The Essential Marketing Tactics

Foreign.

Hello.

Hello.

We're back with another episode of Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. My name is Matt Banker and today I have Tracy Kelly with me. He is a fellow marketer. He primarily works with family owned B2B businesses that don't have a marketing person. So he kind of comes in and helps helps them sort everything out. We're going to have a bit of a broad conversation today about marketing basics for accounting firms. Tracy, thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, thank you, thank you. Excited to be on here. Like I said earlier, Matt, excited to be reconnecting with you. I know we met a few years ago and it's been fun to follow your journey and excited to be here today.

Yeah, well, let's not get into my journey, but let's talk a little bit about your journey. I like to frame it, like, why should anybody listen to what you have to say?

Yeah. Well, I grew up in a small family business and went to school for marketing, got a marketing degree and I've worked in business to business services and some products, predominantly services, since then, since graduating college and most recently worked at a couple different marketing agencies. And, and now I am out on my own doing consulting for, like you mentioned, family owned businesses that sell B2B and don't have a marketing person.

How do you define when you say family owned? What, what does that typically look like with your clients?

Yeah, so all of my clients, there's at least two generations involved. In my case, it's been either dad or dad and mom working with their kids who tend to be closer in age to me.

Yeah.

And they're, you know, they're not just thinking about what revenue numbers am I going to hit in the next 90 days? While that's important, they're thinking about, you know, what are we building so that our kids and maybe our grandkids can have a healthy, sustainable business to run and operate.

Yeah. I don't know. I know that there are some of my clients and some of the accounting firms I know do have the multi generational thing. In a lot of cases, accounting firms, a firm owner's exit is usually to sell the business. Some of them just end up shutting it down. But in the context of this conversation about digital marketing, whether it's a, whether it's a family run business or a succession in some way, something I've noticed is that a lot of businesses come to this inflection point where they've built the business usually on the relationships and the sales acumen maybe of either the owner or a key salesperson. And we're hitting this baby boomer retirement zone where now they have to shift the way that they bring in business. And so a lot of times this is the point when there is those two generations, whether you're related or not. But when you've got these two generations involved, you're thinking, okay, we're not going to do the door to door or the cold call. We want to do digital marketing now, but we've never done it before or we don't know like where we should start. So that's, I think that's kind of a great framing for this conversation. If you are in a place where you have never done digital marketing before, but your current, you know, lead flow tactics are not going to take you, you know, where you want to go in the next, you know, 10 years. Tracy, where, where are we going to start with digital marketing? That's, that's, that's a nice small question for you to start here.

Exactly. And I love that situation you just, you just described because that, it, we didn't pre plan this. I mean that's literally my clients is, it's the, you know, it's the mom and dad generation are saying, hey, we're passing this on to you next generation. And they've been following the way that mom and dad have done it, which is a lot of sales acumen involved. And they realize, hey, I know I need to do this marketing thing, digital marketing thing. Where do I go from here? And so from my perspective, your website ultimately is your modern marketing hub. I don't think that's a surprise to any of your listeners, but your website really sits as the, the standard, right from that perspective. And you want everything to kind of cascade down from that. So you want your, you want your business cards, any sort of printed materials, signage, it all needs to line back up with that website. So once you've got a website that you're happy with, proud of, you need to figure out a way to get people to that website. And then after they've been to your website, you need to figure out a way to re engage with them. And so when I'm talking to first and second generation, because usually they're in that same meeting together, I have kind of a layout of the way that I would prioritize it because here's the thing, and Matt, you know this better than I do, it can be overwhelming. There are so many different tactics you can do. Websites, SEO, all this stuff. As soon as you get your information online that you are a business, you get cold call Three to five to ten times a week from all these different people slanging tactics. Right, Tactics they've got.

Your inbox is full of those messages from people who can guarantee a certain number of leads for you. And all this stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And so it's overwhelming. So what do you do? Where do you start? And this is really, again, my background is digital marketing agencies. So I've had, I've worked with hundreds of clients building out these plans and you start to notice a pattern of what works and what the foundation is before you, you know, work with some crazy AI Legion thing, you know, like before we get there, we don't want to jump to that shiny object before we've got a solid foundation.

