6 reasons why marketing automation can provide accountants with a competitive edge
Wednesday 11th May 2022
Do you want to improve growth, reach new leads, retain clients and thereby have an edge over your competitors in the accountancy world?
If so, it is worth considering an automated system to help you as part of your marketing strategy.
Marketing automation uses software platforms that take all the tedious time-consuming and labour-intensive work involved in many of your marketing tasks, leaving you to engage more in the tasks that enable you to convert leads into clients and to retain your existing ones. This works across many marketing channels that help you to identify, track and nurture new leads, and can help give you an idea of where best to focus your resources.
So how can marketing automation provide accountants with a competitive edge?
1. It allows you to find new leads
With marketing automation, you no longer have to hunt out a lead by working through lists of names of potential clients. You can use automation to allow you to capture leads wherever you exist in the digital world.
So, if you are on social media, email and/or have a website, you can use all of these digital arenas to leverage your business.
2. Improved targeting and personalisation
All new leads have differing needs and with marketing automation there are tools to enable you to sort through your list depending on a variety of traits, behaviours or demographics, so when you come to engage you can develop a more personalised strategy improving your ability to convert new leads into new clients.
3. Nurture leads
Automation will enable you to suss out which of these leads are interested and which are not. By using targeted content, you can work out who is willing and ready to engage and who is not, so time isn’t wasted on those who are not ready for your services.
Once you have engaged with an interested lead you are able to educate and build a relationship with them, providing information about your business and the services you offer using blog posts, webinars, videos and social media.
Marketing automation is the perfect tool as it is used to deliver all of this information to the right lead at the right time automatically, giving you the opportunity to develop trust and strengthen the relationship that will potentially lead to more business in the future.
4. Support conversions
Automation enables you to analyse data about your leads. Who needs recalling? Have any proposals not been chased up? Did anyone express interest but didn’t need your services at that time?
All of this information can be captured automatically, providing information to enable you to act on leads at the appropriate time and ensure that no possible lead slips through the net. This will result in a huge reduction of effort on your part.
5. Retain more clients
Finding new clients is costly, retaining them is cheaper but as your business grows it can become difficult to maintain regular contact, especially if they use your services sporadically.
Automation can help by making sure your existing clients are aware of all the services you offer, not just the ones they have. By using email or visual updates through social media platforms, it will be easier to keep connected to your clients leaving you time to focus on the service you are providing.
Automation can also send requests for reviews on your accountancy services - positive reviews are a great way to attract new and retain old clients.
6. Increase productivity of your marketing team
By design, marketing automation takes the drudgery out of marketing your services which will almost always have a dramatic impact on your productivity as an accountant. If you have a well-planned marketing strategy alongside good automated software, you will improve productivity - giving you the edge over your competition.
