In today’s competitive environment, marketing is essential to every organization. Accounting firms, like all other businesses, need to promote themselves to survive and thrive.

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	Technology can enhance planning and analysis, administration, design and innovation, and the implementation of your firm’s services, all of which will bring in more business and enhance the productivity and efficiency of your client service, resulting in greater profits.

Marketing essentially revolves around the following concepts: product, audience, awareness, and delivery. An accounting firm’s marketing plan must take into account the services the firm offers, the firm’s clients, and how the firm will inform clients about enhancements to its services.

Five Tips for Creating an Effective Marketing Plan

Accounting firms should pay attention to the following points when creating their marketing plans:

1. maintaining the firm’s brand identity
2. developing additional services for existing clients
3. generating strategies to expand the firm’s client base
4. improving firm management
5. measuring marketing activities
6. creating a distinctive sales culture among firm members

Five Tips for Evaluating Your Firm

As no marketing activity can succeed without self-assessment, accounting firms that want to promote their practices must begin by contemplating the following factors:

1. firm strengths
2. firm weaknesses
3. clients’ perceptions of the firm
4. competitors’ perceptions of the firm
5. management’s perceptions of the firm

Five Tips for Promoting Your Firm’s Practice

1. Take inventory of your clients. Find the 20% of your clients who don’t generate significant revenues and get rid of them. Then raise your fees by 20%; this will keep your firm afloat.
   
   
2. Add value to your services. Now that you have decreased your work burden by letting go of unproductive clients, you will have more time at your disposal. This will give you the opportunity to add value to the quality of the services you provide to existing clients.
   
   
3. Communicate with your clients. Educate your clients about the improvements you have made to your services, and explain how they will benefit them. You need client support and agreement to implement innovations. Strive to achieve client satisfaction by enhancing your firm’s perceived value. Bonding with clients is a must for survival.
   
   
4. Take advantage of new technologies. Integrate technology whenever possible. Install accounting software, and adopt web-based solutions. Technology can enhance planning and analysis, administration, design and innovation, and the implementation of your firm’s services, all of which will bring in more business and enhance the productivity and efficiency of your client service, resulting in greater profits.
   
   
5. Differentiate your services. The market is full of similar products and services. Value additions and specializations can broaden the radius of your firm’s market. Watch the industry and continually learn about your clients’ businesses and needs. Gradually develop a niche in which you can solve your clients’ problems better. This will establish you as an expert in that area and consolidate your place in the industry.
   

Accounting firms that demonstrate only average performance never become truly successful. Be passionate about pursuing excellence in your profession, and profits will follow.

On the net:

Marketing 101—Key Elements of a Marketing Plan
www.aicpa.org/Professional+Resources/Public+Accounting+Firm+Resources/CPA+Marketing+Toolkit/Marketing1.htm

Tax Season is Over, Now It’s Time to Plan Ahead
www.accountantsworld.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?page=issue&faid=609&tmep=11&kw=

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