Awareness Island: Marketing Basics

Foreign. Hello, this is Matt Banker with another episode of Marketing for Accounting Firms. Today you just got me. It's a solo episode, and I'm going to spend some time talking about the basics of marketing for accounting firms. I have a little bit of a. A visualization. So if you're listening to this on a podcast and you're not going to get to see all the fun visuals today, but it's like a map in my mind of how marketing works and the process that the what you're trying to get your marketing to do. And I find it helpful just to have these little. These little visual ideas or mind maps as we're thinking about this, so that you can conceptualize what's important and what to look at in. In terms of what is and isn't working for your firm. So the most important thing to understand about this marketing map is imagine you are at a. Your customer is on one side of the river and you are on the other side of the river. In order to complete the sale, you need to move them from one side to the other. And there's some different stepping stones and things along the way that are going to help move them across. Now, right in the middle of this river, there's an island. I like to call that Awareness Island. And what that means is Awareness island is where your clients or prospects end up when they know that there's a problem and they're pretty sure that a solution does, in fact exist for that problem. They are problem aware. They felt enough pain, they've recognized their own needs or wants to the degree that they are now interested in potentially finding a solution to that problem. The first step in any marketing journey needs to be getting people onto Awareness Island. Now, there's a couple different ways that people land there. A lot of people get to Awareness island completely on their own. They hear a podcast or they talk to a friend, or there's all these things that happen. You have nothing to do with them getting to Awareness Island. They went to a conference, they read a book, but basically they got to a point where they realized, you know what? I need an accountant. I need a business accountant who can help me with my bookkeeping, my financials, and who can give me guidance about where to go next. And so they are now aware. They are aware that they have a problem, and they do believe, because they know the word accountant, they believe that a solution exists. Now, we're going to come back in a little bit to some of the ways that you can help move people to Awareness island, but I want to pause here for a little bit and just talk about folks who are already problem aware in some way that you had nothing to do with. They've landed on Awareness island, but they still want to get to the other side of the river. They're going to do one of two things at this point. Either they're going to go to Google or ChatGPT or whatever the current search option is. They're going to do a search for services like yours. They're going to type in accountant near me or small business accountant, or they might use their specific industry accounting for manufacturers, whatever that is, they're going to go and they are going to search. Now as a, an accounting firm, you want to show up when people have a problem and know there's a solution. You, they're, they're hungry, they're thirsty for the solution that you have to offer. Your job at this point is really just to show up where they're searching. That's the good news. Now the bad news is your competitors are all trying to show up in that same place because it is a small slice of the pie of people who are actively searching for your services. And so everyone is willing to spend pretty big bucks to get a slice of that pie. So in search there's three ways that you can show up. You can go through keyword SEO. It's kind of your classic, like write blogs about topics so people will find it. You've got local SEO which is trying to show up in the map pack on a Google search. And then you've got paid search campaigns, Google Ads. Now these apply as well to other search engines as, as well. I tend to focus mostly on Google because as of April 2023, that is the biggest one. Who knows what'll be there, what will be true in five or six months. But that's where we're at now. Now everybody's trying to show up there. And so when someone does a Google search, they're generally not given just one good option. They're given a list of links. And so whether that's through the ads or the organic results, anyone that goes through search will be comparing you to your competitors. And so even if you had a really, really great click through rate and conversion rate, you're never going to get a hundred percent of that search traffic. People are going to click on your competitors and they're going to end up hiring instead. So it's a high competition zone search. So that's one thing that they do. Moving from Awareness island, the other way that people go and look for their look for options is by going to their own networks. And so they'll go to a local chamber of commerce, they'll go to a business group that they're part of, they'll go to their friends, they will go to a slack group of their peers. They will go and they will ask, who do you use as an accountant? What do you like about them? What do you not like about them? And so we, we talk about that as dark social. The reason we call it dark is because you are in the dark when it comes to your marketing. You have no idea what is happening. When people go to their network and ask for recommendations, there's very little that you can do to affect them at that point. Now, hopefully you have good, you have good customer testimonials, you have happy customers. And so there are some people who are part of your prospects dark social network that are good referral sources for you. So all of your referrals come through that dark social channel. It sounds a little creepy, the dark social, but really what it means is there's no software attribution. There's nothing that you can do to figure out what is happening. So that's all happening in a place that you have no control over. That's why a lot of people going back tend to focus on search because it's an area where it feels like they actually do have some control. But again, both of these options, search and network or dark social, these are both about capturing demand. People are aware there's a problem, they know there's a solution that exists. They're out there doing research in research mode. And your job is to capture that demand. Now whether they go through search or whether they go through a referral through your dark social network, they're going to land on your website. Even