How to Hire a Marketing Agency For Your Firm

All right. Hello, Hello. Matt Banker here with the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. And I have Erin Andrews on here today, who is not a marketer. She's the owner of an accounting firm that has worked with marketing agencies. So I wanted to have her on and we're gonna have a conversation. What does it look like for. For firms of different sizes to work with Outside marketing partners could be agencies, could be freelancers. And it overlaps too with what do you do internally when you hire people? So, Erin, thanks for being on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I love talking all things marketing. Even though I don't do it, I love talking about it. So.

So you love marketing. You have an accounting firm. Give us a little background on your firm, especially in terms of when. When did you start marketing, what did you start with and what's a little bit of your marketing journey? Maybe up until this point.

Okay, cool. So our firm has been around for like 15 and a half years. I'm actually in a straight line accounting and advisory. I'm a second generation accounting firm owner. So my father is a CPA. He is still practicing. It's been about 42 years, I would say for him. But we branched off and started straight line. And in the beginning, you know what marketing was like for accounting firm owners. It was just referrals. Whoever walked in the door called and you just took whoever. We didn't have like an ideal client or a niche established. But I would say that our journey started. When did it start? It was like eight years ago, I want to say. So I got onto social media.

It's pretty far in to the business. You didn't. It wasn't something you were really focused on right at the beginning?

No, I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I guess I didn't know. So we actually joined an accounting association, a group, Root Works, which I'm sure most people know if they're listening to this. I was not one of the original members, but they were family fairly new at the time. So I joined that 11 years ago in 2010. And I think they opened me up to marketing and what was out there. And also marketing was a lot different still back then. So they were still doing recommend. They had like a marketing program. They were still doing things like direct mailers. Like there was. It was really. I didn't really understand how to get names for a list that was like you're buying lists, which I don't think that's a thing. I mean, there is a thing right now, but not the way we wanted. But I was always heavy into social media myself, so I. We had a social media page, and what I did was I actually outsourced our social media content to a local woman who did it. It was like, right when social media started becoming popular for business. I want to say maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but she just started posting, like, useful tips. So I always understood the concept that you have, like, give away value. If you give away value, that will help bring people because they'll just, you know, eventually they'll trust you. And so we always consistently had social media posts, and I think our messaging was actually pretty consistent even back then, like, with our brand and what we did. So we've started establishing a pretty a brand fairly early on as like a younger, not a traditional accounting firm. Even though I was coming off of my parents, they were much more traditional. But I think that really helped. And actually because of all those posts on social media, I don't know if you know who Jay Baer is, but he wrote a book called Utility, and he used us as a case study. So I just was like, ooh, we're so cool. So I knew we were on the right track when I was like, give away value for free and it'll come to you. And we were like on Twitter's top 100 accounting firms to follow for things like that. So we started there, and then it was like, what year is that? 2022. I want to say 2018. I actually met an agency that was young. I loved the owners. They, like, they just spoke my language pretty much with what we wanted, and I realized that we needed some type of agency. I think I. I also do think I didn't have the right expectations, and I didn't know what. I didn't know if that makes sense.

So I think that's really common that people don't. I mean, it's. Honestly, it's the same in your area. I think a lot of clients come to an accounting firm not really knowing what they don't know. It's the same in marketing. A lot of the firms we work with, they're not sure what they should be doing. Why, a lot of times they don't even know what is all included in marketing. So it's. It is a confusing area unless you have a lot of experience in it already. You've already mentioned, like, three different channels, you know, direct mail, social media. You know, all this stuff can be marketing, but it can be pretty different in terms of how you might spend money or what you'd focus on depending on your, your niche and yeah, there's all kinds of things there.

Yeah, actually I do remember when I first started working from my parents, like 16 years ago. I remember we interviewed three agencies and I remember this. I remember they came in and they were like, we'll print these things up for you, we'll mail these things. But there was no like guarantee on return on investment. You know, there was, there was, there was no guarantee of leads coming in. I just remember it being like, okay, this is kind of crazy. You're going to spend like $30,000 marketing plan and you're not really going to have any, anything to show for it. That I remember that. That's right. I forgot about that. Kind of blacked it out because we did want marketing, I guess when I started working for them. But. Yeah, so, but I think we all, we have almost always had someone doing social media posts. But I knew, I knew we needed another. We needed nurture campaigns, we needed funnels, we needed lead magnet thingies, whatever they're called. I just didn't know how to do it. And I knew there was people out there that did it better. If I could go back now, I probably would change things on how we did it. We spent a lot of money. I would say we wasted tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands initially because we, we just, we just. I don't know if didn't have our shit together is the right thing or I don't know, we just, we just weren't in the right direction, if that makes sense.

