Marketing + Culture in an Accounting Firm

I mean, I think all of it as a firm owner, you know, like, you want to be able to keep growing, get to the next level. And so, I mean, you do that through the branding, the marketing, the conversations you're having. It's all encompassing. It's not an easy task, though.

You're listening to the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. Each episode, we have conversations with firm owners and marketing experts about how to attract your ideal clients, foster trust, and build a marketing engine that works for an accounting firm. I'm your host, Matt Banker. I'm the founder of Benchmark Growth Marketing. You can find more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at Marketing for Accounting Firms dot com. Now, here's the show. All right, I have Marianne Reynolds today on the show. Marianne, thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me, Matt. Glad to be here.

So you are not an accountant, but you are a partner at an accounting firm.

How.

Tell us a little bit about your story and about your firm, too. You're not the. Obviously not the founder of the firm. You're with your journey and then how you got connected with gift CPAs.

Yeah, so, I mean, I've been at a few different companies leading up to gift CPAs. I've worked in banking. I've worked in wealth management, so I've primarily worked in a marketing role. That's been most of my journey. I've worked in a little bit of operations, so I understand that side of the business. But I've also worked in financial services. So I got this opportunity by being on a nonprofit, and Kelly Gift approached me, and I was lucky enough to work with Kelly on this nonprofit, and we decided to have a conversation about coming over and being part of her marketing team with Steve Gift. So I, you know, I interviewed and we hit it off, and, you know, the rest is kind of history in that. In that aspect. But, yeah, I was doing marketing for Kelly with Pay Smart and then marketing for gift CPAs. And then, you know, down the road, I, I feel like one of my mantras is just Grit. You know, I don't know if you've read that book Grit. It's one of my favorite books. Shout out to that book there if you haven't read it. But, yeah, I, I am one of those type of people who. I'm always trying to take those risks and trying to see what the next challenge is and kind of failing along the way and figuring out how to make the next thing work. But, you know, so I think in becoming partner, I mean, that was one of my, my goals Like, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to own a business. I wanted to be part of something bigger. Um, so was it an easy journey to become partner? No, I had to fight a lot, you know, and I mean, I'm not an accountant. I work for an accounting firm. So, yeah, like, there was a challenge there in convincing Steve and the other partners that I was worthy enough to be part of that leadership ownership team. But I think the value that I showed and what they saw was that I'm not an accountant. So I gave a perspective of how that side of the business could be part of, you know, the overall picture and how we can grow the business, not just doing the numbers and the relationship necessarily with business owners. But.

Yeah, well, you. You mentioned something there that is interesting. I. So most of the show listeners, I believe, are accounting firm owners, but there are some folks who are wearing the marketing hat inside their firm right now. And I think one of the challenges. This isn't just for marketers in accounting firms, but marketers in general sometimes, I think, get enamored with the task or the work and don't necessarily think about it in a fully, like, entrepreneurial sense. Like, that flows through to value. Can you talk a little bit about, like, what's the difference between, you know, just being. Being a marketer and. And I guess, how did you. How did you become entrepreneurial within your role? Even though you, you know, you were working at a. At a firm, you weren't an owner or a partner at that point. What did that look like?

Hmm. That's a good question. So I think the value and the. Just the growth of the people, growth of, I think, growth of our clients, the growth of even the revenue, I mean, I think all of it as a firm owner, you know, like, you want to be able to keep growing, get to the next level. And so, I mean, you do that through the branding, the marketing, the conversations you're having. It's all encompassing. It's not an easy task, though, because sometimes you're just so focused on what you're good at. Right? Yeah, the marketing and all that kind of stuff. And you have to. You have to think of the other. The other avenues and things like that and kind of match them in and put them all together somehow. But I think that's where you have to create goals and a vision and then have the right people that you're partnered with or beside you or on your team to make that happen. So I think, yeah, I mean, that's. That's where I see. I mean, Marketing wise, you know, I can go out there and market and brand and put beautiful colors out there and imagery. Right. But if I don't have the right people on my team to talk about it, the story and get excited about what's the next thing that we're aiming towards? You know, it's just, it's just beauty then marketing side, you know, it's just beauty.

