Generating business and marketing is always challenging, but during lockdown, I’ve had to rethink my firm’s approach and adapt to meet the new world of digital marketing head-on.
Marketing was never the main focus of the business before the pandemic. The focus was always making sure the service and delivery were up to speed and continuing to make improvements so we can grow.
Marketing before lockdown
Before the crisis, our marketing focus was the website, ensuring that it conveyed our target market and attracted the right audience. I use Squarespace to deliver the website and I work with marketing companies Lucky 14 and WeCanCreative to ensure it captures the data required for marketing. For my content marketing, I use Principle Point to capture case studies and project work.
The tech-savant marketer
Marketing isn’t my forte, so I outsource most of it. Having tech tools, such as online scheduling tool youcanbook.me, demonstrates our tech competence to potential customers before our first meeting. The tech firms can also see our efficiency in using the latest automotive apps – they could be put off if your use of tech is dated and unnecessarily manual.
We demonstrate we are tech gurus by actually using the relevant tools they build and design. Soaring Falcon’s social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook then showcase our tech capabilities and attract our target clients.
I review Google Analytics to see the locations, time of views, gender, age-range and industries of our website visitors. Using data such as this is relevant for when you post, the information you want to share and your target audience.
Business Culture
Outside tech is our business culture. Activities like team-building retreats to Montenegro and Tough Mudder demonstrate a strong team that works well together and shows their capability for good customer care.
Marketing isn’t always about the ‘sale’, but also about what your firm does ‘behind the scenes’. It tells a story that will attract the right client.
Our clients love reading about what we do and they always comment on how great it is to see the team’s spirit.
Meeting new clients
The mindset before lockdown was to encourage people from overseas, tech and creative companies to land on my website, check out the social media and want to be one of our clients. They would book in a meeting and then chat with me and we onboard them. In some cases, it would be at events where I would meet them face to face.
Attending accounting events have helped me build face-to-face relationships and profiles, however, with the cancellation of all of these, I’ve relied on tech to replace physical interactions.
Post-lockdown marketing world
Then lockdown struck and we couldn’t go to events or meet people. Suddenly, the focus was not meeting the potential client and onboarding them without a face-to-face meeting. Most of our clients require monthly or quarterly financials, so Zoom or UberConference became crucial to business relationships.
The target client
It’s early days, but my new project is creating client avatars and niches on a Google sheet with ClientWizard to automate the process of generating high-level leads.
Using products like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Pipedrive then pull together your ideal clients: Who motivates you? Who do you want to work with? If you don’t know this, then who are you targeting?
It’s important to know exactly who the target client is as it will help build rewarding relationships with worthwhile clients. We have model clients such as Camplify and Quarantine Productions Ltd, who we base our client avatar on. We then make sure that clients are similar in the way they work, culture, attitude towards business etc.
Top tech tips
I use PracticeIgnition for proposals as this syncs to my workflow manager (Workflowmax) and accounting software (Xero) to allow me to handle the leads when I set up marketing campaigns. Onboarding is an essential part of growth and management, and they enable new clients to feel happy with their new accountant. Practice ignition also links with Zapier which allows further integrations to build and improve the level of automation in and around the onboarding process.
DialPad and UberConference are two exciting products I’ve brought in during lockdown which have voice intelligence where calls and meetings can be analysed. It highlights key trends and words in every conversation, allowing me to build a picture of the potential customer and map out their goals and targets. They reduce note-taking time and give me actionable insights.
The changes are new, so I will be building and working on them over the next few months to generate more high-value clients to the business remotely, rather than attending events. It’s a big step for us to do this, but being fully online is our new target.
I am taking this as an opportunity to explore how to grow the business as a remote and virtual one.
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