Did you feel like, and this isn't to, you know, to throw any other agency or marketer under the bus? Did you feel going into that that was an issue where you didn't know enough of what you wanted out of a marketing agency or did you feel like you expected them to show up with more direction and plan for you?

I think it was both. I think it was both. So we would sit down and like talk about scheduling out. Are, you know, having a plan for each quarter? Because accounting really is cyclical and you can, you can plan out around a quarter. Um, I think I didn't. I, I knew that marketing takes a long time. I understood that. I know it takes like a, it's, it's a long process. You can't expect overnight results. But I don't think I understood the process, if that makes sense, as well as I could, as well as I do now anyways. So we also try to jump into way too many things at once. Like we we got Salesforce. We need a new website. We were doing social media. We want an email campaign. You know, it was just like, a lot going on, and so I also wasn't focused on, I guess, priorities. So the agency is great. They just. I don't think they were a good fit for us after a little while. I don't think I was the best client at first either, to be totally honest. So just like, we have clients that probably aren't the best fit because they, you know, don't do it. You're supposed to. I just. Yeah, I was trying to do too much, I think, with. Too fast.

I think from just like a personality approach to things. Are you more of the type of person that wants to know and understand what we're doing, why we're doing it, or were you looking for someone and maybe this has changed over time. Were you looking for someone who you could basically just say, okay, here's some money, now you do it for me? Or did you want to be involved in that process?

I definitely wanted to be involved because this is the kind of stuff I like to do. I am an accountant at heart, I guess. I love data, and I understand marketing really revolves around data. So that was really important to me to see the data. The problem was, I guess I wasn't seeing the data because we weren't at a certain point yet. So it was really hard for me to understand, like, where our investment was going at first. So I want someone to tell me what to do, but I want to understand why I'm doing it. But they're the expert, just like my clients. Like, I expect them to want to know why, but also take our advice. Yeah, that makes sense.

It does. And you mentioned data. I feel like. I feel like reports and data are such a tricky thing in the marketing world because I. The number one complaint I hear from people when they fire an agency is they just kept telling us, everything looks great. The first reports always looked good. But then when we looked at the bottom line, we weren't seeing any change in the actual, like, revenue sales numbers. And so we were left trying to piece together, okay, how does what we're doing connect with what we should expect in terms of actual results? Because you can't pay bills with, you know, likes and views and just pure traffic numbers. It has to correlate eventually to someone hiring you and sending you a check. And so there. There's a lot that you can understand to know, is this working or not? But there are a lot of ways that marketers can kind of, you know, I don't want to say manipulate them. They're not manipulating the numbers, but they're choosing what to focus on that may not actually be connected to business objectives. And so it looks good even if it's not like doing good for you.

Yeah. So we weren't like seeing those like leads come in, the results of it, but they were probably seeing, well, you're getting average website time on your website is probably really good, so eventually it'll lead into it. The other thing I will say is I, I wish we had really nailed down our. What I, if I were them, I probably would have nailed down our ideal client and our niche much earlier and help me focus it. I, I think they also kind of let me just, oh, Aaron wants to do this, Aaron wants to do that. But I, I do think how can you focus. And we, we talk a lot about this because, because with my other business. But how can you really focus your marketing and your branding if you don't have a niche and an ideal client? Because the nearest spread too thin. So we were trying to do, you know, trying to market to too many people without a focus.

Yeah. If you don't have a niche, you basically are left with geography and you're like, I'll work with anyone. And you kind of pick an arbitrary geographical revenue number.

Yeah, like revenue.

But it's hard to, yeah, it's hard to identify especially. So your firm, you were focused kind of in Massachusetts, is that right, in terms of your customers?

We were at the time, yeah. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes. At the time.

It's a, it's a big, there's a lot of people there. There's a lot of kind of overlapping areas. You don't have to work with someone from your city. You know, there's a lot of the choices that your ideal, you know, quote, unquote, ideal customer has. It's not like you're in a small town where everybody knows the local accounting firm and they're just going to work with you because you're local. You' so competing, you know, for a specific client in a pretty big area in a very competitive space. So it's hard to, it's hard to get in front of the right people.

I would say. Yeah. So if I like, I guess if I was to go back, I would 100% ID my ideal client and my niche from the start. Because you're just, I think you're just throwing money away by doing, you know, any ad spend or whatever you're doing.

You Know, so that's a hard. I think that's a really hard choice for a lot of firms who are basically generalist firms. That's. That's kind of the big hurdle to jump over is choosing that. I am going to narrow down who I work with or, you know, narrow that niche in some way. There are benefits on the other side, but it's a hard choice for a.