if someone gave a, like in person, you know, awesome testimonial to their friend and said you definitely got to hire this guy to do your accounting, they are still going to go to your website first to research you. And so when they're on your website, there's two main factors that are going to contribute to your ability to capture that demand and turn it into a sale. The first thing is you need to have a compelling offer that speaks specifically to the pain points that they have. And basically you're, it's aspirational. You're saying, how are you going to make their life better with this compelling offer? It needs to be specific and clear that it's for them. And, and then yeah, they're gonna, they're Gonna think, hey, this is great. I, I'm interested. Step two though is it's not enough to have a great offer. You also have to convince them that you can deliver on the offer and you need to overcome objections. And so basically almost everything beyond your homepage is focused on how do we answer the questions that our clients have or our prospects have and overcome those objections so that they will actually book a call with one of our salespeople and so we can try to sell them on this idea. So the compelling offer. We use a framework called the Story Brand seven part framework to help identify who is your customer, what is it that they want? What problems do they face that are in the way of them getting what they want? How do we show empathy, that we understand our customers? How do we show that we have credibility or authority? We know what we're talking about. We want to talk about the stakes. You know, what is at risk if you don't hire us or if you hire someone else. And we want to talk about the success of what happens if you do hire us. What are the good things that are going to come up out of that? The seven part Story Brand Framework. It's really great at simplifying your message and making it very clear in, in a, in a sort of sales and marketing context how you serve your customers. And it helps you eliminate all of the extra jargon and the things that you might, you know, tend to include when you're trying to over explain what it is that you do. So storybrand is a great framework or tool to use to identify and articulate what that compelling offer is. The second framework that we recommend is one called they Ask youk Answer. There's a book written by Marcus Sheridan and the idea is really simple. Your prospects have questions and they are looking for answers. If they can't find the answers on your website, they will go to other websites for those answers. For example, they want to know what is it going to cost? That's one of the top questions anyone has. If they can't find an answer to how much accounting services are going to cost on your website, they're going to go elsewhere. And if one of your competitors talks about pricing, that's going to help get that call with the salesperson because you're, they want to know. Now that's not to say you have to list prices on your website, but you do need to, you do need to answer the question of how much is this going to cost? If the answer is it depends, you can write an article that explains what it depends on what are the factors that are going to affect the cost, the complexity of their business, or how many accounts they have, or how many transactions each month. All of those things can be answered on that pricing page. Even if you don't list a price. They're also going to have questions about how do you compare to other options. They're going to have questions about, you know, what do we think are the best in class. There's a whole list of categories that you can answer. But when you think about your blog and interior pages of your website, you really want to be thinking about from a perspective of what are the questions people have when they come to my website. Most people want to do 80% of their buying before they get on the phone with a salesperson nobody wants to be sold to. And so most of us want to know before we talk to a salesperson if this is going to be a good fit or not. We don't have as many general questions at that point. Usually we have some very specific ones and we want to get those checked off the list before we say yes. But most people who schedule that call with a salesperson, they want to say yes, especially if you've adequately answered other questions beforehand. Okay, so if you imagine this river moving from left to right, Awareness island is in the middle and capturing demand is everything to the right of Awareness island, between the island and the other shore, which is your sail. So just as a recap, everything that's about capturing demand, that has to do with search, local SEO, SEO, pay per click, it has to do with your website, how well, how good your website is at converting visitors into sales calls, and it has to do with that network, the dark social network. So that's all, like I said, everything to the right of Awareness island, that's about capturing demand. Now if you are just starting out in your marketing journey, if you don't have much of a marketing program or engine built out for your company, you're going to want to focus on that side of the equation. You want to make sure everything that you have in place when it comes to demand that already exists is running properly. Your website already has some traffic, but it's probably, if it's not well, if the messaging isn't well dialed in, if you don't have a compelling offer, if you don't answer the questions your clients have, you're there's a lot of low hanging fruit to be gathered just by improving your website. And then if you're really hard to find either through search or through those Referral networks, that would be the next place to focus on. You know, invest a little bit in SEO, at least local SEO, so that when someone types in accounting firm near me, you're more likely to show up. Get some reviews on Google, reach out to your current network and make sure that they understand how to best refer clients to you. That's what your focus is on. You're just trying to capture more of the demand already exists in the market. The reason you want to focus on that is that is the easiest stuff to deliver on people. You don't have to convince people that they have a problem. You just have to show them that you have the solution to their problem. So you want to capture demand first. The downside to capturing demand is that it's a small number of people who have arrived on Awareness island. You know, maybe 5%, but probably more like 1% of your target market is actively looking for a solution to a problem that they have. You have the solution for only maybe 