve search engine rankings. 

Producing original content, like blogs and podcasts, will help drive traffic to your website while showing the public that you’re an expert in your field. A regular stream of unique content is the best way to get consistent results. 

Plenty of backlinks to your business website will ensure that people can find you once you’ve reeled them in with your top-quality content. Google’s algorithm also takes relevant backlinks into account when reading your sitemap.  

Search engine algorithms match searches with websites by using keywords. So, if you want your website to rank highly, you need to know what specific words and phrases are most commonly searched for and include them in your content. 

Sites like SemRush are a great place to start. You can enter different phrases, and it’ll show you two key factors:

• Search volume – how many people are using those keywords.
• Difficulty – how many other domains are competing for the keyword

The ideal scenario is a highly searched keyword with lower difficulty. It means there’s plenty of interest in the subject but not much competition. 

Search engines also consider customer reviews when raking their page results, so encourage your customers to leave you a rating on your Google Business profile. 

Aside from pleasing the almighty algorithm, good reviews will also convince other people to use your business and provide you with helpful feedback. 

With all the new tech available, it’s easy to forget about the humble email. But it’s still one of the most efficient marketing tools – it’s cheap, simple to use, and provides a direct line to the customer. 

The first step is getting people to sign up for your mailing list. Then you can send news bulletins, promotions, and business updates. 

You can even automate your email service to trigger messages on certain dates, or in response to customer activity. 

For more information, check out our top picks for the 5 best email marketing services for small businesses. 

Getting some good press can be the most valuable form of marketing because it’s not really marketing at all. 

Well, it is – but it’s unique. 

Ordinary marketing strategies, like advertising, are about getting your brand in front of as many people as possible. Public relations are about getting people to talk about your business without any direct input from you at all. 

Put simply – advertising is bought, but good PR is earned. 

You can get started with these methods:

• Charity campaigns
• Social justice campaigns
• Breaking a newsworthy story
• Providing input on a newsworthy story

If done right, activities like these will make people view your business in a positive light, making it an incredibly valuable, organic form of marketing. 

You can save your practice time on manual admin and help your clients keep organised records with Countingup’s free accounting software. It’s built specifically to help you manage your self-employed and sole trader clients.

The app automates time-consuming bookkeeping admin for your clients so they can focus on running their business—and send you accurate, structured data to work from. 

Countingup’s accounting software is MTD-compatible and full of features for you to efficiently review and manage client accounts with direct access to their real-time organised data. Find out more here.