Lot of people to make. I mean. Yeah, and we could go into niche all day. I mean, Alex Harmozi says riches are in the niches, so.

Yep.

I mean, there's so much benefit to niches, like niching down processes, employee training, anyways. But, yeah, we go on that for a long time.

So. Okay, so leading up to the agency you're working with now, how did you decide who to work with? I don't know if you want to go into, like, what was the. Did you know there was a point when you needed to stop working with the previous agency and make a switch? Did you make a switch right away, or do you take a break in between the two?

So, no, we. We went pretty quickly, but. So actually a lot of things happened in 20. Was it 2019, 2000? I don't know, 2020, before.

Before pandemic or during pandemic times?

I. For. My God, I forget. So we had it. Okay. So we had an internal person that was doing, like, our social media content and like, things like. Like just developing content and things like that because it's really real. I've found it's very difficult for an outside agency to develop content. And for a company, unless they're in, it's very difficult to, like, personalize it. So to me, it's always been extremely important to have somebody that could do that internally. So we. That person left our firm, and then my sister actually came on in September of 2021. And at this point, we were having a lot of issues, like, with that internal person that was there and then also defining the line of, like, what the agency does and what we do internally, that was like a huge struggle. And so. So that's partially our fault, I think. It was just. And then, honestly, we just didn't have the best person that we were working with with the other agency. So unfortunately, that's kind of what happened. But then my sister started in September of 2021, and she just turned out to be. She was really good at writing, communications. She turned out to be amazing for content creation, social media, things like that. Unexpectedly. And then we decided we were always obsessed with story brand, like The Donald Miller and like I took his all day, you know, two day course on messaging and branding. And the agency we were working with, they just weren't a story brand agency and they just didn't get it, I think. So we were trying to push something that wasn't their philosophy, I guess so.

So you were bought into kind of a marketing philosophy after you'd already started working with this agency. They weren't really interested in coming along. So it's kind of like an alignment issue in some ways.

Yeah, yeah. Which is okay. I mean they do their thing one way and we do our things another way. So.

But you got to be. I do think you need to have that alignment with the marketing agency. You know, I have a way of approaching marketing that isn't a right fit for every client. And if, if they really want one thing and what we do is something different, it's like always going to, it's always going to end. It's not, it's not a long term. Yeah, it's not a long term success.

So like I guess when I said it was okay, it's, it's okay not to. If they want to go do their thing and we want to do our thing, that's not going to work. We just found a storyboard agency. We just happened to get someone in Florida because that's where my husband and I moved. And, and they have been great. They understand like if I say the lingo they, they understand. I remember the first meeting I had with the owner or whomever it was. He was just, usually they sell the story brand. And I was like, oh no, no, I could sell, I could sell it to you. So that's. He was like, well, you're just like a perfect customer for us because you're already doing the philosophy. That's the way we do things. So. Yeah, but, but we also have different, they have a different role than we did with the other company too. And we really, really defined our internal person and then their role too. So. So that's been huge. Which I wish we had done better with the old agency.

So what, what does that kind of look like at this point? Who, what is your internal person doing? What do you rely on an outside agency to do?

So the internal person who is my sister, she does all of the social media content creation, like basically everything related to that. She actually writes the most of the emails that go out, the nurture emails. She then she works with the agency that we use. They're like the bigger picture things. So they helped us, our HubSpot. So we ended up transitioning from Salesforce to HubSpot. HubSpot was a disaster. So our biggest project was getting HubSpot. So they helped us clean up HubSpot, get that ready and now, now that HubSpot's been all cleaned up and we're good, we, you know, we established properties and all that stuff. They help us do workflows and so like when my sister wants a nurture campaign, they help teach her workflows and all that stuff. They also built our, that we got a new website. They built the website and they make things talk between the two. It's all the higher, higher level stuff that we really shouldn't know how to do because we're not an agency. And then that we, then they're there for just like with strategy, for planning and they write us blogs for SEO. They also maintain our SEO. So like I said, I don't think they could do content creation for social media. But it, I don't, they couldn't do it the way my sister's doing it.

So, so you get a breakdown from content. You break it into, you've got SEO content for the website and then social media content as the main buckets of what you're, of what you're doing. Yeah, it sounds like. Well, I'll say a couple things. One, that content piece is so important. Like if you're positioning yourself as, as, as a guide or as an, as an expert within the niche for your customers. It's so difficult to outsource that expertise to a copywriter. And the way I think about it is basically a copywriter can go to Google and they can look up what somebody else has said but they can't generate the actual like insights that an owner can, can have. And you know, even within that it's hard. I don't know how, how closely you're involved or you know, kind of upper level management people. It can be really hard to hand that off to a junior person as well. Most of the firms that we've worked with really struggle if they try to outsource their expertise to a person who doesn't have any, you know, it just falls.

