Branding your Niche and Marketing It

Got it.

You're here. Wednesday, we don't know if you're gonna freeze or not. My money's on you're gonna freeze, but just don't move. Sarah is actually— Sarah's hanging out in— where, Sarah? Where are you? Vacation and still joining.

Yeah, in Pacific City area on the Oregon coast.

I'm going to bring Jan in here, and I don't know what's going to happen because I want to keep her video off and it's supposed to, but I don't know what will happen if I let her in, but she's here. Okay, we'll just keep her video off, but she might pop in, and she did.

Let's see.

Okay, I don't know what that did, but anyway. We just don't have the right Zoom, but we're gonna get that.

Yeah.

So this week we're gonna talk about branding and marketing your niche. And I put that in place to calling it branding because I put it in place first, because if you're thinking about specializing and moving towards a niche practice, first kind of thing you have to do is, is start to look at your brand. So that starts with it. And one thing I wanna say about branding, 'cause a lot of people think branding is your logo. Branding's not your logo. It's not your logo. It's a piece of it.

It's a piece.

But it's not your logo. So, you know, I guess you can look at it that way. It's, well, what does branding mean to you? And I'm gonna pull a PowerPoint up while you answer that before you freeze.

Okay, before I freeze. Well, it's got a, it's an identity too. It identifies you in the market. So if you're looking at e-commerce, if you're looking at legal, if you're looking at— oh man, I'm thinking construction— and your specialty and your niche, I would look at how you want to brand yourself, but what are others maybe doing, just to get an idea. Not to copy, but, you know, just to have a presence, to understand what works most effective. Yeah.

And Jan, if you're listening on Facebook, when I bring you on, it brings you in even though I don't want you to because Sarah and I don't have the webinar one. So we're working on that and we'll get this fixed. But yes, so branding, yeah, branding definitely is that. So if you're considering niches, we've kind of gone through the rules about like getting your goals set. Maybe you're thinking about specializing. I highly recommend specializing. I've said it multiple times, specializing for me has been the best business decision that I've made in my practice. And knowing that you've got commoditized bookkeeping at your doorstep, they're really swallowing up. I mean, somebody's brand new and we're learning how to do their— they get a brand new firm startup and they go to QuickBooks because they're like, I'm keeping everything on paper and I'm not organized. They go to QuickBooks. The first thing they're going to see right off the bat is QB Live. And they might go there because it kind of bundles a package and it's really kind of cheap. And, you know, it's not great yet, but it's going to get better and better. Intuit's making it. So, you know, that system is going to get better. And Truly, I mean, that's how I started with those little tiny firms. So I feel kind of badly that— and I don't think that's actually a missed opportunity. You'll still get some of those. But I think that if you start to think about if you're an established practice and you're looking at a way to maybe get a boost in your revenue by specializing, it doesn't only just give you more money. You do get more money because you can narrow your focus down on what you're doing. But it also— for, you know, you're not going to be bored, I can tell you that. There goes Sarah. But It allows you to really get to know the industry that you choose, and you might have to choose a couple until one lands in your lap. But if you do that, I think that you will be able to perhaps, as you get into specializing, get to really amplify where you're at and what you can do and offer to a client, because now you know their industry. And I think of people who are like that, like Tanya Schulte is one of those people. She knows the construction industry. Megan Tarnow knows nonprofits. And I think that once you get to those places, then you can really focus on what you do and what you do best. I know you're not pictured, Sarah. I don't know if you can still hear me.

I can. I can. It's going in and out. Yeah.

So, you know, how are you? So you've made the choice. Let's assume that the person— people listening here made the choice of what they want to do, where they want to focus their work with. You have to let the world know, right? So number one, you've got to communicate what you do. I mentioned it last week. I think you have to say it, announce it. Um, what other ways do you think there are to really let people know what you do, that you're focusing on this one thing? Because they might only know you as a generalist all this time. So how do you let people know what you do?

Well, between your website, your— maybe your social media, um, in aligning yourself in the industry with certain groups, um, identifying yourself as that key individual, uh, maybe you have a niche within a niche, you know.

Yeah, you could micro niche for sure. I mean, I've thought about that even with us, but yeah, absolutely. So I started out with my blog posts. So my blog posts were like out there for everybody. In fact, the ones that I have had the most responses to are ones that were generic. Something was broken in QuickBooks. I wrote an article on how to work around, fix it, or whatever. Those things that are there, those are pretty highly watched in my YouTube channel. However, I had to redirect my focus in YouTube and the videos and the blog posts towards what I'm— my new person that I'm trying to speak to, which is an attorney. I like the attorney at a larger firm, the mid-market firm, but the smaller ones as well. So that's a way because YouTube is owned by Google. I've said this many times and Google uses YouTube. So you get yourself listed there. Podcasting is another way and it's an effective way to start to let the world know what you do. For sure. Making a podcast.

