174 Slow Vs Fast Marketing in Accounting Firms

Whether you are a brand new firm or not, you are evolving. You are going from point A to point B. Maybe it is getting your very first clients and having to take in pretty much anything and everything to pay the bills. Maybe you already have a mature firm, but you have something in your head that's like, oh man, this specific type of client's really profitable, really enjoying doing this work, and we want to start building this in a more long term way. Well, in the various ways that we market our accounting firms, there are certain things that are optimized for getting quick results, which ultimately are kind of some cheap wins. And then there are, how am I planting the seeds for building more long term relationships, which is where the really super profitable work comes from. So we're gonna talk about various ways that people market your accounting firm. And this isn't necessarily like billboards and like traditional marketing. This is like, how do we talk about what we do in a way where people will find us? Of the various ways that we can do this, what are like the quick ways? Where maybe you need quick right now, maybe you just gotta put food on the table and that's what you gotta do. Versus what are the slow ways that can drive the most profitable work possible? Because you've built a ton of trust with the audience. Gonna talk about the differences there and how we should probably be investing in both lanes at any given time. So come on in and we'll put together a plan for your firm. So misconception, I think, is that firms are either niched firms or not niched firms. The reality is specialization more generally is a huge spectrum. And you will never reach a destination of specialization where it's like, okay, we're a niche firm now everybody can get off the bus. It's like, no, generally the more specialized you go, the less people understand normies, understand what it is you do, which is a great place to be because you're solving even more specific problems. Unfortunately, most of us are afraid to like even take the first step of specialization because it feels like we're closing the doors to a whole bunch of things, right? And as a result, we don't learn that actually through that door is a whole bunch more doors with all sorts of different types of even more nuanced specialization that can lead to even better and even more profitable work. And so I think in theory, most of us understand that that is the place where you probably build a hyper profitable firm. But real life is, I just started a firm and I gotta pay the bills or I'm trying to delegate more work to my staff. And I may be capable of this work, but I don't think my staff is right now. And so when it comes to thinking through how it is that we market our firm, how do we balance the quick wins with, you know, the firm we have today versus the firm we want tomorrow versus the more long term marketing strategies that will ultimately get you to being like, you know, somebody like me, where like you build trust with folks over a long time by doing this stuff consistently, not necessarily prolifically, but at the very least consistently so that they see you there and you in a very linear way. Like, you know, build your following over time. On the other side is a bunch of people that now trust you and they'll, you know, buy your services and all these different things. Right. So what kind of took me down this path was conversation I had in some DMs, some advice that I shared. We'll start there and I'll just, I'll run you through this conversation, buddy. And I started a firm recently. What do you think about paying for leads through Google which come in as phone calls? Pretty pricey, but supposed to have a high conversion rate. I'm like, I'm generally fan, like more of a fan of organic than paid acquisition. They said they're trying to niche from the start in real estate, but they gotta start with a wider net just to build up revenue before they start getting too picky. Any recommendations would be appreciated. I basically ran them through my framework. Three steps right now. First, build a super compelling offer for a specific type of person in real estate. I don't think real estate is specific enough. There's a million different people that wear different hats inside of real estate. What's a very compelling offer for a specific person in that space to solve a problem that they have? That's a very painful problem. We talked about this, I think it was last week. And standing up firms around solving those problems and initial projects rather than ongoing work. Great book here. $100 million offers whether you like Alex Hormozi or not. Ton of great tips there around building a. A killer offer that people will say, duh, people will feel dumb to say no to. So it's very tactical around like how would I stand up my landing page and my copy to make it something that people will agree to. So step one, build a very specific offer for a very specific type of person. Step two, try that out, that same formula for a few different types of people in that space. And this could look like standing up different landing pages for different problems. And it could look like posting to social media, talking about those different problems. And you'll find usually one of them hits in a way that the others don't. And it isn't always what you would expect. But a lot of social media is, you know, is putting out signal and listening for noise. What is resonating with people. The thing with niching down and getting more specialized, gang, you are not gonna get it right on the first try. You're just not. So like it is not a question of do I make the jump and go into this niche forever or not. That's not how life is like. It just isn't. And the longer that you wait to start, the more time you're losing to just learn about what it looks like to get more specialized, not only around specifically that domain, but in the act of specializing in the act of going further down that spectrum. So the fact that you're probably