If you’re looking for strategies to build your accounting firm, you’ve come to the right place.

Marketing is one of those things that all firm owners know they need to do, but it can be hard to know which strategies and channels to focus on. In this article, we’ll explore 15 different strategies for increasing your client base and creating opportunities for your firm to grow. 

#1: Spend Time Building Your Brand

Who are you, and what can you offer? Before you start any marketing plan, you need to know the answers to these questions. Knowing your competitive advantage, whether it’s a better price point, more accessibility, a niche area of expertise, or a proven track record, will help you understand where to focus your marketing efforts.

You may already know what your firm has that stands out. If you’re unsure about your strengths, feel free to reach out to your current clients. Ask them what they love about working with you. It might also be an opportunity to ask about what areas they feel are your weaknesses allowing you to address those issues.

Get Started: Sit down with your management team (if you have one) and decide what areas you want to focus on and what your company’s mission is. You can decide what your brand is, who your target audience is, and how you want to reach them.

#2: Be An Authority In Your Niche

Potential prospects don’t look for an accountant or tax preparer who’s “good enough.” No, they want the best in the field (or at least in their price point). Positioning yourself as an authority in your field can attract clients seeking assistance in your specific niche.

But how do you become an authority? Sharing your knowledge with other people. Authority can be bolstered through lectures, podcasts, articles, or networking. The more you can help others in your field or related fields; the more work will come to you. If someone has heard your speech about taxation issues for contractors, they will think of you when they have a contractor who needs help with their taxes.

Getting Started: Consider your personal brand and be willing to put yourself out there. Sign up to speak at industry events, attend networking events, or start writing. Being visible lends credibility, and doing good work will cement the impression.

#3: Create Content In Your Niche 

You know you possess a vast amount of knowledge in your specialty. How can other people find out what you know? Sometimes, people are scared that posting content about dealing with an issue or tackling a certain kind of project will give away their secrets or enable potential clients to do the work themselves. This is rarely how it plays out. Potential clients want enough information to determine whether you know enough to solve their issues, and then they want to hire you to do it. 

Content can be ebooks, website content, blog posts, or podcasts. Be creative! Look for opportunities to work with other firms or tangential accounting products for cobranding.

Getting Started: You can start by writing yourself. If writing isn’t your forte, you can always hire a writer on Upwork to create content (just make sure you review it if you’re going to put your name on it!). Someone in your firm may also want to tackle content creation – ask around, and you might be surprised what hidden talents your team has.

#4: Take SEO Into Consideration

Creating content for your website is a great way to drive more traffic. You can’t just create content without considering search engine optimization (SEO). Even the best content needs help moving up in the Google search results, so it doesn’t get buried under hundreds (or thousands!) of other results.

You can either hire an SEO consultant to evaluate your site and recommend changes or use online tools (such as SurferSEO or Clearscope), which allow you to use keywords to optimize your content on your own. 

Getting Started:  It’s essential to understand SEO basics and how it affects your ultimate ranking. If you choose to work with an outside consultant, carefully consider what claims they are making and the timeline for seeing results. In general, you should avoid anyone who makes guarantees of rankings.

#5: Provide Free Resources On Your Website

Articles and podcasts are helpful, but are there other free resources your firm can provide for clients that won’t eat into your business? Obviously, you don’t want to publish your proprietary spreadsheets and internal tools as part of your content marketing. What are some other ways you can help your clients? 

Examples might be timesheet templates, IRS forms, or links to HR-related sites with helpful information. Publishing a tax planner your clients can use to gather their information at tax time might actually save you time. If there are tools you wish your clients would use that would make your life easier, put them out there. 

Getting Started: Consider what tools you could give your clients to make their lives easier or questions you often get from clients that don’t need an individualized answer (such as calls asking for tax return refund updates that are redirected to the IRS website). Once you’ve come up with the list, consider publishing free resources for your clients to use. For example, webinars addressing commonly asked questions are always a good idea.

#6: Use Social Media

Most accounting firms rely on word of mouth to grow their firm and have been slow to embrace online marketing activities such as email marketing, advertising, and social media. However, it’s a missed opportunity to identify potential new clients and bring more visitors to your site. Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media sites have advanced targeted marketing features that allow your ads to reach only the potential customers you want.