You should not be trying to do your digital marketing in the metaverse right now. If your website is still, you know, was last redesigned and 2003.

Yeah. Or even 2017. Like even that was six years ago. Right. And websites look different from six years ago. So talking about website, that is the foundation. If I were to start with one thing, it's your website. So if you're an established firm, you've got, you know, solid clients, this is going to be a bigger lift because it's going to be a bigger website, it's going to be a bigger cost. But the time and effort that you spend working with a professional agency, building out and scoping a website, it's going to be time well spent because a good agency is going to ask the right questions. They're going to get to know who are your customers, who are you trying to work with. They're going to build a website that truly is reflective of the story arc of your customer and their buying journey. And that information, it can be leveraged with the next thing. So again, starting out with having a solid website. So if you've been established for a while, I strongly recommend working with an agency, you know, put together a budget that is a little bit uncomfortable because they always come in a little bit more than what you think you can get something for. But you've got to realize a good agency is doing a lot of front end work before they ever design anything and, and before they ever code anything.

Yeah. One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses do, accounting firms and others is they think, oh, we can just, we can get someone who's good at design and then we can figure out the rest. You know, we'll provide the copy or write the website. And what always happens is they get busy, they don't really know what to do and so they end up mostly copying and pasting from whatever was on their old bad website onto their new nicely designed website. And so your point about working with the good agency really like they kind of force you into a process that is going to be good for you in the end. It's almost like a fitness trainer. Right. Like you kind of hate that guy who's yelling at you to do the push ups but you're happy with the results if you stick with it.

Yeah. And again, I've been part of more website projects that had problems than I think the average person has been, you know, the average marketing manager has been part of. Right. Just because of working in agency or world where you know, again, sometimes clients come in and they say, hey, just do it this way. When it's like, I appreciate where you're coming from but you know, you're talking tactics and we need to start up strategy. Now let's say you're, you know, you're someone who just went out on their own. You're like me, just went on your own. You're a single operator. You don't have, you know, the budget for a big website. What I would recommend in that case is do something uses some sort of a template or a theme that, that'll just get you established. I call those credibility websites. In my mind there's like two different types of websites. A credibility website and a marketing website. Credibility website is, you know, one page or five pages. It just establishes credibility that you're a real business and it's your first step in your online marketing journey. So and then marketing website is a website that's built to generate leads for you and get new business. And that's something that we should be aspiring for. But really we just need to have some sort of a solid online presence that you're not, bluntly, you're not embarrassed to show somebody.

Yeah. You know, you mentioned this. You know, there's the three phases, right. You got to, you need that website is the hub. And again, we didn't plan this but one of the, one of the visuals that I've, I've used in the past is if you think of like an infinity loop, right. That kind of goes back and forth. The website is right there where those two loops cross the. And then on one side you have how do we drive traffic to get people to the website. And on the other side, how do we nurture our leads or the traffic. But really the deal is we're always kind of trying to bring them back through the website at some point because that's the key place where most of this, the conversation starts. That's where the sale or the scheduling, the call, whatever it is, it's going to happen on the website. You need that piece in place. Now, I know. I have my opinion. But, Tracy, would you say, essentially, if you don't have a good website, like, don't even pay attention to anything else that we're gonna say, or not pay attention, but don't invest in social media or ads or any of these things if your website isn't ready, what do you think?

Again, if you got a plan to make your website better, that's one thing. But if you. Why would you spend money to throw a party if you had an ugly house? Right. That's a really bad analogy. But the idea is we always want to clean up our house before we invite a bunch of people over. Right. And so if you're gonna spend a bunch of money on advertising, you better have somewhere to send them your website that looks good, something that you're proud of. So that is why I prioritize that. Because it's the hub. We don't spend a bunch of money on other stuff if the house isn't in order.

Yeah. Well, okay, let me. Just. One last thing. So I design and build websites. You're more in the consulting role. So you're not saying this as a person who's like, tracy, I'm trying to sell you a website. You're just saying this from a consultant. Hire a good agency. I mean, you're making me look good. Is what I'm saying, is you don't have an incentive to. To try to convince people to do this, other than it's going to make everything else that you do a lot easier.