Yeah, I think we were very lucky because my sister grew up in the accounting industry. She is not an accountant at all. She's very smart so she understands it. But she can also like listen in on something and like she listens is on my sales calls. She sees our sales process. She sits, she sits on a bookkeeping calls. So she's like researching the marketing agency what they do is like you just said, they just find the keywords and they probably just Google like an article to write and they do that. I also think as a firm owner, I meet a lot of firm owners that are like, I'll have my admin do it and I'll give them ideas. Or that's not, I don't know, it's. You got to find someone.

Yeah. I mean there's probably like three skills. It's like you have to have accounting expertise, you have to be a good writer and you have to put yourself in the position of like the customer. Two. So you have to. And, and if you have two out of three, you can probably make do with missing one of those. You go to other people for expertise. But you know, if you're missing, if you only have one out of those three things, it can be really tough. We used to do a lot of content writing for our clients and we've essentially, like in our firm we've, we've essentially cut that. We have a copywriter who can, who can take content and turn it into articles. But we're, we require, we need a subject matter expert to be involved in coming up with the ideas and making like having a point of view and all of that. Because otherwise. Yeah, like I said, it kind of, it kind of falls a little bit flat there.

How.

Okay, can we talk, can we talk about money a little bit? So marketing is, marketing is expensive. Right. And so other than jumping over the hurdle of like, what's your niche? I think that understanding, like what is a realistic budget for, for marketing, like how much should you put in, what are your expectations about getting out? And you know, you don't have to get into tons of detail, but how do you go about developing a marketing budget? Working with an agency is more expensive than, you know, hiring a person in house. How do you do that?

So like I said earlier, we have overspent on marketing. We didn't have a budget so we just knew we wanted to kick ass marketing. Right. Like kick out of social media. So I will always have, probably always have a dedicated in house person that at least handles a con, like and they're the coordinator with the agency. If you're just starting out, I think you need to kind of pick what makes sense for you. I don't know if you'd agree with that. I'm good on social media. I'm horrible at making posts. My sister is really good at that. She's really clever. But if you could find someone that's really good at that and they can do, you know, internally I don't think that's as expensive because you, you know what I mean? That's someone you can pay a few hundred bucks a week. An agency. The reason why, one of the main reasons why I really wanted an agency is because we use HubSpot and I wanted a really good website. Websites as I understand it are supposed to make you money, not just look pretty. So. And I wanted my messaging right. So we could have built something on wix ourselves. I'm pretty good at technology but I knew that wasn't what we want. So they have to maintain the website and things like that. So I think now that I know a lot more I just like ad spend is different too. Like you need to have a budget first. You have your agency. So we spend a few thousand dollars a month on our agency. We were spending $5,000 a month on our agency plus our in house person. So we were spending like 95000 a year which is like I think about that now and I want to vomit. Not even counting ad spend. So that was when we didn't know what we didn't know. I don't think now we're spending probably half that. It just depends. But I also would make sure that you have your processes in place for when your marketing stops that you can take on the client that you're gonna respond to the leads. So it's very time consuming. So if you're doing social media posts there's a lead center that comes in that has to be managed. If you're getting email nurture campaigns and you're getting emails back, you have to manage that. Assign it out sale. There's a sales process involved. So I guess start slow and kind of think what you can afford. I think I do think you can't afford not to do it. If you want to grow.

Yeah, the number that is kind of always in my mind if you don't, if you don't have marketing but you want to be aggressive is that you probably have about 60k a year as your budget to start and you can do two things. You can either hire a person and have them do a lot of those things. You might have a little bit of budget for some ad spend or you can hire an agency but you're probably not going to be able to spend. You're not going to be able to spend you know, $6,000 this year and see your revenue double, right?

No, no, no. Like ad spend we. So now that house spot's cleaned up now that our sales cycle, you know, everything's gone. Because it took us a while to get even our sales process and everything, they want our ad spend to be about 2, 500amonth on top of everything else that we're spending. And that's like, that's what my old agency wanted too. So to me that's normal. I think we're spending like 1500amonth right now. We just started, so that seems normal to me. It's not cheap, but it can.