5%. I would say it's more like 1% of the market is actively looking any one time. And so that business owner, and again, this is why it's so competitive. That business owner, who knows that they want to hire an accountant. There are a lot of people, a lot of SaaS, companies, a lot of other independent accounting firms, a lot. You know, there's, there's all these different options that they could go with. You're all competing for a very small 1% of the market. Now the good news is there's a much larger market that is a good fit for your services. The problem is they don't realize that they're a good fit. They don't realize that they have a problem or that a solution exists. Now they might actually be feeling pain, but they haven't connected that to something in their business yet. To know that that's the problem that they're experiencing and to then make that leap to understand that maybe they should solve the problem and their life would get easier. So all the way over to the left on the other side of the shore. The other shore, you know, sail is on the right side. Your prospects, a whole bunch of them are there on the left side. And they are in what I would call other priorities mode. They're not really thinking that this is a problem that needs to be solved. Right now. They're just kind of dipping their toe in the edge of this river. They're not really engaged. What you need to do through marketing is your goal is to help them, and you've probably Heard this before. You want them to know, like and trust you. If you can get them to know, like and trust you, you are going to be able to communicate pieces of information that are going to help move them from the left into the middle to Awareness Island. And that is called creating demand. Now, each of those rocks, we'll call them Know, like and Trust. Imagine each one of those is like a stepping stone. The first one is you need to be known. There has to be a way for people to find out that you exist. There's different ways to do this. You can be active on social media, you can be active in community groups in your city, you can go on podcasts, you can start your own podcast. You can go speak at different places. But the goal is you need to show up and be active where your prospects are. So showing up is the first place, so you are known. But some people show up and they are not liked because they don't add any value. They're there to sell. They're not there to provide help and value. And in order to get people to like you, you need to be helpful and solve problems for your ideal customers before they're thinking about being your customers. And there's a couple things that are happening here when people get to know, like, and trust you. Some of those people are your ideal customers, and you are helping them move along the path towards the sale. Some of them who get to know, like and trust you are never going to be your ideal customers. They maybe they're in an industry that you don't serve, or maybe they don't even own a business. But for whatever reason, they find out about you, they learn about what you do, and they like and trust you. Right? And so those people, though, are adding to that dark social network that we're talking about by showing up where people that you like to serve are, where they hang out, that can be digital or in real life, and by providing helpful advice, helping solve problems, using your insight and perspective to help them along the way. You're doing a lot of good work in moving them along that process. That third stepping stone is that they need to trust you. And that's all about credibility and authority. You need to be able to show proof that the things that you're talking about actually lead to the results that you're promising. And so gathering testimonials, putting them on your website, getting reviews for your company on your Google business page, things like that are a great way to do it. If you have any certifications or awards that you've won As a business, you know, putting those on your website, there is an opportunity for you through say your social media to show case studies, for example, or to talk about a client that you've helped or to share a testimonial. Again, people want to know that someone else has been there before and that you can deliver on your promise. Now going back to this idea of the river, if someone is on the left hand side, they are in other priorities mode as, as you interact with them, they get to know you through your social media activity. They get to like you because you're providing value and they get to trust you because you've shown that you can do good work for other people. Now when you say, have you ever thought about having a monthly accountant who's helping you with your bookkeeping, your tax planning and giving you advice on your business financials instead of just that annual CPA who helps you with your taxes, they may have a light bulb moment at some point in here where they realize, oh, maybe I could benefit from a, from working with an accounting firm. All of that is just to get them to Awareness Island. So all of this content, anything that you're creating in order to get them to know, like and trust you, it is not salesy. It's all about providing value, it's all about being helpful and it's all pre sales in a lot of ways. But it's a really important part of the process and it's very important if you want to expand that pool of who you can potentially be reaching. If you are running out of volume. You know, maybe you've got a great paid search campaign, but you can only get so many clicks per month and you want more clients, you want to grow faster, you're going to need to start creating demand instead of just capturing demand. Now the bad news about that, I think for a lot of firm owners when they hear this is it's very difficult for someone that doesn't have actual expertise to be able to do and create demand. Well, the problem is most marketers are not experts in accounting and so you can't hire a marketer to do that work for you. It's not something that you can just throw money at. It's usually something that is built around a person at the firm. Now you also can't really build that around an employee at a firm because when you're building an audience to create demand, that audience is attached to a person, usually not to a company. And so if that person leaves your business, it's unlikely that you're going to retain the audience, they're going to go with them. You're going to lose whatever benefits that person brought to the firm. And so if you are really thinking about we want to create demand, we want to maybe make a podcast or you want to start a YouTube channel, you're