So, yeah, you've. And, and you hold, you've, you've held multiple roles within the firm and the leadership structure. Tell us a little bit about what as far as, I don't know if you have to get into really like exactly the partnership model. But how do you all, as a leadership team kind of divide up your responsibilities and where have you fit into that puzzle? Obviously you're not reviewing tax returns or doing, you know, more of the sort of traditional accounting firm stuff. But where, how do you, how did those puzzle pieces fit together in terms of different strengths on your leadership team?

Yeah, that's been, that's definitely been challenging for us, you know, since we took over a couple years ago. It's something that we're still learning and we, we do work with a strategic planning group right now that we're working through this plan and our roles even, you know, diving deeper into that. And I mean, we meet every week and we talk about things. But yeah, my role has, has changed a lot over the past two years. You know, I was focused on marketing and then I all of a sudden grabbed onto hr. So I'm doing a lot of HR things and then even in the last year I was helping to manage two of our five offices and the staff there. And you know, that was very difficult for me just because again, I don't, I don't look at tax returns or know how to really put them together and you know, do all the numbers and the technical side of things. Can I manage process and people? Yes, I can, but the actual technical items, I can't. So again, that's like part of learning. And as leaders, I feel like people think we should know all be all, but no, we're allowed to learn and make mistakes and, and you know, and, and grow and grow from them again. Right, Grow. So, you know, we did, we did make some changes and I'm, I'm now focusing more on the HR marketing starting this year, which, you know, allows me to, to hopefully do more with the marketing and do more with hr because we didn't really have a great or big, huge HR presence only because we were so small. Right.

Yeah.

So now that we're getting bigger, we, we need more structure with that. Just like anything else, you know, in.

In the accounting space, a topic of hiring is like constantly right on the table because especially for firms who are looking for more senior people, I, I find everyone's always looking for, you know, a senior tax manager or tax and accounting manager, you know, someone who has a CPA or has a little bit more experience. And so on one hand, you might think of things like HR and people in culture and marketing being like pretty different categories. But I think especially for accounting firms right now, almost half of your marketing is how do you market your firm to prospects who might work for you? And sometimes, you know, I meet a lot of firm owners who are saying, I would love to get around to fixing my marketing, but I can't take on any more business until I get this role hired. And I see them at conferences like year after year and it seems like there's always another role to be hired because hiring is so hard. This week's episode is sponsored by Benchmark Growth Marketing. Helping your accounting firm expand your niche with branding, positioning, websites, SEO and marketing strategy. If you're an accounting firm looking to fix your marketing, benchmark is your go to solution. Learn more at marketingforaccountingfirms.com now back to the program, the people side of your firm and the marketing. How do you see those fitting together and how much do you kind of go back and forth between them or see them as I guess, a single entity in a way.

So I do see them going hand in hand. As a one person who wears a lot of hats, I feel like it's like, it's very difficult. You know, I have some designation certifications of marketing. That's always been my wheelhouse. So I feel like I knew that a lot. But then learning a lot on the, on the HR side has been crazy over the past two years and I'm continuing to learn and everything, which is great. I love learning. But I do see them going hand in hand, especially when prospecting, whether it's for clients or for staff members. You know, even if you, if you go on indeed. And look at our ad, I mean, it's not, it's not a typical, like we are hiring a, an accountant. This is what you are going to do. It's very marketable in the sense of like, are you looking for a fun environment? You know, it's kind of like a commercial ad or something to that degree. It does have some keywords in there. It's very you know, a marketer put it together, essentially. And so I've heard that when I'm doing interviews, like, what attracted you to. One of my questions is, what attracted you to our ad? Like, our position, a gift. And some, you know, a couple people have told me, you know, your ad was different from others in the sense of, you know, you talked about your fun environment and a collaborative environment and things like that. So I think that matters. And that's where marketing does kind of overlap with HR to a certain degree. I mean, especially while hiring. And then you want to make sure that your culture also matches that too. I mean, that is a hard fee. Hard, hard fee. I mean, it is. We all need to make sure we're on the same page with that and foster that as much as possible. And it takes a lot of effort. So, I mean, we're not perfect at it, but we continually work on it.