not going to get it right on the first try means let's test out kind of a few different avatars in this space and how we can build compelling offers for them and then we'll see which one hits and if any. At the very least you learned a bunch in the process. And then number three, I actually said if you want quick marketing results and I'm biased here, I actually think influencer marketing is tremendously powerful. What you have to pay in influencer marketing compared to like AdWords and like the more general advertising channels paying to advertise on somebody's podcast, on social Media, on somebody's YouTube channel, it is a way of hijacking the trust that those people have built with their audience for years, which is not a replacement which we're going to talk about for ultimately building your own vehicle for trust. But that's a more longer term investment. Influencer marketing right now I think is a great opportunity to get some of those quick wins. So what are some other examples of what are quick wins when it comes to marketing versus more like slower long term builds. You know, people often ask me, Jason, who is this episode sponsored in part by? Well today this episode is sponsored in part by LiveFlow. Did you hear the news? LiveFlow just launched a consolidation product. You actually might have seen it on the main channel recently. We did a whole demo day of it. Liveflow's automated multi entity consolidations. It's beyond simple to use. You can easily map multiple unmatching chart of accounts from multiple QuickBooks Online companies into one standardized report. Once it's set up, LifeFlow is gonna get to work updating the consolidations automatically in real time, the realest of time, so you can focus on analysis using instantly updating data across entities. LifeFlow can even consolidate financials that are in different currencies. That sounds disgusting. Yikes. And it doesn't stop there. LifeFlow offers flexible, powerful reporting tools. Create customized dashboards that meet your specific needs, you little snowflake. Build executive presentations, cash flow forecasts, and more with just a few clicks. The consolidation thing is actually super cool. You haven't seen that yet, check it out on the main YouTube channel. And thanks to Liffel for sponsoring the pod. This episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Cloud Accountant staffing. You all know I'm a big advocate of hiring offshore. One of the biggest changes I made in my firm, we transitioned a Legacy firm from 100% onshore local hiring to 100% distributed US and then 100% distributed globally. Hiring and honestly is the best thing we did. It virtually alleviated all of our hiring pains, completely changed how we thought about staffing projects and the type of work that we wanted to bring on. Because you know what, the folks we hired offshore really freaking good. A lot of misconceptions around the type of people that you hire offshore because your enterprises will oftentimes use offshore folks for like menial work. Absolutely not the case. There are tens of thousands of people working for big four accounting firms. You know, offshore outside the US you can get folks that can do anything from tax to junior level stuff to super senior level stuff. But try to do that yourself. Figure it all out yourself. That's going to be hard. It's going to be scary. Really good place to start Cloud accountant staffing. They will hold your hand through that process. This story is super simple. An accounting firm in the US hired a bunch of people in the Philippines, fell in love with them, but didn't fall in love with the fees they were having to pay to the staffing companies that were managing these employees. So they built their own solution and now they're starting to pull other accountants in. I'd encourage you. A big tipping point for me was when I was like, I'm going to stop being opinionated on this and just try to learn. And so I talked to the other practitioners, I talked to some of the vendors that would like help you get into offshoring. That really opened things up for me. So if you've been on the fence, I'd encourage you to at least learn about it and you start heading down that path. Consider Cloud accountant staffing building Your own podcast buddy. That is a slow build. Bless the hearts of the people who listen to this podcast and share it with other people. Because what's really unique about podcasts is there is no or like no real mechanism for discovery besides what word of mouth and the work that you do on other platforms. So people ultimately only listen and find, listen to and find my podcast because I talk about it in other places that are discoverable, like social media. Now people still do tell their friends about it, which I super appreciate and that does that. Word of mouth does grow it. But if I was starting from scratch and had no listeners, how am I going to get it in front of anybody? The reality is you have to talk about it in other places where it can get discovered. And so building a podcast, while honestly, of all the different types of like media consumption might be the very, very best because it, because it is the last remaining long form media that people will listen to these days. It's really bizarre, honestly, that think boy culture has actually trended towards your long form interviews, like your Lex Friedmans and your Tim Ferriss and stuff like that. It's actually trended towards these multi hours long conversations while all other types of media are just getting more and more and more compressed, like smaller and smaller, more bite sized. It's weird how those two things are going in opposite places, right? And ultimately building trust and building a relationship with someone asynchronously, that is, you know, them consuming your stuff, listening to your stuff, all that and ultimately developing trust with you. Developing that trust is a product of time spent and it's what makes podcasts massively valuable when it comes to building trust with people. Because where else can somebody