Yeah. And again, as a consultant, I mean, it's a lot easier to build out from there once the website's in place. Thing is, I've done this enough, right. I've worked with clients coming in with really not good websites, expecting big results, willing to spend a bunch of money on advertisement. And I've taken that order before, you know, at their insistence. And then we didn't get the results. And it's like, well, if we would have went, you know, done what we suggested at the beginning, which was make the website a good website, you wouldn't be upset with me, I won't be upset with you. Like, it just doesn't work.

Yeah. So, all right, so websites, where you start, where are you going to tell people to go next?

Yeah. So I'm a huge proponent of Google Business profile used to be called Google my business. And it's, it's that thing when you, you know, search accountant near me. We want to make sure that that is just optimized. And I'm not going to go into all the details because there's a lot of details, but it also changes pretty regularly. But it's a super powerful Google product that's free and you can put pictures services, you know, schedule a call. There's a lot of really nice and easy to use features on there that legitimizes your business, makes it easier for people to find you and it helps with getting found on Google. So like one of the first easy steps to getting found on Google.

Yeah. And most accounting firms, even if they have national clients, their core business is based around a specific geography. And a lot of your clients part even if they don't meet with you in your office, they want to know that you're nearby and they could meet with you in your office if they wanted. And so that Google business profile, that's really one of the main assets in terms of that local presence that you have online outside of your, outside of your website. Now I have several clients who actually, they're a little annoyed because so many people just go to their Google profile and click to schedule a call or like, you know, that's where they take the action. They call the office and they're saying hey, I wish people would go to my website and see all this because it would lead to more qualified leads. And so that, I mean that's its own problem to be solved. But it shows the importance and the power of a Google profile. A lot of people, unfortunately in some places if you've got a great website, don't even get to the website. If you've got a good profile there that gets them right, you know, to talking to someone in your office.

Yeah. And I've got again, I grew up in a small family business and just have a personal experience of when, when all the COVID stuff happened. We made some tweaks to my, my folks Google business profile. And to your point, people weren't even hitting the website, they were just calling. And it was, it was a great.

Challenge to solve for too many leads calling you in. That's not the worst problem in the world in terms of that Google profile. What are some of the things that are important to be thinking about as far as making sure that it's working well for your, for your marketing?

The biggest thing is just take the time to fill out every little thing that you can they like completeness on.

There and then I think they being Google, right?

Yes, Google, yep. They yes, Google likes it when you do that. And then the other thing again, this is where had some kind of fun success was they have like a posting area where you can almost treat it like a social media again this is a little bit next level stuff. But if you can do some posts on there with some sort of a basic offer, it's interesting how much traction those can get. Now it does require time and effort to update it because they disappear after a couple weeks. But putting some sort of an offer or even like a little video on there again that was like the secret sauce that we did. We, we put a short little video my baby boomer dad got on his iPhone, did a video and I chopped it up a little bit, put it on there and that video drove a ton of traffic. So again the big thing is just take your time, go through it, fill out every little thing that you can and just watch what happens.

That's great. All right, so website, Google business profile, what's next?

Social media, I mean that's another easy free. So the biggest thing my recommendation is if you're like a lot of business owners that maybe aren't that into social media, pick one or two that you're willing to commit a little time and effort to. My personal recommendation is Facebook. And I know it's a little bit, you know, outdated in a lot of ways, but what people forget or maybe don't realize is Facebook has a huge ad network. And so we'll get into ads a little bit later, but at least having Facebook as a channel is, it's something I'd recommend. You can also get reviews on there. But again that I really, from my perspective it's really comfort level. I'd rather see on less business on less channels and more active on those couple channels. Then try to be on everyone, be overwhelmed. My whole thing and I've really tried to optimize this for my personal life and my business life and my clients life is how do we make this simple? Marketing can be super overwhelming. And that's why we've narrowed it down to like these six things. So I really believe that with social media is pick something that you're on regularly and just start there, Start there.