No it's not. I mean you, when you're, when you're hiring from. Well it's in house or outhouse, you're out. Outhouse, Outside, that's a better word. But you're, you basically you're, you pay three times is what I tell people. You pay for the ideas. And so you went out and you found an agency that had good ideas, they were aligned with you on messaging. Using StoryBrand as the framework, they can come and help you direct the strategy. And so you pay a certain premium for people who have better ideas about marketing. Then you pay for time and you either pay for, you either pay in time where you do it and someone on your team like uses the hours to get it done or you pay someone else to do the work. The actual tasks of. Yep, Setting up funnels, workflows, writing, posting, social media, all of that. And then you pay the platforms, which is the distribution. You have to Pay Facebook or LinkedIn or Google, whoever, wherever you're putting that content. And not every marketing strategy needs to do paid content. You know, there's all kinds of little things in there, you know, SEO or there's kind of technical things that you almost always have to outsource some things you can do with an inside person. But I don't know if this is, if this makes sense. The other kind of recommendation I usually give people is an agency. So like any person probably has three out of the 12 marketing skills that would be really helpful. Like they designing websites or being a designer, you know, writing for social media. There's like this whole list. If you have a person inside, they probably have three to four skills that they can do. And so it's not realistic to hire an in house marketing person. Expect them to do everything. They're just not gonna have the capacity. But if you hire an agency, they'll have that whole list, but they're gonna be like three times as expensive as the person. Yeah, so it's, it's a trade off for sure. So you, you hired a person first or you've always had kind of a person.

We, we've always had a social media person and like the person that just did, she just did like she did custom posts for us but they were generic in a way that worked for the time, the time that it was. And then we've. But we have an in house person. I mean but you, you know, like we're everything we need. So like even internal emails to clients, communication. I just had to have somebody like even the office is closed. So how do you launch new products and services? You have to make it look pretty. You know, how do you announce a new staff member, anything like that? I just. But the return on investment over time for what we're spending, I mean it's gonna pay off.

Yeah.

As long as we're consistent with our messaging and we are consistent with follow through. I used to make the mistake, I'm part charge of sales of not, not getting back to the people which was, you know, stupid. So you're literally throwing them out. You're like, well what's the point of marketing if you're not going to reply to the sale? I've learned my lesson.

So it sounds like there's kind of a. Still talking money a little bit. There's kind of a, an increase. There's like a bit. Usually spend a lot at the beginning of a relationship, especially with an agency and then over time like it can taper off a little bit. And what I found is even, even with good agencies most of the time what you need from them becomes somewhat less over time because you get the processes set up, you solve the big problems. Your internal people maybe are taking over some of those things. It's kind of two questions. One is what are you, what kind of metrics are you looking at in term in terms of deciding is this working or how do you do, how do you decide every quarter? Yes, we're going to keep doing this for our marketing. We, you know, we believe it's an investment and then I don't know if you have any thoughts on like and what would be, how would you know if, if it was time to, to change things up for marketing?

So we, we just started getting reporting because everything just got finally set up this past June. Um, so I guess if we're doing like email campaigns, it's open rates and conversions from there. We are also heavy, like I said, a heavy on social media. So we get a lot of email addresses from being parts of groups and giving like free tools away. So once we get them in, how many of those do we convert to leads and then, you know, sell them? Obviously dollar amount, I guess, like from a super technical. Now that we have the SEO, because the SEO blog just started, just started in July or August, so probably a lot more data in a year. But seeing how those are, those are coming up on the, the. All of the dashboards, the Google stuff. Yep, I think so. I think I would give it probably a year before I really. Unless it's like you're getting zero. Really made a decision to stop something because I think it's the. As my husband always says, the flywheel has to start spinning and then eventually it goes.

Yeah, it's really hard to restart things like to start from scratch. And I think a lot of firms go through a process where it feels like they do a thing for a little while and then they cut it to zero and they have to start over. And it feels like a long slog to build back up to something that feels like it's really working.

Well, even our presence on social media, that even though we're so present, it took a really long time, but now most of our business comes from social media. Like even we'll have a client. We got a client from social media. They'll repost something we posted and then that person that's following them calls us. So that. But that took. I mean, we've been on it for years and it's. It still takes a long time. But yeah, it's. I all. I always get so, like frustrated with any business owner, I guess that says, well, I tried this and it didn't work. So we stopped and I'm like, well, you have to give it time. You have to give it time. It's not going to work overnight. I guess that's the one thing I've always known from the start. Yeah, you just have to give it time.