go sit on a riding lawnmower for 45 minutes and have you in their ear the entire time? Like there's just, there's nothing else like that. And so podcasts are phenomenal, a great way to build trust, but it is a investment, it is a long term investment. Now value building trust is we are trying to get to a place where ultimately the very best type of client that you can bring in is one who already knows you very well, has already spent a bunch of time with you. Not synchronously, but asynchronously. They spent time consuming your content, listening to your podcast, whatever. And when they come in, like they will pay way more than they would pay somebody else who they don't have that trust with, and you're just starting the relationship in a completely different place where they're gonna take your advice like it's just totally different. Right? But on the spectrum of how do I get a quick win to how do I build super valuable long term clients, that's definitely on the long term end of the spectrum. If you're just starting out and you gotta cover rent next month, the solution is probably not to publish your first podcast episode. Now, as I said, like, I think we should be doing both simultaneously, planting long term seeds at the same time as we're doing kind of some of the quick win things. But it's not something that's going to net you a ton of clients overnight. Now another thing to keep in mind here is we're talking about long term versus short term. You don't need a big following to build a successful firm. Case in point, when I started getting my Twitter on a few years ago, I launched my accountant community, realize with like 600 followers. And that launched with like, you know, 65 members or paying members or something like that. From day one, we are kind of brainwashed by mainstream social media. That is massive scale and very impersonal. Reality is you don't need that many close relationships to develop online. As long as those people are aligned around a very specific problem that you can solve for them. It doesn't take a huge number of people or listeners or followers to actually build a pretty compelling business. Other marketing channels that are on the slow end of the spectrum, slow not being bad, but slow being long term. High Trust. Building a YouTube channel. Buddy, that is a grind, especially if you haven't done it before. A YouTube channel. Getting to a meaningful place realistically is an investment of years. Organic social media. So just turning up on social media, being consistent every single day. That stuff doesn't happen overnight. You showing up in the algorithm for other people is a product of building a following over time, building trust with people, building relationships with other humans, which makes them more likely to like and reply and engage with your content. That stuff doesn't happen overnight. Online communities are a great way to find people. Don't jump straight to I should make my own community when you've never even been helpful in somebody else's community. Like there are tons of communities out there all over the place with very specific types of people where you can go in and just be helpful. And if you've ever considered launching your own community, you need to first be in everybody else's community first to learn what's working, what's not working. How can I add value for people? Because again, we are not doing this on a massive scale. We're doing it on a micro scale, we're truly building relationships with other human beings. That's how this stuff happens. That's how they ultimately build trust in you is just being helpful. This episode is brought to you in part by Teamup, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options is that Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company. Guys, gals, gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you. So you can retain your team for the long term. Team up consource accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Xero, QBO and Dex. Also recruit specialist roles, team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants. Thought experiment. What if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season? Just. Just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky ol inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever going to get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employee of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team up on the more fast end of the spectrum. Asking for referrals. Specifically asking your best clients for referrals. And I know the palms are sweaty. That's like a. That feels like a thing you just wouldn't do. It's uncomfortable. But it's all about how you frame it. Because what you're actually doing here is you have learned that this type of person who you're going to ask for a referral from, that you want more of them and that should be flattering to them. And so that messaging looks like, hey, we've actually learned in working with you and a few others that we love doing this type of work and we're looking to move into more of it. Do you have anybody in your network who we could help out? And specifically when you make that request, you need to be thinking about why would they come to you. And so I, I mean this could be as simple framing as we just want to be the absolute best shop for this very specific type of person. And the reality is most people are working with a general accounting or tax support person and we want to be a killer solution for this type of person. And so that why needs to be included there. A win needs to be included. So it needs to be like we're onboarding a few more people, you know, before things kick off next month or something like that. You need to put some sort of timeframe on it to actually get them to follow through and you need to outline how you want them to make that referral to you. Could be as simple as an email intro to you. But you gotta make it as easy as possible for that person to do what you are asking them to do. And you need to flatter them in the process. I mean