And if you're not on any social media but you decide you want to dip your toes in, think also where are your ideal customers hanging out? So we know I work with a lot of accounting firms. If your ideal customer is well, marketing agencies, or other lawyers, professional services. They might be more on LinkedIn or. One of my clients works with dentists. Dentists are basically not on LinkedIn. They don't need it. They're not looking for jobs if they own their own place. And so it doesn't make sense to be active somewhere if your audience doesn't hang out in that place. Agreed. Okay, so this next one, SEO, that's the next thing to think about. We're talking in May of 2023, we've got this new AI, ChatGPT. At this point, it's new coming out. I have some, I'll say, concerns about the future of search and SEO and some of those things. So I'm going to lay my cards on the table and then I'll let you kind of respond to it. The other challenge I've seen with SEO is that it can be in certain spaces. It's really competitive, and it might take a really long time. So from where you're sitting, what's still worth it when it comes to SEO, how should we be thinking about it? Should we be investing a lot? Now, this is number three or four. This isn't the first thing we do, but given some SEO skepticism from me, how would you approach it?

Absolutely. Well, SEO has always been a long game. So there's a reason it's number four. Right. Is because we want to start laying the foundations. And we even started laying down the foundations at step number two with the Google business profile. And so here's the thing about chat, GPT, AI, all of that stuff. Right. I don't know what six months from now is going to look like. You don't know what 12 months is going to look like. We don't know what you know. We don't know exactly what the future is going to look like.

Yep.

However, we do know that regardless of which platform, etcetera, People are going to be searching for information.

Yep.

So with the information that we have today, building out a program to show up when people are searching, it's search engine optimization. It's not Google optimization, it's not Bing optimization. A couple years ago, everybody was saying how you had to make sure that you were optimized for voice because everybody was just gonna go to their Amazon devices and just ask the question. And so the point being is we need to do something towards this. To your point, SEO can be super competitive. And so we like your client that works just with Dennis. I think it's going to be folks like that that are going to have more success in SEO. Where we've got a very specific target market, a niche. And so your general accountant in White Bear Lake, Minnesota needs to focus on White Bear Lake, Minnesota accounting. Right?

So yeah, local, because there's, there's some, they're related, but there are some different tactics when it comes to like a local SEO campaign versus a national. And to your point, really I, my perspective is having a more kind of national focus only makes sense if you have a clear niche and way to, to really approach that market. Otherwise it's just too broad. And so if you, if you're a generalist focusing on local SEO showing up for like you said, I mean that goes back to the Google business profile. Accountant near me is going to be more valuable than accounting firm, you know, on, you're going to be on the 40th 50th page of Google if that's the main keyword that you're on. On like a national level that you're looking for.

Exactly.

A lot of accounting firms are doing self implementation. If they wanted to take an SEO approach, is there anything that you would point them to in terms of getting started, understanding that and some of the basics of what they can do for their website to make sure that it's up to snuff as much as it can be?

Yes, I think from my perspective the kind of three basics you want to think about with SEO is making sure that you've got good content content on your website and so get comfortable and familiar with content, which involves knowing what keywords are. So hopefully if you're doing this all on your own, you've got Google Analytics on your website, maybe Google Search Console on your website, so you can see where people are coming from, what they're searching to get to your website, and then being comfortable looking up keyword tools to get, get a sense of what are the terms that people are searching and how do we incorporate that through the website. The other piece is getting backlinks, which can be pretty challenging, but really any opportunity to get a link from a different website, make sure that you're doing that. So asking any associations you're part of, your local chamber of commerce or your dental association group, group to link back to that and then making sure that your website is technically up to date. And different website platforms such as WordPress, such as Wix, Squarespace, they have different places in the back end to do that. But the thing is, SEO is hard to do and there's a reason they've got so many SEO agencies that even have specialties within those organizations. So ultimately, what I would recommend is if this is something that you're going to be thinking about doing, get familiar enough with what SEO is and then start doing research on SEO agencies. And this is, I've worked in both generalized marketing agencies and I've worked in niche specific or industry specific marketing agencies. My experience has been the ones that are focused more on one specific industry or one niche are gonna do a better job with SEO for your specific business because they understand the keywords, they understand the buying cycle, they understand the customers, they understand just the specifics of your business. So they're spending less time learning about what your business does and they're spending more time on actually doing the work for you.