We often. I often think about it as like, there's stages and the first stage is setting up and you basically have no idea if it's going to work or not. And you got to give it, I'm going to say minimum of 90 days for almost any new initiative. And at that point you're really still just looking for positive signals. Like, is there. Do we get a couple comments? Do we see one person, a quarter even coming in through the funnel that we have set up, that's a positive signal and says, yes, it is working how it's supposed to. Now we're going to test it and we're going to try to improve it or get it dialed in. So it works better. And then it's after six months that you can start saying, all right, well, now that this is working, pour on the gas and, you know, maybe do more. But if you. If you just go through those first 90 days and you're like, well, I only got one. One lead out of this new system. That's a lot a. It's a lot of money to invest upfront for a system that you commit to for a pretty short amount of time. And then you're going to start over and you're going to have to spend a bunch of money again.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The one thing that I have learned about myself is I don't really want to be somewhere where I'm not comfortable or I am not, like, on a lot. So for me, Facebook is big. Like, I am on Facebook. I. I'm sure a lot of people in their 20s are rolling their eyes, but that's where I am. My sister is huge on Instagram, and she's always like, go on Instagram. So I also think if you're gonna, like, if you're doing social or whatever, you should probably choose something that you're comfortable with. But you also need to find where your audience is, because if you have to force yourself to go there, it's. I think it's really hard.

Yeah. And I'm definitely a LinkedIn person. I know that's where there's a lot of business owners. Are there accounting firms? If you don't have a social media platform that you're active on, but you want to be, I'd recommend LinkedIn for most firm owners because that's probably where a lot of the clients, at least critical mass of them. But we know there are certain industries that just aren't on LinkedIn and they are on Facebook. Like you said, you have to find who's your ideal client, because it doesn't make any sense to spend a bunch of money on Facebook if it's. If no one's there, or LinkedIn if your audience isn't there. So you do need to know those sorts of things.

Like if you're. If your ideal client is influencers. Yeah, you got to go where the influencers are. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, ours are contractors and a trade, so they're. Yeah, yeah. It's just where you can find them.

You're a more established firm. You're. You're. You're bigger. You've invested in marketing in the past. You have growth aspirations. What would you say to the smaller. You kind of started talking about this a Little bit. But the smaller, let's say it's a four person firm who is saying, okay, we want, we want to grow, we want to turn into, you know, we want to get to that 20% headcount and have a cool office and whatever else we know it's going to take marketing. Like what are, what are the baby steps that you would, you would say that they need to start with?

I would say get your brand. Like you have to, you don't want to have like a confusing brand. So like your messaging should be super clear. I'm sure you'll probably love this because it's story brand but. And what you're, what you sell and offer and what's, what problems you solve. If you can have that like, like on a website, like a very clear space, exactly what you do, that has been huge. So there's no confusion about what you do. That's probably, I don't know if you agree with that.

Yeah, well I, I mean I always say it's, there's no point in spend spending money to send good traffic to a bad website. Like that's, yeah, it's, that's kind of a waste. And it's not the website is the be all and. And all but it's usually it's kind of ground zero for like it's the first impression people have of you. It's if you ever get a referral, that's where people go and if, if they're confused at what you do, who you work with, you're losing, you're definitely losing money at that case. Even if you have a great referral network, improving your website can, can lead to, I think an increase in conversions, you know, from that referral network.

Because I've been on people's websites and I'm like, I don't really understand who you help or how you help them even not even this industry and other industries. I'm like, I don't, I don't know what this person does. So just make that super clear. And then I think it's, I don't know, it's you, you have to start getting in front of people. So if you have an idina niche, we've already talked about this, you should probably, probably have an itch but figure out how to get names and emails so that you can start adding them to an email list. Even if you're just using something like mailchimp just to start emailing them and get in front of them. Would you agree?

Yeah, I mean I'm, now I'm in the selling myself as a marketer role in some ways.

Yeah.

I mean, I think website is a place to start developing an audience. If you develop an email list, it's something you own, Right. You could develop a lot of connections on LinkedIn and they could change the algorithm or switch the way that they, like, put out content and it could really hurt you. But an email list you. You basically own forever and you can, you can take it back. We're. What we're finding is it is harder to get people onto email lists now than it was, you know, five, 10 years ago because we all get inundated with spam. But if you have ways, you know, you can join organizations, you can, you know, be a member again. If you have that niche, you can be a member of an organization and you can get the email list. And now you've got a list of warm leads and email is still a really powerful channel if you can get them onto that list.

