Marketing for Accountants: The Top 19 Strategies

If you’re looking for the best marketing for accountants’ strategies, you’ve come to the right place.

In this post, I’m going to outline 19 of the top strategies working well right now to help you attract clients.

Most of these methods I’ve personally used myself to help take my cloud accounting firm from scratch to sale in just 5 years.

Let’s check them out!

Table of Contents

1. Marketing for Accountants 101
2. The Top 19 Marketing Strategies

• • #1 Get Blogging
  • #2 Spin Up a Podcast
  • #3 Send Newsletters
  • #4 Viral Marketing for Accountants
  • #5 Social Media Marketing for Accountants
  • #6 Consider (But Be Wary Of) Paid Ads
  • #7 Networking Meetups
  • #8 Write a Book
  • #9 Include Lead Magnets on Your Website
  • #10 Partner on Webinars
  • #11 Live Stream Q&A Marketing for Accountants
  • #12 Build Strategic Alliances
  • #13 Land Speaking Gigs
  • #14 Run a Giveaway
  • #15 Sales Outreach Marketing for Accountants
  • #16 Follow Up with Lost Deals Quarterly
  • #17 Video Marketing for Accountants
  • #18 Ask for Referrals
  • #19 Upsell Existing Clients

Marketing for Accountants 101

Before we move on, I think it’s important for me to state a few things on the topic of marketing for accountants:

1. None of these strategies are magic. Most of them will take consistent time, resources, and effort on your part. Be wary of anyone promising any kind of magic solution.
2. The most effective accounting marketing strategies require you to know your ideal client exceptionally well.
3. Some of these marketing efforts will require a bit of trial and error before you see growth.
4. It would be a good idea to create a marketing plan for your marketing resources before you immediately jump into any marketing activities. I see too many accounting firms rush from tactic to tactic without any real plan in place.

The Top 19 Marketing Strategies

And now, in no particular order, let’s jump into the top strategies:

1) Get Blogging

Blogging is my all-time favorite digital marketing strategy.

And for good reason.

I’ve built 2 businesses almost entirely off the back of blogging.

How is this possible?

Because I’ve been able to create blog posts that show up on Google’s first page for the topic that I’m writing about.

When my target market searches for that topic, my article pops up, which then drives traffic to my website.

And a portion of that traffic will convert to leads with a pretty simple mechanism.

Let’s look at an example:

Let’s say that you’re in the US and you want more information on how to complete the PPP forgiveness application form. So you type into Google, “PPP forgiveness application form.”

This keyword brings up a first search result from Bench, an online bookkeeping business:

And then when I click on the link, I get brought to their article, where the blog post will look something like this:

Circled in red above is a Call-to-Action (CTA) asking the reader to take some kind of action. Most of the readers will disregard this CTA, though a percentage of them will click through to see how Bench can help them with their books.

The more blog posts you can do this with, the more traffic you’ll get to your website.

You’ll need to write content that the search engines find valuable, which means having a basic understanding of SEO, or search engine optimization.

If you’re curious to see my SEO blog formula for how you can use this method yourself, you can download my 15-Step Blogging Formula guide.

2) Spin Up a Podcast

Podcasting is super hot right now, yet many firms aren’t utilizing this strategy. The nice thing about podcasts is that firms like yours can get a foothold in this space if you get started now.

If you can create a routine around your podcasts and deliver valuable information within them, your audience will get to know you and your services. As such, podcasts are a great way to brand yourself.

The other great thing about podcasting in the business accounting community?

It’s super cheap and pretty easy to get started. This is also a good way to gain new prospects and direct them to your website.

Podcasts can be a powerful lead generation tool that many firms can use for sharing valuable information with your listeners and developing trust.

My friends over at Kruze Consulting do a great job with their Founders & Friends Podcast where they interview people in their target market on the show.

If you want some more inspiration for your CPA firm, you can check out my 39-Must Listen Accounting Podcasts.

3) Send Newsletters

There’s a popular saying in marketing that goes:

“The money is in the list”

I don’t doubt that one bit.

In fact, I wish I would have started building an email list far longer ago. My newsletter has really served as my #1 tool to help remain top of mind among my target audience.

I think there are a few tricks involved for having an effective newsletter for firms that allows you to convert readers into dollars:

Deliver value

A newsletter should not just be one giant long ad for accounting firms. The more valuable information you provide, the more people will want to remain signed up, the more trust you’ll build = more dollars to your accounting firm.

Pick a theme and stick with it

You want your readers to know what to expect. Perhaps every week you email them your top 3 business tips or you can curate news happening in your niche’s industry, etc.

As an example, the theme of my newsletter is a weekly top 5 which is sent to 1000’s of firm leaders looking to design a modern, scalable firm. Every week I review 100’s of articles and pick the top 5 best ones that I feel will best help my audience to design a modern, scalable firm.