One thing I know about the accounting industry, for those who are listening, is there are a bunch of companies who do content for accounting firms and they provide you with the blog content and they'll probably sell you on the SEO value. I think that's a waste of money for two reasons. One, they're often providing your blog content on a separate domain. So if your blog is blog yourfirm.com, you're not really getting the SEO value for your website. It's being pointed to the wrong place. Secondly, if they're providing you content and they're providing 100 other firms in the United States the same content, Google is not looking at that and giving it a lot of value. So if you're getting content from someplace else, this goes back to your first thing about good content. If you're getting it from someone else, you're outsourcing that. Honestly, the only value is if that content is so good that it's valuable to your clients or it's stuff that you use to kind of support the services that you provide. Beyond that, it has very little SEO value. And so it's not the best. I generally think it's not the best use of money. I think that's true in other industries as well. But I've seen that a lot here in the accounting firm space.

Got it. Yeah. So I have a background, I worked at an agency, we did a ton in the roofing and home services industry. And you know, unfortunately that that type of behavior runs rampant. And to your point, and I call it behavior, right, because it's a bad behavior. Basically these companies are, like you said, reselling the same information, same content. Google, when you have two exact pieces of content on different website, Google doesn't give any one of those like, precedence over the other. It just says like, oh, whoops. So that is SEO Content in any way, shape or form. Yeah, that might be like an interesting resource if you're sending that to a specific client, but that's not an SEO resource at all. In fact, it does the exact opposite. So I would be very wary of that. And then to your point, the blog dot is not helpful at all. And so this brings me to, and I'm not going to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it's something that again, I saw time and time again. And for me, I work with family owned businesses. Part of what, what motivates me is I remember sitting at the store with my dad when I was 13 years old and the big outdoor sign guy coming to my dad and trying to sell him a $20,000 sign when my dad's business was already located on the main highway and his whole building was a display was his own sign. So I just remember this feeling of this guy is like pushing really hard for my dad to buy something that my dad doesn't need or want. And that's not right. And that's exactly what you're describing over there. And bluntly, that's part of the reason I do what I do.

This is, this is a little bit of a rabbit trail, but I think it's important and it's an interesting topic. I, you know, for my own, like, full transparency, I do a lot of consulting with accounting firms. But whenever I'm in that role, there's a little bit of a conflict of interest. Right? Because I'm, I'm a fir, I'm an agency owner. And so when I'm talking to clients, there's at least part of me that is thinking, what other services can I sell that my team provides? Because that's going to benefit me personally. One of the things that I love about working with like a third party consultant or recommending, you know, someone like Tracy is when you can sit in that seat without having any particular service that you're trying to sell or push, you're more about helping them make good choices. It's easier to be more of like a fiduciary on their behalf when it comes to marketing. And so it's one of those areas where it might feel like, I don't know if I want to hire both a consultant and then, you know, pay an agency and pay for ads and all that. When you, you pay for three parts of marketing, I always say you've got your, you have to pay for good ideas or strategy. And that's something, Tracy, you do. You kind of provide that strategic Role, you have to pay for the labor to like do stuff, you know, design, create, setup campaigns, you know, all of that, maintain it, and then you have to pay for the platforms if you're doing any paid ads or, you know, anything like that, or the time that it takes to post regularly on social media. And so a lot of times companies think that they can get away with just doing two out of three or, and that's, that's a real recipe for a disaster. Or they think it'll be cheaper if, hey, let's just pay the agency that, that can do the labor and the distribution. But if they don't have the strategic, like what's best for you in their mind, it's just they're thinking what's best for us to sell you. That can be a really expensive route to go down that may not yield the results that you're hoping for. And so it's one of those areas where, you know, you get what you pay for. And sometimes investing a little bit more on that strategy side especially can save you a ton of money later when, especially when you have someone that you can really trust in that seat. So that's my soapbox. And that's my soapbox. As the person who sits in both of those seats, I hope that I do a good job of being as neutral as possible and making recommendations that aren't benefiting myself. But I know even in that space I'm going to be drawn to the things that we can provide more than just the things that if I was a totally unbiased person, I might bring a little bit of a different perspective.