Yeah. So. Well, I'm also a huge fan, especially if you're. We keep talking about niching but like, if you can host a webinar, like start giving value out for free. We did a ton of that during COVID with PPP and stuff like that. If you join that association, offer to do free webinars for the members, you're going to get lists, you're going to get people trusting you or go to your local chamber of commerce or something like that. Kind of start out with. I would start out with what's reasonable and what you can do without, like studying Instagram algorithms or something like that, because I don't know them. My sister somehow figured out the song thing, the audio thing on Instagram and like, what's coming up. That's wild. But yeah, or if you have, like, maybe you're an old, like you have a kid that wants to be involved and they're really, really great at social media. Bring them in, I guess, and have them just start posting. I. I guess you got to pick.

A channel and I think you do have to get active. I think it would be probably the biggest mistake. We talked about this earlier is an assumption that you can just ask someone else to do it for you. You know, accounting, it is a trust business, It's a credibility business. And so business owners do want to hear from you more than they want to hear from a bookkeeper on your team or your kid. But you got to get the technical, get the stuff out there too. And so if you have a person who can shadow you and who can be the person putting in the time to do this stuff, then that could work really well as well. Is there anything else you would tell an agency owner to just like, avoid or what are. What are the kind of the pitfalls that you wish someone would have told you? You know, 15 years.

I would, I would like a very thorough plan of like, like just writing out what you want, what you, what you want at the end of what, like what the goal is of your firm, and then align your marketing plan towards that. So just because you say, I want to grow in revenue by 25% this year, what does that mean? How many clients does that mean? An average of what? In what industry? How are you going to get that? That's, that's definitely something, I guess. Don't, don't do something you're not super comfortable with. That's just like, what is this? Like, if people are DMing you on Instagram and you're not on Instagram, that's not going to do anything. So, um, but the plan is the big, I think aligning on the same plan, because then you can really prioritize what you want to do and when you want to do it. I think, I would think. Does that sound like a good idea?

I mean, it sounds. As a marketer, if I come in to work with a firm and they don't really know who their customer is, what their goals are, what they're trying to accomplish, it's really hard for me to put a number on that of like, okay, so how much is that worth to you? You know, if they say we just want to grow, it's an ambiguous thing. It's hard to say, well, okay, would you spend, would you spend $50,000 a year, you know, this year to, you know, quote, unquote, grow? Well, you probably are going to need a number that. Okay, grow by how much? You know, what is that? What does that look like? So the more, I think, the more a firm owner understands who they are, what they want. You know, are you building a lifestyle business? Are you looking for? You know, a lot of folks these days are trying to offload tax only clients and just get small business clients because. Because tax season is terrible. I totally understand that. But if that's our goal, you know, we can build a marketing plan that aligns with that. But if you're just saying, well, I just want to increase revenue next year, that's. It's pretty hard for the marketer to guess. What does that look like?

Like, I know I need to add 3.3 clients a month on an average of $1500 a month to get to my goal by 1231, 20, 23. That's what you need to figure out. That's my goal. That's what I need. I know. So like, then, then my agency is like, all right, so you need this number, you need this number of clicks on whatever and leads that come in, you know, prospects that come in that turn into leads and all that stuff. And, and the conversion rate too. So that, I mean, accountants love data, so, so use that and make the data, you know, you know how to use Excel.

You can figure it out.

Yeah, it's actually kind of fun. Once I realized that marketing is like almost all data, like data driven. And I was just like, oh, this is great. How could any account not like this?

Yeah, it's a nice mix of, you know, it's art and science. You've got the math and the data and then you've got the like language messaging side of things as well. Yeah, yeah. But once, I mean, once all that, all that fun artsy stuff is like at the front end and then after that it's all data.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Well, one, one other tip that we're trying to focus on is getting reviews. I feel like, I think that's like an easy thing people can do right away just because that gives you like more authority and stuff like that on Google or Facebook, encourage your staff, things like that. That's something we're trying to focus on.

That would be probably like if we're looking at low hanging fruit, if you could get, if you could get two reviews a month from your current client base on Google Maps, that can have a pretty big impact on your local search rankings.

And so that's.

If you're just looking for something like what to do today, that's, that's a good place to start looking at the reviews and local SEO. Yeah, you're doing some other things right. You've got, you've got a company and then you, you've got your own podcast. What, where can people find you and what do you want to, what do you want to tell us about what you're up to?