going to need someone who is committed and invested in the company in the long term to be the face of that campaign. There are some ways that you can create demand by using outside sources, but they tend to be a lot more expensive because you're hiring an entire team or a crew to be your voice and to leverage whatever insights you have and turn it into materials that are really great. The less expensive way is for you as a firm owner to start thinking about yourself as an ambassador for not just your company, but for the work that you do and for all firms like yours. Your goal is to almost expand the category and you're out there providing free, helpful advice in a one to many scenario. I bet right now you're often in a one to one scenario. You get brought in to work with a client directly when they have a problem, you want to try to shift that to be more of the one to many. Now that can be intimidating, overwhelming, annoying to a lot of firm owners because a lot of folks don't actually like to be on social media, for example, they don't want to do public speaking and things like that. There are a lot of different ways that you can invest in creating demand in your, in your niche or in your market. And so I'm sure there's a way that you can find that will work for you. But I do recommend generally that's something that an owner or a partner needs to take some ownership for their firm. It's not something that you can fully outsource. Now the last thing that's really great about creating demand is if you bring someone from, you know, the One shore all the way to Awareness island, they are not going to go to search and they are not going to go to dark social when they're considering who to work with. If you've already gotten them to know like and trust you, you're going to bring them right through Awareness island right to your website. So instead of going to Google and typing in accounting firm near me, they're going to go to Google and they're going to type in the name, your name or the name of your firm if they're familiar with it, they're going to go directly to your website and see if that's a good fit for them. Now that doesn't mean that they're totally outside of research mode. You still need to have a compelling offer and you need to be able to overcome those objections. But you, you don't have to compete with everybody else that's in search and you don't have to rely on the dark social network to make a recommendation because you are that part of that network really in that at that point when you're creating demand. So as just a summary, your marketing engine, its goal is to move people to the sale as if they're moving across the river. Some people are already aware that they are halfway there. In those cases, your job is to capture that demand and help them with that compelling offer and overcome objections to move to the sale. A lot of people are not aware yet. And for those people, marketing's job is to get them to know, like and trust your company and move them to Awareness island so that they can again land on your website where you have that offer and you can overcome their objections and that leads to sale. I didn't even get into what happens once there's this handoff to Sale. I think it's a very fuzzy line between sales and marketing. A lot of good salespeople are doing the work of getting people to know, like and trust them. They're doing marketing by being where their customers are, helping to solve problems, all of that stuff. And so it's not, it's. That piece of, it is not completely separate, but there's a whole process of developing a proposal and how do you present your, your different packages and how do you move people through the sale and all of that, that is, you know, that's, that's a whole nother episode, I bet. But right now I just want you to think, when you think about your marketing system right now, all of the pieces that are moving, what pieces are not working correctly? I like to use this three part framework when I'm thinking about how to get a marketing engine. Could be one campaign or it could be your marketing engine in general. I go through these three steps with my clients and even for myself as I think about it. Step one, fix what is broken. Is your website broken? Do you have that compelling offer? Are you able to answer questions on your website? If you can't do those two things, that's where you need to start. Then you want to say, can anybody find us? If nobody can find you on the Internet when they already have a problem, then it's going to be very difficult for you to get additional customers. So fix what's broken first. Step 2 Reduce friction. You reduce friction by making it easier for your prospects and customers to work with you. How easy is it to book a call with you? Again, this kind of applies to the website as well. How easy is it to understand what it is that you do and how you get it? Step one Fix what's broken. Step two Reduce friction. And step three Increase joy. Make it a little bit more fun. Add some personality to your marketing. Make sure that the language isn't dry and boring. Don't be too clever. It's always important. Clear is better than clever. You want to make sure that everything that you're communicating is straightforward and understandable first, and then you want to add joy. That's why I put it as the third step. Fix what's broken. Make it clear. Reduce friction. I guess that's also about kind of making it clear. And then maybe fix what's broken is make sure it's accurate. Reduce friction. Make sure it's clear and easy to use. Step 3 Increase joy. Make sure that it's fun and interesting for your people to your prospects to interact with you. Okay, I am going to leave it there if you would like to see the graphic that I have. If you're listening to this on on just your podcast and your headphones, you can find that at marketingforaccountingfirms. Com. Just go there, join our email list and we will deliver this to you. If you have not liked and subscribed to this podcast, we'd love it if you would do that. It helps us out a lot and I hope that you have found this episode to be helpful, even though it's just a long monologue of me talking about marketing. My name is Matt Banker. You can find me on LinkedIn or you can go to our website marketingforaccountingfirms.com and this is the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. Thank you. Goodbye. This podcast, Marketing for Accounting Firms, is brought to you by Benchmark Growth Marketing, a marketing agency that helps accounting firms get more calls booked through their website. You can find us@benchmarkgrowthmarketing.com Connect with me Matt Benker on LinkedIn.