I hear firm owners complaining about how expensive it is to find good talent. But the reason people choose you typically is you gotta meet a pay threshold. But then they're looking for culture. You've got a job of investing into and helping to create the culture in your firm. And then there's a secondary job, you know, potentially for marketing is how do you show that culture to the world, specifically to prospects, although to clients too, I think, you know, culture can be an important thing, especially for hiring. Do you have any hints, tips, tricks on how to. How do you take that culture and put it in a way that people who don't yet work for the firm can understand and see it and see that it might be an attractive place to be?

Yeah, so I've also heard in my interviews that I do that our video bios are pretty popular, and that shows a lot of culture and personality. I mean, so on our website, we have written bios for all of our staff. Right. And those are usually very professional. You know, this is what I am. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is where I went to school, that kind of thing. Maybe a little bit of personality in there, like my favorite book is, or I have a dog and whatnot. But our. Our video bios give a lot more personality. I mean, it is professional in there. It gives some information about a testimonial, probably, but it also gives some. Some personality and in the sense of what they like personally, at home, outside of work, things like that. And there's a difference between reading something and seeing someone face to face. Video, you know, video, that kind of thing. And so people who are researching Us they watch them whether it's a prospect, client, prospective client or a prospective staff member. So that, that's been very helpful to us. I mean our videos are a little old right now and we're working on a new website and refreshing a lot of these things, but they are still so useful.

Yeah, we, I was just at a conference last week. Was it last. It was earlier this week and I was, I was speaking about, about pages for businesses. It's a weird niche thing, but that's what you get when you specialize in, in marketing consulting I guess. And. But one of my kind of point of view often is the about page.

A.

It's, it's often the second most visited page on a website and I think where it's really powerful is to be thought of as this is your humanizing page. Like people will see your homepage and say oh, the stuff they do could probably help me or solve my problems. But then the next question is, yeah, but who am I working with? Like what's, who are the people behind it? And in accounting, it's such a trust business that that can make a big difference. So being transparent, you know, putting your people and videos on that about page is a great way to help prospects and job candidates understand just that you're real people. Sometimes that's enough to like being a little authentic and real. It doesn't have to be like quote unquote impressive. You just have to be yourself.

Right, Exactly. Exactly. And that's what we do. We showcase our staff members and the people you're working with.

That's great. So tell me a little bit. How is your, how's your marketing? Okay, here's what I love. I have someone on here who is a partner stakeholder in an agency, has some marketing expertise. I'm going to assume that you understand the value of marketing. You're also sophisticated in your understanding of it. And so you know when and where you're getting value. Right. Like you can. I feel like you're probably a well educated person. More, more educated than most. If when it comes to like what kind of, what kind of people do we need to hire? What kind of agencies or freelancers are we going to partner with? How are we going to get this marketing stuff done? So I would love to hear just how is your marketing department organized? Do you have any thoughts on how you budget for marketing and where? Like right now you talked about kind of investing in it Again, what. What are you investing in? And it'd be really helpful for folks if you would. If you could give even like ballpark figures around, you know, what it costs to invest in some of these different things.

Well, that was very kind of you to say all that about me, but we're not that perfect at marketing, so I will put that out there. We don't have a budget that we set aside. Yeah, so that's, that's been something that.

Well, you have you as a, like the salary allocation.

Well, yeah. Okay.

That's right.