Social media marketing is a cost-effective way of reaching your audience and boosting your online presence. It may take some sweat equity to get your firm’s audience to grow by posting regular, high-quality information. However, the potential growth can make the effort worthwhile.

Getting Started: Set up your firm or personal presence on each site you want to advertise or create content on. Start networking by reaching out to current contacts. Next, get started with creating content. If you’re not sure you want to run your firm’s social media presence, you can hire a social media consultant to manage it for you.

If you’re looking for some extra help with social media, here’s an interview from the Growing Your Firm Podcast where Stephen G. Pope (CEO of SGP Labs) explains how firms can be using video content on social to grow their audience:

#7: Create An Inbound Marketing Funnel

What is an inbound marketing funnel? It’s a way of thinking about marketing and the journey from stranger to client. The marketing funnel allows you to visualize the process of landing new clients and strategize ways to increase your conversion rate.

An inbound marketing funnel might be as simple as having a standard timeline for following up with new potential clients. Examples include: 

• Send an email after initial phone call to provide your contact information
• Follow up with a call 3-5 days after initial conversation
• Add client to the mailing list for your newsletter
• Add client to client list to keep them on your radar

Getting Started: Review the steps taken when you have successfully landed clients in the past and the appropriate level of follow-up after initial contact. Create a standardized workflow for potential clients, including who is responsible for each step of the process.

#8: Run Marketing With a Strong Point of View

If you are seen as just another accounting firm, your voice will be lost in a crowd. Accounting is a crowded marketplace. You need to have strong opinions to stand out. 

This isn’t to say you need (or should) have a vocal opinion about everything. Consider what you have to say about accounting, something unique or unexpected. Find something that differentiates you and your firm, and publish it.

Consider Jason Blumer, a CPA who has a very active Twitter presence. He focuses on providing actionable advice for his audience through personable videos. 

Getting Started: Work on identifying what unique experience or insight you possess and how those things can help your audience. Once you’ve figured that out, consider how best to present the information to your audience and engage them.

 

#9: Add Chat To Your Website

If you’re just getting started, you may have time to respond to chat messages on your website. For medium-sized firms, it might be harder to devote time to responding since you already have a significant amount of work to do. The appeal of adding a chat feature on your site is that it easily allows potential clients to start engaging with you.

The easier you make it to initiate contact with a real person within your firm, the more likely potential clients will be to reach out to you. You can also outsource the chat feature to a third party that gathers the initial intake information on your behalf and forwards it to you, so you don’t have to devote your own resources to respond.

Getting Started: Decide if you want to answer website chats internally or externally. Once you’ve decided, you can work on integrating the chat feature into your website.

#10: Create A Newsletter (And Maintain It!)

The basics of accounting don’t change very often, but the rules and regulations do! Consider creating a weekly or monthly newsletter for your clients that provides valuable, up-to-date information about changes which could affect their personal finances or their businesses. There’s a vast amount of information on various financial and tax topics people can use to make wiser choices throughout the year.

Having a regular presence in your clients’ inboxes will have you at the top of their minds when they have an accounting-related need or someone asks them for a recommendation.

Getting Started: Determine who is responsible for distributing your newsletter and who will create the content. Discuss how frequently you want to distribute the newsletter, what should be included, and who should receive it. 

#11: Use Review Websites

Most people rely on recommendations from friends and family when it comes to accounting services. If they don’t know someone already using an accountant, they will turn to the internet. You can’t ignore your reviews on websites such as Google or Yelp. While you can’t get a bad review removed, you can provide excellent customer service to encourage good reviews.

Getting Started: Asking for good reviews is a violation of the terms of service for most review websites. However, you can make your presence known on these sites to your current clients, which might inspire a few favorable reviews.

#12: Apply For Local Awards

This one involves a lot of self-promotion, however it is a great opportunity to get local exposure. Many small business awards and leadership awards ask for applications or nominations. Some people may feel uncomfortable about self-promotion, but consider that anyone else winning the award would have been nominated in the same manner.

Getting Started: Do some research online for local business organizations or scour news sites for articles about local awards and then find out how to apply. Even if you don’t win, it can be a networking opportunity.

#13: Networking

The majority of accounting firms are small businesses that serve other small businesses. By networking within your community at entrepreneurship meetings, local small business meetups, or volunteer activities, you’ll have the opportunity to meet potential new clients. 