this really does boil down to we have learned through working with people like you that we want more of people like you. And if I think if you frame that in a way that is flattering, it feels less like you're making this awkward ask of somebody who's already paying you for your services and that there's kind of a uncomfortable thing there that's. That can be hard for us to get over. Right. Continuing the list of fast marketing solutions, giving stuff away honestly, like giveaways are an easy hook for people as long as that giveaway aligns well with pay pains that they feel. So if they are super stuck on something right now, maybe that is we're into January now, but maybe that is like year end planning opportunities, maybe that is deciding on a retirement plan, whatever that is, things that you can give away that will give them a solution immediately. Definitely motivates people to like take action right away. And so they, that could be something you just give away on social media, could be a digital product that they buy from you, could be a standalone project. But as long as somebody is acutely feeling that pain that it solves for, they're going to be ready to move. Having built trust with you beforehand, while that helps and makes them more likely to buy, is not necessarily a prerequisite to buy if it hurts enough. If a lion is chomping down on their head and you sell lion chomping helmets or helmets that purport to protect you from lion chomping, they're going to be all over it. Influencer marketing, we talked about that, how that can be a fast, quick win and then paid social, paid ads online. I don't really like it because it feels cheap. It's actually like a really expensive way to get cheap, low value ads. Makes a ton of sense if you like sell products. So if I sell. I was reading about this like silent basketball that this influencer created and they sold a ton of them. If I'm, if, if my mom is scrolling Instagram and she, she sees an ad for this silent basketball and she has grandkids over and they always wanna bounce the ball in the house and it's too loud or I don't know, like you don't need any relationship with this brand to be like, that's a great idea, I'm gonna go buy that. For professional services where people pay you according to the value that they assign to what you do, regardless of how valuable it actually is, whether you actually even know what you're doing, whether you're doing it right or not, they don't know. Cause you can't really benchmark what we do against how somebody else does it. At least from a technical standpoint, you can't. So they'll make buying decisions based on the experience, based on everything that they do understand. So when it's totally about how much trust they have in you to do it right and how much their belief is that you are truly better than anyone else to do this work for them, then I think in spaces like ours, like through that lens, I think it makes paid acquisition not particularly valuable and honestly super expensive if you're doing it in a general way. Still pretty expensive if you're trying to get to a specific type of person. But ultimately when you get those people in, the trust building process doesn't start until you have them in. And what I keep harping on is when you have that initial trust building conversation and it comes down to, you know, the price of what you're gonna do for them, that's where you're gonna lose a bunch of people. Isn't it just fundamentally better if before you have that conversation, you already built the trust with them? That's just a much better place to start a client relationship, but something that takes time. So as we're thinking about how we're marketing what we're doing, if you need those wins right now, definitely go for the quick channels. I would put influencer marketing ahead of paid social personally. And when I say paid social, I mean like giving your money to Twitter or to LinkedIn or to, you know, AdWords, stuff like that. If you gotta get those short wins. Yes, do the short win stuff, but don't just focus on the firm that you have today. Focus on what you're doing to plant seeds for the firm that you want to have tomorrow in those more long term like trust building formats by either turning up on social media every day, starting to develop. You know that library of podcasts that you've done where when somebody finds it they're like oh my gosh, like yes, this vibes with the problems I have. So well start thinking about how you can invest in both because ultimately the the long term high trust channels will get you the great long term projects. But the reality is everybody's in different places and marketing for you could be about solving short term problems versus long term problems, right? If you got any hacks in this domain that you've stumbled into, feel free to share them in the comments. Anything you've done to find some really quick immediate marketing wins versus what? The most valuable kind of long term marketing you've done is stuff like podcasts, YouTube, anything else? A lot of like social media advice and marketing advice out there. But as with everything accounting firm running really hard to generalize because not everybody's in the same spot when it comes to do they need clients now? Do they already have a mature firm and are just starting to explore like okay, what's an even better version of this firm? How should that impact my marketing efforts? Remember, not everybody needs clients, but everybody needs better clients. And it is your job to keep curating that client list to have people that appreciate you more and that are willing to pay you more for the work that you already do. And that all starts with what happens outside the accounting firm, right? Which oftentimes the last thing we want to think about. We're busy solving everybody's problems who are already on the client list. But how are you going to go out there and find your next even better client? That is ultimately the path to a super flexible, profitable accounting firm. So get out there and do it. Bye SA.