That's fair. I do have a brand ambassador who we've promoted into this position. Um, she was internal and we promoted her to a brand ambassador role. So she's been helping tremendously and learning. So she was not a marketer at all and she's been learning a lot. I've been teaching her the ropes. But I mean we, we act, we spend money on blogs and then SEO. So that's part of SEO, the blogs. And then we spend money on some website management at this point. So we, we haven't spent much money actual marketing. I, I try to help guide the SEO to a certain degree as well. Like I said, last year has been a little tough on, on the marketing side of things only because I had a lot of hats that I was wearing. And I mean management, I'm sure a lot of these firm owners know, like managing employees is, is a lot of work. I mean it's a lot. And, and your people are so important that you want to spend that time on them. I mean, as you probably know, marketing's usually put to the, to the side. Right. You put you, that's like last on the list. But your people are important. They're, they're first. So you know, paying attention to them was one of my priorities. Well, so marketing was just kind of on autopilot for a little while. But this year SEO is going to be even bigger. I feel like we as a small business and like a two person team, there's so much that we can do and focus on that we can't, we can't do everything. And I know that it was speaking to some firm owners at PASBA even. I know like there's so much to do in marketing that everyone wants to try to do everything and see what sticks. But we need to figure out what's actually working and what you have the capacity for because you're not marketers. Right. I mean, we're trying to focus on getting clients, we're focusing on doing the good work for them and then getting those referrals and trying to get more business and things like that. So we need to focus on like not doing all the social media platforms because it's just, it's just impossible. So focus on the two to three social media platforms that are like the biggest ones out there for your, for your industry or for your type of. Or focus on.

Which ones do you focus with? Gift, CPAs, your brand ambassador, I assume a lot of their job is on social media. What are the channels that you're focused on?

We do Facebook and LinkedIn and then YouTube because of the videos. I know some people are getting into Instagram because a lot of the younger people are on Instagram and not necessarily Facebook. But I mean, you got to look at your market. The people who are in business are probably on Facebook more than Instagram.

Yeah.

And so look at our business too. We're, we're professional services. I mean, what are we really showcasing on Instagram? That makes sense. If we were a restaurant business, we could be showcasing food or, or actually if we're like a makeup business, you know, like you're showcasing makeup and you're like, you know, doing that kind of stuff and. But I mean, what are you showcasing on Instagram, which is photo focused? Um, that makes sense for accounting. So, like, we need to think about those kind of things. Like, we can't be on everything. Right.

And Twitter, you'd think like LinkedIn is, is a great place for the type of content that you want to produce, but you might not have all of the, like, if you work with a lot of trades or other folks, professional, professional service type people are on LinkedIn. But you know, the, your local electrician is probably not spending a ton of time on LinkedIn. So even though it's good for you, you got. It's kind of that balancing between what is. Where is it going to make sense for us to put together content to put out on social media and where is our audience going to actually be hanging out? I think you're right. Facebook and LinkedIn probably make sense for a firm like yours more than now. If your focus was restaurants, you'd got. You'd have to figure out a way to be on following those restaurant accounts on Instagram and interact with them.

Sure, absolutely. Yeah.

Tell me SEO, let's, let's talk about that a little bit. So I know you said before, before we started recording, SEO has been really helpful and beneficial to you in the past. Can you unpack like what has. What has worked in the past and what you're focused on in terms of 2024?

Yeah. So blogs, those blogs, those keywords we're, we're redoing our website here this year. So I've been interviewing website designers, but not just, just, I mean when you, when we're looking for website designers, let's not just look at website designers for the beauty. We need to look for website designers who understand SEO as well. Because SEO is, is a different animal and SEO has to do with those keywords. And those keywords are going to be found in the, in the copy. So the content that you have in your, on your website, the landing pages on your website, especially your homepage and the keywords in your blogs, the content in your blogs. So I mean that's, the keywords are what's going to bring people to your pages when they're googling certain words. So that's what I'm going to be focusing on. I mean the analytics are going to come into play so that we realize what, what keywords we need to use, make those adjustments. Again, like just driving that as much as possible and then highlighting our people. Because again that when our clients come to our page they, they do, they just really like to go to those, we're finding that they like to go to those bio pages and learn more about our people. Um, and I, I don't know, I, I, I like to creep a little bit and look at people before I work with them if I'm able to. So I mean I think that's, we just have that ability now with, yeah, with the web. Right. And trying to find out as much information as possible.