So we have an account. Yeah, so we do have an accounting firm. Like I said, straight line. We're actually currently going through a rebrand, thank God, because I do not like the name. But we have recently started a business called Owners and Operations and it's developed to help accounting firm owners and we're trying to change the stigma of the accounting industry kind of, you know, maybe Want to attract people rather than, you know, it's so difficult when you go to look for a job and you're 21 and someone's saying, well, you have to work a minimum 55 hours a week for more than a quarter of the year. How is anybody going to want to join that industry? It's just there's so much abuse with that. So it's kind of a joke. It's not really a joke is we want to change, make it, make it more fun so that people don't die at their desks. Because I've actually heard a lot of accountants die at their desks. So we have a course that. To help firm owners build the right foundations. It's kind of like the prequel to marketing to set you up so you can do marketing. And then we also have a podcast, which is really fun owners and operations. But if you do, I actually gave a discount code. So if anybody is listening to your thing, wanted to join our course or we have a workshop too, a KPI workshop a couple days coming up. There's discount codes. I think it's benchmark that I use a code, but I'll give it to you. So, yeah, it's just fun. We have fun. The podcast is super laid back. We have some really cool guests coming up. Yeah, that's it.

So good. You're. You said you're on, you're on Facebook. So it's the best way to find the group. Is it through?

So, yeah, so we have something, right? We have a private Facebook group. I'll give you the link. So if you want to put in your show notes, you can. But it's just owners and operations or you can just DM me, my sister looks at it. And then we also, you know, we, we have all the other shit, LinkedIn, Instagram, things like that. But we're primarily on Facebook with the group and things like that.

But yeah, yeah, Facebook. This will be my last, like marketing point. Facebook groups are great right now because the Facebook algorithm, this is strike while the iron's hot. The algorithm really prioritizes group content. And so this is another tip. If you're in an accounting firm starting a group for your niche, once they join, they're gonna see your content in their Facebook feed a lot more often than if you're posting on your page or personal account.

Yeah, I actually heard a good tip that your page is kind of like your website. It's there to go to, you can post to it. But if you actually want like traction on Facebook, it's Your personal and then the group. So, yeah, groups are very popular. Like, very. But it's also very. It's kind of funny. I remember when I had a really. An autoimmune disease, and when I first got it, I got most of my medical advice from Facebook groups, but they actually really helped me. So from then on, I was sold. You got medical advice from Facebook, but it actually works.

So, yeah, this podcast is going to get one of those.

I know. Oh, God. Yeah, you can. You can edit that out, but groups are the way to go. You can definitely get in front of your audience that way.

Yeah, groups are. Groups are great. Well, Aaron, this is. This is great. I think it's super helpful. It's always good to talk to accounting firm owners. You know, I, I work with a lot of accounting firm owners. That's our niche.

And you're a story brand agency.

Yeah, well, we actually. So I actually have two agencies. We, we kind of. We split ours in because we needed to niche in a sense. So we have one web design and development company. We do websites for any industry, any business. It's a story brand agency. I do some of the work and then we work with other story brand guides and then benchmark growth. Marketing is marketing for accounting firms. We don't label ourselves as much. I'm a certified story brand guide. It's a tool that I use with every single client that I work with. But most of the accounting firms we work with don't know much about storybrand. And so we, we talk about the importance of clear messaging and. But we're a little less. Less like story brand. What's the word? Centric in our own marketing and, and branding because. Because of the way that we've positioned in our own messaging in our niche. But yeah, if, I mean, if folks are listening to this and you don't know what storybrand is, there's a book, um, you've probably been offered it before or someone's mentioned it. Uh, it's like to. To be honest, that's like marketing 101. If you don't know anything about marketing and you just need to have a little bit. A little bit better understanding of where to start from. Like, it's probably the best place to begin. If I had to.

Baseline Marketing made simple.

You're talking about or the marketing made simple. Well, I, I think the story brand book, just understanding how important how you communicate to your audience is and what. What makes a difference. I also find it's the thing that gets people excited about marketing. Yeah. Marketing made simple is like tactical. That's their other book. But. But story Brand is if. If you need to be inspired to care about marketing, that's what you should.

And you should. I think I will say you should. If you are a firm owner and you want to grow it all, you should have some type of marketing plan in place.

Yes. And if you need to get a marketing plan, you can reach out to us or you can reach out to Erin. She can give you recommendations as well. And she can. Yeah. We haven't worked together, so you don't know how good I am at marketing. But. But I know that you have. You've got a good answer.

I've heard you're good. I've heard you're good. You. You do some PASBA members, right?

Yep. We've got. We've got I think four or five pasba member clients right now, so.

Yeah.

All right, well, this is good. I think we can leave it there. This has been the marketing podcast for accounting firms. And you can find us on LinkedIn, you can find Aaron on Facebook, and there'll be links and things in the show notes. So, yeah. All right, have a great day.

Thank you. Thanks.

This podcast, marketing for accounting firms, is brought to you by Benchmark Growth Marketing, our marketing agency. See, that helps accounting firms get more calls booked through their website. You can find us at benchmarkgrowthmarketing. Com. Connect with me, Matt Banker on LinkedIn.