Though most networking events involve an uncurrent of marketing, you want to remember that the reason for these events is to meet other small business owners and learn from shared experiences. Think of these events as an opportunity to get your name out there. Potential clients will think of you when they’re in the market for accounting services.

Getting Started: Check out Linkedin or Meetup for meetings in your area. You can also reach out to the local Chamber of Commerce for networking events. 

#14: Have Professional Marketing Material

The business card is not dead! Having several on hand saves you from the embarrassment of jotting down your number on the nearest post-it note or napkin. Having business cards at the ready presents an air of professionalism. Though things like business cards may seem trivial, they help present your firm as established and high-end. 

Other simple marketing materials include promotional items like branded pens, notebooks, coffee mugs, and reusable water bottles. Check out SwagUp if you’re looking for a good vendor to get swag for your business.

Getting Started: Evaluate your current marketing material and consider whether you can create new marketing material in-house.

#15: Volunteer

While it shouldn’t be viewed as a marketing channel, one often-overlooked opportunity for marketing is getting involved in local charities. You can volunteer your services (as an accountant) or volunteer in other capacities. Local volunteer organizations present many opportunities to get your name out there and meet other people interested in the same causes.

Local charities tend to do a lot of local marketing and may include your firm’s name as a sponsor depending on what services or financial support you provide for the organization. 

Getting Started: Determine what local charities you feel strongly about supporting and reach out to see what support and services you could provide. Ideally, you want to form a long-lasting relationship with a small number of charities. 

How to Better Manage Your Growing Firm

Tired of spending endless hours manually creating and building workflow and process templates for your firm? Simplify your workload with our customizable accounting workflow templates. This free resource includes a ton of the most popular accounting templates including monthly bookkeeping, weekly accounting analysis, client onboarding procedures, and common tax return forms.

If you’re looking for a simple accounting proposal template which can easily customize for your firm, you’ve landed in the right place. 

This article includes a free accounting proposal template, in addition to tips that’ll help you structure it in a way to win more business. We’ve also included a bonus download accounting firm owners will love.

 

What is an Accounting Proposal?

Unless you are responding to a request for proposals, an accounting proposal is usually not your first interaction with the potential client. You will usually have an initial phone call or meeting to discuss their business and identify pain points in their current accounting system.

Once you’ve gathered information on their needs, you put together a proposal outlining how your firm can meet their accounting needs and ease any bottlenecks in their current process. The accounting proposal will also include which services are being offered, pricing, and other conditions for establishing regular accounting services with your firm (such as view-only access to client financial accounts).

 

Free Accounting Proposal Template

To get you started, below is an accounting proposal template you can adapt for your firm and services. You can also access a Google Doc version of the template here.

(Insert Name)

(Insert Street Address)

(Insert City, State Zip Code)

(Insert Phone Number)

Dear (insert name),

Thank you for coming into the office last week to discuss moving your accounting to our firm. I appreciate your insight into the issues with your current firm and your expectations for the work going forward. We work with several clients in your industry and understand the unique challenges and demands of your field.

We pride ourselves on providing superb, reliable accounting support for our clients each month. We answer all phone calls and emails within 48 hours. You’ll never be left wondering what’s going on with your books. 

We will access your QuickBooks account directly online and will set up view-only access for your financial accounts, so you won’t need to be involved in our data gathering. Management reports will be completed early each month, which means you’ll have nearly real-time insight into your business metrics.

I look forward to hearing from you regarding transitioning your work to our firm. We’ll do everything possible to make it a smooth transition. 

Respectfully,

(insert name(s))

 

Our Services

Included in our initial proposal are the following services:

• Coordinating the transfer of files from your previous accountant
• Working with you to set up our access to your accountants
• Monthly accounting and financial statement preparation (includes balance sheet, profit and loss, and statement of cash flow)
• Handling client billing and collections
• Managing accounts payable and vendor management
• Tax preparation for your company

 

Cost Summary

Initial Setup: $(insert here)

The initial setup includes coordination with your current accounting firm to gather necessary documents. We will review your books for the past two years. We will discuss any issues identified in your past two tax returns and make a plan to address any items found during the review. We will also discuss procedures regarding to accounts payable and accounts receivable processing.