So yeah, I mean this, this might be like a random piece of advice to accounting firm owners, but if you can create a little space in your office where you can record reasonably high quality, they don't have to be professional. But video, it, it doesn't need to, it doesn't need to be perfect. But just having video, having actual people on your website in various places can be super powerful. You could bring in a video editor or whatever to do it higher level. But I've found for my business, and I know this is true for our clients, just having a few videos where, you know, face to camera, firm owner, partner, someone is just talking about their, their business in a normal human sort of way can make a big difference. A lot of people mentioned the videos that we have on our website when I talk to them on sales calls, that's a big part of convincing people to take that step. Because at the end of the day like marketing is basically eyeballs and phone calls. Right. You got to get enough eyeballs onto Your site or your brand so they know about you. And then you got to convince them that they should get onto a sales call or an inquiry call of some sort. You got to get those two together. At the risk of monologuing a little bit here, going back to some of this SEO stuff we've been finding, we've been finding recently that firms that have a little bit more of a generalist focus really need to invest primarily in local SEO and trying to show up in the map area. I know gift CPAs, you have a bunch of locations, is that right? How many, how many locations do you have?

We have five. Five locations.

Five locations. So if you've got five locations, that means probably five business profiles, five places to gather reviews, you know, five different cities where you're trying to show up on the map. When you think about these, like, local areas, do you see those as your prime, like target areas or are you looking at a pretty big geography or is it your locations? Tell me about this.

Yeah, so part of feo, we focus on those locations we actually have on our website, which I will roll over to our new website. Five location pages. So the content on there is location specific. So it'll say Mechanicsburg in there. On the copy, we'll have Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. So that if someone Googles, you know, and they're located, that it just. Google knows, Google crawls, they, they figure it out and they're going to drive people to our website then to those location pages or anything in our website that we, we try to market all those words. And, and you know, I mean, that doesn't mean that people from all over the country or even from a different, like from Canada or from overseas can't find us, because they certainly do. And we certainly have clients from all over the place. But our primary focus is our local community. That's where we want to do business, our local community. But we have the capability and will take on clients that are anywhere if it's the right fit.

Yeah, that's kind of the way of it with a more generalist firm is that you focus locally. That's kind of your target in the center. And then your market is, we'll take anyone from elsewhere, but we're not putting a lot of our energy because it just gets so dispersed. Right. It's really hard to connect with everybody. You have at least the affinity of being, being together. I'll just throw. Just for your. For your info, you may want to look into. There's a, there's an app or a program called Bright Local that we use a lot. We use it with our clients to help track the ranking in, like, the map pack and things like that for these different locations.

Okay.

So if you're going to focus on SEO for. For these locations this year, it. It might be a really helpful tool in terms of both getting those up, but also tracking, you know, how you're showing up in those different things. We like Bright, Bright Local. I don't even know if I have an affiliate link, but if I do, I'll put it in the. The notes or something. Yeah, not because I think it's great. I think that we would make money by people clicking on our link, but it's actually, like a good product. It's been really helpful for us and our clients.

Perfect. Thank you.

Well, you've got. You've got a website redesign in process. You talked about the importance of copy and words and SEO. You're going to be focusing a little bit more on that this year. How about from like, a culture and HR standpoint? What. Do you have any particular goals for this year in terms of your team culture?

Yeah, I think what I would like to focus on more is listening and having our partners do more of that listening. I think that, like I mentioned earlier, it's hard, you know, trying to get everyone on the same page and having five offices and being cohesive in that sense. So I think that listening is huge. Another book recommendation I'll make is that Radical Candor. I don't know if you've read that one.

I haven't.

It. It's really great. I feel like not only listening, but how you speak to people and in order to get your message across is important as well. I'm definitely not perfect at it. I'm more of a direct type of person. But I think you have to figure out how to be direct and supportive as well. I. I just. I mean, talking about grit, too, like, I just have high expectations. I'm not good at mediocre. And, you know, I think that helped me to become partner. You know, I have goals, I have aspirations, and, you know, I took risks and I. I failed at things and I pivoted and I grew from them and I learned and I, you know, spoke about them with others and mentored or whatever, but, you know, I just kept going and I. I became partner. And maybe it's not that perfect path for me or what I wanted ultimately, but I'm still in this place of being able to grow and learn. Um, and so how do I take that experience? Listen to the Employees and what they're going through and, you know, teach them with some grace. Right. Teach them and mentor them with some grace. Like from my experiences. It's not always apples to apples, but I think the overall experience and the things that I went through, like, how can I relate it to what they're going through?