Scheduling consistency is key

I recommend a weekly newsletter that’s sent out on the same day and time of the week. That way, your readers will know what to expect, which helps reduce unsubscribe rates.

Keep it simple!

Some of the most popular newsletters out there completely forego formatting, images, and colors and stick with a newsletter that looks and feels like a regular email. This is my approach as well as I feel it helps create a sense of me sending you a personalized email.

Using this technique, you can build your email marketing list through strong content in order to nurture prospects toward a close.

Here’s a snippet of what my weekly newsletter looks like. Nothing fancy!

Newsletters are such a powerful marketing strategy to determine and gain a captive audience.

In fact, if you’re looking for amazing, pre-crafted newsletters for your firm, members of my Future Firm Accelerate^® online coaching membership get access to these each month 🙂

4) Viral Marketing for Accountants

This is a tough one, but if you can, the rewards are wonderful.

While viral marketing can take many shapes, the idea is to launch a campaign around something that might be trending at the moment.

For instance, when I ran my cloud accounting firm, I announced that my firm was the first to accept bitcoin as payment in 2013 via a press release:

This received a ton of media attention because it was around the time when people first learned about bitcoin after its massive price increase from only a few dollars to over $1,000.

5) Social Media Marketing for Accountants

In this age of digital marketing and technology, any social media marketing for accountants’ strategies deployed here will largely depend on who your audience is.

For instance, when you post content, Instagram caters very well to creatives whereas Linkedin caters much better to professionals.

This also means your social media page will look great on mobile devices too, like phones and tablets which is where most people are searching these days. Which makes it very handy for prospects or potential customers.

If you share helpful information and brand your firm, you will improve your online presence, get your website promoted, get likes, comments, shares, and potential customers. Most firms are overlooking significant opportunities to target this. If you just post about advertising your services, you’ll get none of that.

For instance, here’s part of a post I wrote commenting about millennials in accounting firms, which so far has received over 22,000 views:

And because of the engagement I received on this one post, I was able to get this post trending for popular hashtags I used in the post.

One of such hashtags has over 4,000,000 followers, which means I received a ton of exposure and growth:

6) Consider (But Be Wary Of) Paid Ads

Any time I speak to an accountant that wants to get involved in digital marketing, they talk about Google Ads.

The good thing about paid ads strategy like Google Ads is that you can flip the switch and see instant traffic to your website.

The problem is that it’s often not the kind of traffic you want, it costs money & most accountants don’t have a very good sales process, meaning, they’re just burning through leads and do not create potential clients.

If you have a rock-solid sales process and a highly defined target market and you’re able to send people clicking on your ads to a website that can convert those visitors into leads, then paid ads like Google Ads might be for you.

7) Networking Meetups

Networking meetups are a staple of marketing for accountants and firms.

It’s not my favorite form of marketing because, in my opinion, the cost-benefit ratio is far superior to some of the other strategies listed in this article.

But if you’re good at schmoozing, and to maximize your marketing efforts, you can add this to your list of marketing strategies to make contacts in your desired accounting niches.

To find all sorts of networking events near you, you can check out Meetup‘s website:

8) Write a Book

What better way to be viewed as a thought-leader in your space than to write a book on a subject matter of interest to your audience?

In fact, some people I know write a book and ship out free copies to those that they think would benefit most from their brand and services.

If you think of your marketing in terms of the cost of acquiring a client, this might actually be one of the cheaper strategies around.

9) Include Lead Magnets on Your Website

Lead magnets are incentives on your website that your firm would offer to potential clients in exchange for their email addresses or contact information.

Examples of lead magnets could include eBooks, PDF toolkits, downloadable video training, etc.

Here’s an example of a good lead magnet from my friends over at Avalon Accounting (circled in red):

The lead magnet in this instance is a PDF guide for entrepreneurs to help them pick an accountant.

Once the email address is provided, your firm can nurture this contact into a customer.

10) Partner on Webinars

Webinars are a great way to get in front of a larger audience. The trick is to get partners from firms or others who already have an audience within your target market to introduce your brand and accounting services.

For instance, if your firm has a niche carved out with dental practices, perhaps you can approach the local (or national) dental association that you see running webinars and pitch an idea for a webinar that you think would be helpful for their members. You also need to make sure that your webinar topic is relevant to what you do as well.

Find associations, firms, partners, or organizations within your target market and pitch them ideas for valuable webinar content. They’re always looking for guests.

Keep this in mind when you plan on doing your first webinar.

11) Live Stream Q&A Marketing for Accountants

With this digital marketing strategy, you get on a live video stream and answer your audience’s relevant questions in real-time.