Or being a guest on one. I mean, you don't have the time or the bandwidth.

Yeah, it's a little bit of an effort to, to, to podcast. But yeah, for sure, social posts. And I've been listening, because I've been, you know, marketing is always one of those topics we talk about in the lab. I've been listening to a lot of podcasts as I walk in the morning about the social posts and how to get the attention. And you can do those on LinkedIn, you could do them on Facebook, you can do them on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, there's a lot of places out there that you can start to do those Social posts, just pictures, or ways you could do video there as well. Video's starting to get real popular on LinkedIn. So you could do that. But then once you've communicated it, right, you want to start to measure your results because you want to know what's effective because you can't blanketly spread yourself over every platform. If you can, you probably have nothing else to do in your day but that. I mean, that ends up being a job in itself.

Yeah, insane.

And there are tools for that. But still, measuring where the results are coming in from. That's part of it. You have to lay the groundwork, place it out there, and then see how it starts to come in towards you and see as you start to get the people coming to you saying, hey, I saw you on— and it's always part of a conversation as we even get to meet with new people. As you know, as we start to get into that, what's bothering you? And, you know, what, you know, why did you call? And then I always somewhere in that conversation said, how did you find us? And if they say YouTube, or, you know, I saw your video, or I saw you on LinkedIn. Those kind of helped me know what's working.

You do so well at that too. I like it. That's why it's like a treasure trove for us. We like— we ask kind of somewhere in the middle or towards the end, like, okay, now we're dying to know, how did you find it?

And you're the treasure trove of undoing a messy IELTS. I watched you— I basically watched you figure one out this weekend. And as I'm sitting there watching your brain go, and I'm like, She just wants to say it out loud so I can follow it, make sure, yeah, that sounds great. But yeah, so we work well in that aspect. But I think goal setting— so we talked about goal setting ad nauseam the last few weeks, but setting goals as you start to create your brand and start to communicate what you do, start to set some goals. So you want to say, if you're a generalist for a lot of years and you've now picked a niche, whatever that niche is, Set some goals as to what you'd like to see coming in, and if that's short-term ones or long-term ones, I think that's a good basis. And then start to, like it says, analyze trends. Start to see trends. So see what others are doing. See where people in your industry are doing, because you want to really focus. I mentioned this, I think, in the lab at one point, maybe not when we were doing a marketing thing. You know, at one point I was focusing towards people coming into the lab and I let go of focusing on the attorney. And then some of the calls stopped coming in. So I had to redirect the messaging from me to get that out so that we'd start to get those calls back in because it really did stop. And that just proves how that messaging works, right? I think she might be gone. So the other thing is identify your audience. So in that respect, exactly that, identifying the audience. I wanted to speak to the attorneys that need my help. To get the work in. I don't want to be speaking unless I'm working on getting people into the lab. I want to make sure that that's always in my narrow focus of who I'm directing to. And then, you know, if you have a— you can have a brand goal and a sales goal, and that's part of it. Just remember that brand's not your logo, like I mentioned earlier. I don't know if you're here again, Sarah.

I am. I'm in and out, in and out.

I know.

I love what you just said, sales versus branding goals. Those are awesome things to do.

Yeah. true though, because yeah, you, you can get so focused on this stuff that you can kind of lose your way. And part of this is when you start to work out, we like to analyze, we like to measure, right? But part of this is setting your sights towards your marketing goal and the short-term goal and the long-term goal, and then figuring out what's really effective. Where is it working? Because you don't want to spend a lot of time on something. You start a podcast and you get nothing from it, but you got to give it time. I'm like the worst offender of starting something and then Well, didn't work in 2 seconds. So, you know, there goes my attention span, and it stopped because you have to kind of stick to it. So I thought you said it on live, so I love it.

Now I can remember to remind you that.

But yeah, you know, it's funny because like I found a measurement for us, and it was, um, brand to sales should be 60/40. So 60% of your effort on your brand, and then it should result in 40% of your sales coming in. But the caveat here is just because tomorrow you say, I'm going to work with attorneys, and you throw a couple posts up doesn't mean it's going to happen that fast.

Yeah.

I still to this day can remember we were getting leads from LeanLaw. LeanLaw was handing us some leads, and I can remember, in fact, I think I even called Jonathan up and said, oh my God, I got my first lead that came from all the efforts. And that took, I'm going to say, almost a year of my efforts of Putting it out there, putting it on LinkedIn, putting it on Facebook, letting people know what I do now and that I do this stuff. Writing articles like we wrote, we both wrote articles. We reached out to LeanLaw so you could find that app that works the best for your industry. LeanLaw, Clio for us, and you can reach out to them and say, hey, can I write for you? Or hey, can— are you writing any articles in any technical space? Like we did legal— I forgot what it was— legal tech. News Now or something like that. Can I write with you? And then we wrote with Gary, and then Gary, one of the founders of LeanLaw, we helped write there. And then that was able to kind of help put you out there as the expert, basically. So I don't know if you're here still, Sarah.