Ongoing Monthly Fee: $(insert here)

The ongoing monthly fee includes monthly financial statement preparation, accounts payable management, and accounts receivable management. After 12-months we will assess our fees. 

Additional Services: $(insert here)/hour

For services rendered outside of the items outlined above, we will bill at our standard hourly rate, which is listed above. 

 

Acceptance

By signing below, you are accepting the terms and conditions outlined above. Any changes to this agreement must be in writing and accepted by both parties.

Accounting Service Start Date: (insert date here)

______________________________________

(Insert Name)

______________________________________

Date

______________________________________

(Insert Name)

______________________________________

Date

 

BONUS: 32 Other Free Templates for Accounting Firms

Once you’ve seen how much time you can save by having a standard accounting proposal template on hand, you should start looking for other areas of your practice that can be standardized. Most accounting tasks are repetitive and can use the same workflow each month.

Jetpack Workflow has created a set of 32 free accounting workflow templates. They include standardized steps for accounting tasks such as bookkeeping, financial statement preparation, audits, and tax preparation. The templates can be further customized based on your firm’s policies and procedures.

 

 

How to Structure Your Proposal to Win New Clients

 

Customized

In the initial section of your proposal, you want to point out the unique concerns brought up during conversations with your potential client. You want to address them from the very beginning to let the client know you understand not only their business but also their expectations for your working relationship.

The letter should not read as a generic letter you send to all potential clients. You’ll win far more business by taking the additional time to personalize the letter. Remember, a proposal is not only an agreement between you and your new client – it’s a piece of marketing material. 

 

Value Proposition

Accounting can be a significant expense for a small business, whether the business is taking the position in-house or using an outside accounting firm to manage its books. As an accounting firm, you need to make the case your services will save the client either time or money (or, ideally, both!). 

While you don’t want to presume what their in-house expenses would have been, you should mention the efficiency with which your firm can complete tasks and the large knowledge base your firm possesses. You should mention any specialties or areas of practice your firm has.

 

Services Covered Under Proposal

The accounting proposal template should outline all services which will be included in your engagement with the client. You should spell out each service in detail to avoid future misunderstandings with the client. Additionally, a detailed set of services will allow the client to compare different proposals if they are comparing several different firms.

 

Billing

Initial Cost: Carefully consider how much time is invested in setting up a new client before pricing out the initial phase. If the client has several years of books to catch up on or has a piecemeal system and needs a professional set of books set up from scratch, that will take a significant amount of time. Keep in mind  you want to establish a long-term relationship with this client, so you should consider the full picture when pricing the initial cost.

Recurring Cost: Once the client’s accounting system is set up, how much time is it going to take you to maintain it? After figuring out your hours and your billing rate, you’ll have a good idea of what the monthly cost should be. 

Other Costs: To prevent future misunderstandings, it’s best practice for accounting professionals to include your policy for billing additional services outside the scope of the initial engagement. Usually, additional services are billed based on hourly rates. You can either list a specific hourly rate or state that additional services are billed in accordance with your standard rates.

 

Timelines

Each proposal should include a timeline for each phase of the project. For the initial phase of the project, you’ll need to work with the client to understand the urgency of their initial financial statements. For ongoing work, you should set a date each month when the updated financials will be ready. Once these timelines have been created, it’s important you stick to them.

 

Acceptance

The proposal should include an area where each party can indicate their acceptance of the proposal and the start date for accounting services.

 

Need Help Managing New Accounting Client Projects?

In the best-case scenario, you land a new client. Once you’ve landed the client, how do you ensure you’re doing your best work and nothing is falling through the cracks? You should have standardized workflow procedures within your firm that let you hit the ground running.

 

You could create your workflows using a piecemeal system of spreadsheets, to-do lists, and emails, or you could use a complete workflow management system like Jetpack Workflow, which was built with accounting firms in mind. Jetpack Workflow offers a free 14-day trial. You can test it out for your firm and see how much you can improve your efficiency (and profitability) through a workflow management system.

 

However, if you don’t bill by the hour, keeping up a weekly timesheet can feel like a waste of time and one more menial task eating up a large portion of your day. Knowing how you’re spending your time is crucial for determining areas where you can be more productive and determining which tasks are most profitable.

Though you have many options for tracking your time, a simple spreadsheet can often give you the insight you need to evaluate your workload. 