For instance, at the beginning of COVID, there was a ton of confusion about the various government stimulus programs. So you round up your clients and prospects to answer their questions in real-time.

This is a great way to develop a relationship with your audience and to clear up questions on several topics.

Here you’ll see what it looks like:

12) Build Strategic Alliances

This is a tried, tested, and true marketing for accountants tactic. If you can develop and align yourself with a banker, a law firm, an insurance broker, and anyone else relevant in your field, you can have a great way to send business back and forth.

You want people that are going to reciprocate and ones that are sending back quality business.

I personally had one alliance in each category and just sent all my business there rather than splitting things up between multiple lawyers, for instance.

13) Land Speaking Gigs

If you can get invited to speak at different events (and sometimes you need to invite yourself!), you can get in front of an audience that you might not have had access to previously.

For instance, here’s a presentation of mine at Xerocon 2019 on the topic of marketing for accountants:

You can combine this with a lead magnet discussed in one of the tactics above.

Basically, you can give away parts of the presentation in the form of an eBook, checklist, or any other kind of downloadable content. No fancy software or technology is needed! To do this, include a presentation slide that shows a URL where the audience can visit to provide their email address in exchange for the lead magnet.

And voila! You are starting to convert audience members to leads that can be nurtured via your newsletter, which can eventually lead to sales.

14) Run a Giveaway

I’ve run a few giveaways in my life.

The first one was a horrible failure with my accounting firm.

I posted a draw to win 1 free year of accounting services in exchange for liking the firm’s Facebook page.

It was a massive flop.

But I learned from it.

When I launched a giveaway with Future Firm^® in 2020, it was a big success that brought in 100’s contacts that joined my newsletter which could later be nurtured.

The big difference is that the first time around I launched a giveaway without any partners. The second time around I partnered with others in the space to coordinate a giveaway campaign.

As you can see below, I partnered with 6 others to pool together all kinds of cool services and products into one giant bundle of value:

I’m not saying you have to make it complicated, but if you’re going to run a giveaway contest, consider partnering with one or two others in the campaign to extend your reach.

15) Sales Outreach Marketing for Accountants

If you want an easy & cheap marketing tactic, why not monitor job boards and reach out to companies or accounting firms looking to hire accountants or bookkeepers?

For example, if you go to Indeed and type in “Bookkeeper” in Toronto, Canada, you’ll get 100’s of results that may fit your expertise.

For instance, check this result:

Why not reach out to them and see if they would be open to outsourcing this?

You don’t need software for this, and I guarantee you’ll see growth and get a few hits with this tactic.

16) Follow Up with Lost Deals Quarterly

Let’s face it. You’re not going to close 100% of the leads you speak with.

Sometimes, you’ll have a really great discussion with a business, a firm, or a client but for one reason or another, they don’t sign up with you.

Tag those lost deals in a CRM and set a reminder to gently “check-in” on their business every quarter to see how things are going.

You’d be surprised. A percentage of those lost deals can be turned into won deals just by being in the right place at the right time.

17) Video Marketing for Accountants

Another strategy in the world of technology is video marketing. Some have had tremendous success in launching Youtube channels in order to share videos with valuable information, developing trust (and business) with their viewers.

Plus, you only need a few resources with this.

Take Hector Garcia, CPA for instance. He shares all kinds of information and his expertise on how to use QuickBooks.

And guess what?

He was over 93,000 subscribers as of the time of writing:

Think of the exposure he gets every time he releases a video…

18) Ask for Referrals

Tried, tested, and true.

Asking for referrals works. Your accounting marketing will be an ever-evolving process.

Contact your best clients who love what you do and ask them if they know any contacts of theirs that would benefit from your services. Get client testimonials. Maximize your client resources. You’ll probably get some introductions.

Just be sure not to overdo this strategy. Your clients’ time is precious.

19) Upsell Existing Clients

Effective marketing doesn’t mean that you need to focus all your efforts on trying to land brand new clients.

In fact, the easiest marketing strategy to land new revenues is to simply speak to your existing clients to see how else you can help them out and then upsell them to a higher-priced plan.

Which Strategy Should You Start With?

Well, some of these strategies are easy quick wins that you can use immediately to gain clients, while others take a bit more time to plan. Successful accounting marketing is fully within your reach. For the ones that take longer to execute, I’d start with 1 or 2 that you feel mesh well with you, and your accounting firm and get those working right. Once they’re working, you can branch out to others. The key to having successful accounting marketing is to try to avoid doing too much at once as you’ll get flustered.

Promotions and advertising are some of the methods that marketing departments use to increase sales. But you can do this without a marketing team or marketing professionals. Make a list of your expertise and sort them out.

Which strategy do you like best?

Are there any missing? Any tips you want to share?

Comment below to let me know!