I am. I think we got a good spot. But if I turn on my camera, I'm afraid I'm gonna blow it.

Yeah. But you want to measure, right? So you want to measure the cost of The cost of the lead, the acquisition of the lead. But then you want to also measure the conversion of the lead. Those are the 2 measurements you want to look at. You want to look at both. You don't want to just look at getting leads, and you can get leads in all day long. But if they don't convert into a job, they're, they're not going to be effective. And if you're getting the leads, but they're not really people who want to— they're tire kickers— that won't really work. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or social media growth. Do you want— you want people Looking at, you know, that's where part of your building awareness. You want people to be liking your posts, engaging with you. It's really hard for— I find it very difficult to have engagement on LinkedIn. But once you do start to get that engagement, and it depends, you could be Twitter, you kind of have to be a little bit bold and different to be able to get that engagement. Sometimes video is really key there. But once you get that engagement. You want, you want more than just the likes because again, the likes are just kind of like getting a lead. Likes are likes. They don't really do a lot for you other than maybe boost up your post a little bit. But you want the engagement is where you're going to get the results for sure. And the more you build your brand, the more ROI, the return on investment that you'll get from your marketing efforts. That's true. If you think of, you know, and the best— I like to think of the best ways to see who does a great job with branding. Think of Apple. Apple does a great job with branding. I think they— weirdly, do you remember the days of the commercial with the PC guy, the real cool hip guy, and then the nerdy— I mean, not the— I'm sorry, the Apple guy that was the cool hip guy, and then the PC guy was like, you look like an accountant, actually. But if you think about that, that's a great job of branding, right? I remember that now. I don't know how long ago that was, but that's a great job of branding. So you wanna come out with that premium look. If you're gonna niche, you want to come up with that premium look. You want the person that could hire any bookkeeper or accountant to look at what you do and say, I want her because she really knows what I— the world I live in. She knows the language. She knows the— she knows the, uh, the way I communicate. She uses the same terms that I use. She says, she uses these terms that we use all the time that If anybody listening in that isn't involved in accounting or in the legal industry would not know what we're talking about for sure. And I think with branding too, telling a story, if you're starting to do the blog posting, even in the podcasting, stories stick in your head for sure. And branding and marketing, it takes time to grow legs. It doesn't happen overnight. So if you're like me and want instant gratification, it doesn't happen. Like that, for certain. Google has to know you exist. And he doesn't— he or she doesn't believe you at first. But stick with what's working. So as you start to measure, create the goals, measure, measure what's working, and then figure out what's working and try to narrow that focus down to— I think that that's key. Do you want to add anything, Sarah? Because I'm blabbering now because you keep freezing.

I'm sorry. Yeah, I know we're at the top of the moment. But I kind of caught a little bit. I really feel like you really nailed it too, with the sales versus branding, and making sure that you identify that because then it helps you market your business.

And I think too, part of what people get drawn in with us is we view— if you market from your heart, and I remember in my yoga training that we talked about the emotional brain versus the rational brain and the emotional brain, believe it or not, the emotional brain thinks like when I buy a pair of shoes, the emotional brain is the brain that buys. So if you can pull that emotion into this, into the picture when you discuss things with your client and listen to them— God gave you 2 ears and one mouth— listen to them and then hear it and listen for their emotion and pick up on those things that are really bothering the client. And one of the things we're famous for saying is like, we're going to help you sleep at night. We're going to figure this out, correct it, and help you to sleep at night because they actually do worry about a messy IOLTA account. So yeah, yeah, I think that's all. I don't know if you have anything else, but stick with working and know that it takes time. All this stuff takes effort, like we mentioned earlier. Put it on your calendar. And there we are, our wonderful team. And here we are. And don't move.

I know, I wish I could show you the ocean. It's just so incredible.

You did show me and it was like freezing then. It was hard. But, and poor Jan, I'm so sorry that it didn't work. We just have to figure that piece out. I'm still trying to figure out the other one. You know, big marker.

We'll get there.

Yeah, we will, maybe. But Jan, we love you. And on that note, Sarah, until next week, and we come up with another topic. But if anybody's interested in joining the Facebook group, it's the Accountants Law Lab. You can find us on Facebook. I'll put a link in the, in the chat here. And if you're interested in learning more about branding, marketing, you know, we can have discussions in there. And Also, we have a private mastermind group that meets every Friday, and this Friday it's all about engagement letters and what you need to put into your engagement letter to put it all in writing to make sure that it's done properly and that you don't have any problems. It's clarity with your client. Maybe that'll be the name of the PowerPoint.

That's a good one. I like that.

Yeah, cool. Nice seeing you. Go back on vacation. Okay. You don't need to be doing this. Nice to see you.

Nice to see you.

Take care. Bye, Sarah. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, Linda.