So.

Okay, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Love it.

Okay, so a whole bunch on SEO, a little bit about sleaziness in the marketing industry. Let's talk about online ads and like paid. When you start paying the big tech companies some money.

Yeah, when you start paying them, they promote your stuff out to, you know, in front of people. Again, how it works. Yeah, that's number five for a reason. And you know, once we've got the site, we've started some social media stuff, we're doing some, a little bit of SEO stuff because again, that's a long term approach. Ads are a good supplemental way to start getting eyeballs on your brand. And there's a couple different ways to think about ads. Right. They've got the search ads. Those are people directly searching for, you know, accountants, for dentists. I like that example. Right. Wanting to show up there, if we can show up there. And then on the organic Results, the paid result, the sponsored, they call it now sponsored and organic that by the time they get down to that organic listing, that first one actually lends credibility. So even if they don't click on it, it's just providing credibility. I think the other piece that you know we should be thinking about is display ads. So these are, you know those images and those can be on the Google network which is way bigger than one might think. But also on places like Facebook and Instagram just there's something called the mere exposure effect. So merely having your name, your brand show up in front of people just by showing up over time you're gonna have a more positive outlook. So big believer in that. There's also, we can go way deeper but this is the basics. But you can remarket to people that have already been on your show them super targeted ads information. So it's just like there's a lot you can do with ads that could be its whole conversation on its own. But it's something that you should be thinking about after you've got your website, after you've done my Google business profile, after you've looked at social media, started SEO, then ads and then the follow up to all of this is having a good email marketing program. And that really is two prong approach. One is for your existing customers so staying in front of them, reminding about key and important dates, things like that and then also creating some sort of value that something that people are actually going to want to read. Right. Email can be one of the most effective marketing tactics but upset people and they unsubscribe and unlike ads they're not going to see it anymore. So I always put that at the end because by then you'll have a lot of these other pieces in place running, you've got a marketing system going. And again that email piece can be incredibly, incredibly powerful.

Yeah. The two challenges I've been seeing a lot with email these days is we're more and more hesitant to sign up for email lists. But what we also know is companies that have email lists are very effective. It's a very effective way when you, I mean going back to that like infinity symbol right that, that loop about, you know, how do we nurture and bring them back to the website. A really key component of that for most companies is their email list. The email marketing either through automations if people sign up or through that like weekly newsletter or nurture email type campaign. But you know, it's hard to get people to sign up for your list. All of these tactics I'm just going to come back to this again and again are easier when you have a really clear niche audience that you're after. So I am not a fan of like you shouldn't go out and buy an email list and then start emailing people. But there are in different niches, there are organizations that you can join that give you permission to market to their people. And so if you are looking for a way to kickstart your campaign and you have a really clear niche, you know, let's say if it was, you know, roofing contractors or something and you know, like you've worked with in the past, there may be an association of roofing contractors. You could become an associate member or affiliate member or something and you would be allowed to, to email some of those folks. But again, you'll get emails in your inbox that'll say, hey, do you want to buy such and such email list? I would generally avoid those. And, and honestly, in any case, tread carefully in, in the email list world because there's a lot of, again, there's a lot of sleaziness both in the way that it's implemented and there's companies that are happy to take your money and not provide something that's actually going to benefit your, your marketing.

Right.

So tread, tread carefully in that we have covered a ton of ground. Every single one of these points, honestly, could probably be an entire episode itself. So if people have, they've gotten a little bit of it and they are thinking, man, this Tracy guy, he really knows his stuff. What's the best way for people to find you or connect with you and learn more about your insights in marketing? I like it.

Yeah. So going back to keeping it simple, I keep it simple by just go on Google, type in Tracy Kelly Marketing or Tracy Kelly Marketing MN. My LinkedIn is going to pop up. That is where I engage the most and that's where people can find me. So find me on LinkedIn.