Yeah.

So.

Let me end with this question. If you've been in the marketing seat, employed by an accounting firm, and now you're in a partner seat, part of the leadership of the accounting firm, what. What advice would you give to firm owners or partners when it comes to leading or managing, relating to a marketing person on their team? Is there anything you wish you would have gotten more from when you were in that seat and advice that you could give to help firm owners kind of better. Better lead if they have a marketing person.

Wow. Yeah. Accountants and marketers are very different.

It's a lonely job if you're a marketer at an accountant. Yeah.

Yeah.

You're kind of on your own little island here.

Oh, yeah, we're absolutely on our own island, I would say. I mean, we like quality time. I think. I think we do because we're on an island by ourselves. And I mean, we like the team and the brainstorming activity. So I feel like quality time for us matters. So for firm owners who have a marketing person or maybe two people, I think spending that time with your marketing people and again, listening, hearing them out or kind of doing brainstorming with them, I think help them to have that energy that they need to, you know, be marketers and be those brand ambassadors for your firm.

So, yeah, when. When I think about, you know, firm running, conversations are often about, like, what is the service that we provide, how do we package it together, how do we price it? All these things. And those would be conversations. I think as a marketer, it'd be really helpful to be a part of. You know, when you think about brainstorming and all that, it's much easier when you really understand not only, like, the value behind what you're trying to market about your firm, but the reasoning behind. As to why you. You do it in a. In a certain way. It's going to make your marketing better the more that person can be a part of those conversations. And yeah. And they can usually bring an outside perspective. I know.

Yes.

I have a fine arts background and I work with accounting firms. You know, you have a marketing background and you're at an accounting firm. They're. I've actually found accountants to be quite. They tend to recognize where they are not strong in certain ways. So, like, like, I found that having a little bit more of a creative perspective, accounting firms find that as being valuable. But I would say lean into that and celebrate whatever skills and diversity of background and thought you have on or near your leadership team. And if that's your marketing person, I think it's going to be really beneficial into those conversations.

Yeah, they're going to bring that energy and get that excitement. So, yeah, that's what you want with.

Marketing work that they do. So you want to make sure that they're excited about the product or the, the service that you provide.

Yeah.

Well, Marianne, this is, this is great. Thank you for coming on the show where if people wanted to get in touch with you or connect with you, are you, are you personally active on LinkedIn or any other of those sorts of places?

Yes, I am on LinkedIn. And, you know, you can certainly come to our website, giftcpas.com and reach out to me there. I'd be happy to answer any questions and, you know, learn from everyone else's experiences as well.

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't want to. You're. I'm sure you're a very busy person, but I would imagine, you know, every once in a while there might be a person who is kind of in your has. Is in a situation like you are in, where they, they're, they love the firm they're at, they're motivated, dedicated, maybe in a sales and marketing role and wondering, you know, what does it look like? What does my future look like here? I think it's, it's great to see that there are opportunities, I think, for people. If you, if you want to be a part of a small business, you can kind of. Not in every case, but in a lot of cases, you can kind of make your role and say, like, I want to be. I want to do this. I want to be a part of it. You're a great example of that kind of grit and willingness to, to like, put in the time and the energy to do that. So do you. Any last words of wisdom that you want to leave the, the folks with.

Read that. Radical Candor, Grit, Atomic Habits. Those are the three books that I love. And, you know, I just, I wish everyone the best of luck. We are not perfect. We don't claim to be, but we are forever learners. And I just think that everyone needs to be in that mindset as well. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Very good. Well, thanks again. We will leave it there. This has been marketing for accounting firms the podcast.

Thanks.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. If you liked this conversation and found it valuable, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's really good for the algorithm and it helps other firm owners find this show. You can subscribe to our weekly Marketing for Accounting firms newsletter@marketingforaccountingfirms.com and you can connect with me, Matt Banker, on LinkedIn or Twitter. We hope you tune in next time for another episode of Marketing for Accounting Firms.