Free Accounting Timesheet Template

To get you started using a simple timesheet template, here is a free accounting timesheet template in Google Sheets that contains daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly schedules. You can also download this template into Excel or PDF format if that works better for you.

Keep in mind, the most critical part of any time-tracking tool is to use it consistently. Recreating your timesheet days (or even hours!) later can be frustrating, involving digging back through your phone logs, emails, and calendar.

BONUS: 32 Other Free Templates for Accountants

If you’re looking for additional templates, Jetpack Workflow has created a set of 32 free templates for standard accounting processes. The templates include workflows for bookkeeping, financial statements, tax engagements, and audits. 

Each template can be customized to meet your team’s unique needs and processes.

Why You and Your Team Should Use Timesheets

There are many reasons it makes sense for you and your team to keep regular timesheets. Below are six of the most common reasons firms decide to track their time.

1. Payroll Processing

It may seem obvious, but the most basic reason for maintaining timesheets in your firm is payroll processing. Non-exempt employees should be tracking their work hours to ensure they are correctly paid for overtime hours. You’ll want your staff to sign their timesheets or submit them electronically to verify their agreement with the logged hours.

Along with employee hours, you should have staff record paid time off, vacation time, and sick leave to ensure you have all the information you need to process payroll.

State overtime laws vary along with rules for paying out vacation time and other accrued benefits at the end of an employee’s tenure. Thorough records of hours worked can prevent you from underpaying an employee and running into issues with your state’s labor department.

2. Billing Clients

If you bill your clients on an hourly basis, you’ll need to carefully track your billable hours to verify you are billing your clients correctly. Clients will expect to see detailed bills, including dates the time was worked along with which staff member performed the work. Timesheets completed in real-time will allow your billing department to accurately and promptly bill your clients.

For firms that bill hourly, staff members should note which client they worked on and what tasks were worked on, so there are records available in the event a client questions the billing.

3. Evaluating Client Costs

Whether you bill hourly or not, you should track your time by client and task. This will ensure you have the data available to determine how profitable each client or type of work is. 

The most significant expense in an accounting or bookkeeping firm is staff. Not tracking staff expenses and how funds are being spent is like not reconciling your bank account regularly. A big no-no for an accountant! 

4. Finding Areas to Be More Productive

Along with tracking client costs, you and your staff should track non-billable time. For any non-billable time, the more detail you add to your timesheet, the more insight you will have into processes that should be streamlined or reworked.

If you spend a lot of time contacting clients about outstanding bills or answering questions that a junior staff member could handle, you’re wasting your valuable time on non-billable work.

5. Improved Project Management

Accurate and thorough timesheets help you find areas when your workflows are hitting bottlenecks and where you potentially need additional staff or to reassign tasks. Analyzing daily timesheets often leads to conversations with staff to discuss potential issues they may have been reluctant to bring up themselves.

Along with the initial evaluation, ongoing time tracking lets you monitor improvements and inefficiency. This ongoing monitoring allows you to initiate improvements in your workflow processes.

6. Identify Issues

Adequate time records will show you which staff members are being over-or under-utilized. This can prevent staff burnout and make sure everyone realizes their full potential. Monitoring timesheets may not be the most exciting activity, but it does provide valuable insight into your team dynamics.

Alternatives to Timesheets

Jetpack Workflow

Jetpack Workflow is an integrated workflow and client management system meant to streamline your processes and project tracking. Jetpack Workflow includes a built-in time tracking feature. The timesheet system allows you to include details about projects, which staff completed the work, and how much time was spent on the project. All of this information can be used to create analytic reports and increase productivity.

If you’re not sure about an integrated timesheet and workflow management tool, Jetpack Workflow offers a free 14-day trial so you can evaluate their system for yourself.

Time Tracking Tools

There is no shortage of freestanding time tracking tools. We’ve listed a few options below. Each option has web and mobile applications and various reporting options:

• Time Doctor – Pricing starts at $7/user/month
• Toggl – Free for one user. Team plans start at $9/user/month
• DeskTime – Free for one user. Team plans start at $7/user/month
• MyHours – Team plans start at $0/user/month though it costs more for additional features

Keep in mind that a freestanding time tracking software will need to be matched up with other data sources in order to evaluate productivity and efficiency, which means you’ll be spending additional time putting together multiple data sources to make them useful.