Find Tracy on LinkedIn. Well, last thing. So accounting firm owners. I work with a lot of accounting firm owners. Some might be a really good fit, especially if you're in that like family business zone to work with you. But I know that accounting firms also have a lot of business clients and so they, you know, they're a great referral source if there's a firm owner here who's thinking about, I need a good referral partner. You mentioned it earlier, but who are the perfect, who are the perfect clients for you? If someone was to give a recommendation to say, hey, you should Go check out Tracy Kelly.

Yeah. So family owned businesses, multiple generations involved business to business, and they don't have a marketing person like you mentioned before. The classic example is mom or mom and dad running the business. They've got some kids involved, they're ready to kind of step out of the business. And the kids, the next generation are saying, yep, let's do this. But we need to like rethink how we're doing marketing. We don't know where to start because we're so busy operating the business, running the business, doing sales, whatever. We need this third party outside perspective to give us some ideas about marketing and help support the next generation so that we can maintain and keep this business going for the following generation.

Yeah. This conversation has made me think I should do a show on how to help accounting firm owners make marketing recommendations. Because, you know, you're looking at these company books and you're seeing, you know, they're their revenue or income numbers coming down and maybe you're saying, well, you got to do something about that, but you don't feel confident about who you should recommend as a marketing partner. That would be an interesting conversation. Maybe I'll have to, I'll have to. Maybe you and I should reschedule another one of these and talk about that. Referral partners. So, Tracy, this has been great. I appreciate you coming on the show. Is there, is there any like, last nugget of wisdom, you know, just about marketing in general or that you, that you think about? I love to kind of end on this like empathy piece of, you know, business owners. It's a hard decision to make big investments in, in marketing. One of the things I appreciate about you is I feel like you really approach marketing from that perspective of like, what is going to be best for my clients. I'm really trying to help them out. But you know, as you're thinking about your clients and people as they're making these marketing decisions, what's. Do you have a piece of advice for them that you really would say, hey, keep this in mind as you're, as you're thinking about your own marketing.

Two things. One, strategy always has to come before tactics. So if you don't have a strategy in place, it doesn't make sense to purchase a tactic. So that's number one. And that will, I believe, ring true for marketing forever. Right. Because that's a foundational, fundamental thing. The second thing is maybe you do have a strategy and you're looking at a specific marketing tactic. If you don't understand what the agency person is pitching you or the consultant is pitching you. If you don't understand how it works, what it is, why it's important, even if it's a flashy new TikTok or this, you know, chat GPT, if you don't understand the basics of it, don't do it.

Yeah.

You know, just like you wouldn't invest in some sort of company or thing that you don't understand kind of what they do. Don't invest in marketing if you don't understand what it is, how it works.

Yeah. The worst parts of this industry, the marketing industry, are the ones where, you know, it's that black box of like, hey, just trust us, this is important. I can't explain it. It's too complicated for common business owners like yourself. If you don't feel like it's not that you need to become a marketing expert in order to hire a marketing company, but if it doesn't make sense on its face, if someone's trying to sell you some sort of crypto NFT sort of marketing tactic, hold off, talk. And again, that's, that's again why it's so helpful to have a trusted strategist in your corner who can help you make some of those decisions and, and guide you in the right direction.

I think the biggest thing, not to go too far on this, but the biggest thing that I see this is with, is the whole SEO thing. So if you're talking to an agency and they're talking about SEO and they can't explain what they're going to do for that monthly retainer and they can't give you solid answers. Anytime a marketing account executive is shifty about answers and can't, like, give you straight on answers. Run.

Yep.

You would never again, you would never give your money to a money manager who can't give you straight answers. Like, is this one in stocks or bonds or, you know, EFTs, you know, it's one of the money stuff, you know, because money, it makes more money. Like just no run. So if they can't answer, it's time to move on.

Yeah. Well, Tracy, thank you for trying to make the marketing world a better and more like, ethical, upstanding place. Again. Find him on, on LinkedIn and I think we'll wrap it there. This has been the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. You can find us at marketingforaccountingfirms.com or find the podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever it is. We appreciate if you review and like it and you know, email me and tell me topics that you would like to hear more about. I'm always happy to hear feedback. Thanks for coming. Tracy. Thanks for being on the show.

Yep, thanks.

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 @benchmark growth marketing.com Next with me, Matt Banker, on LinkedIn.