Accountants
Accountants are in a business where there does not appear to be much differentiation or urgency to engage, especially in the practices dealing with small to medium size businesses.
Main messages are varied ranging from tax expertise, saving you time, speciality in certain software, reliability, advanced management systems, specialisation in certain areas such as IT or entertainment, family run and in some cases nothing at all, just listing services everybody else does. Apart from all these messages being features rather than relevancy to the target audience, other mistakes are made.
The web sites then tend then to be inconsistent with whatever main message they have chosen veering into a list of everything they do with generalities and broadshot attempts to capture as many customers as possible like this.
Another common mistake is the indepth descriptions of the practice’s areas of operation.
The idea being to demonstrate skills and knowledge – it’s a mistake because prospects lose engagement being bored by information they don’t yet need. A free downloadable ebooklet is the method for this because it can be easily printed out, kept and passed on. We can help you with this.
These common mistakes in web site design result in the practice operating at a fraction of its true potential.
Most people who talk about Marketing do not know what it is, thinking it is the “in word” for selling of one sort or another, and that is why many mistakes are made.
The starting point is “The Buyer Journey”.
http://neededresults.com/buyer-journey/
The Right Way
How do prospective clients go about choosing an Accountancy practice from the plethora of those out there ? What do they look for ? How do they prioritise ?
This depends on who the clients are and why proper targeting will determine how things work on your website, especially your landing page.
Positioning
Some Accountancy practices are quite clever in that they structure what they offer perfectly relevantly and in some cases creatively to exactly what their target audience wants to hear and want (with correct focus) and may want later. That is an excellent start and the way it is conveyed by some is mostly correct.
This is a site with a target audience who are start ups and small businesses.
https://www.theaccountancy.co.uk/
The site is designed to be uncomplicated and far simpler than the majority of accountant sites who have far too much detail.
The landing page is a good match for the target audience offering small monthly installments making this look like a very affordable service.
This is the best message for start ups and small business clients on the landing page. (And many others)
There are also other ones such as “creative or clever accounting” which always gets prospects on the site to find out more. “Automated Accounting” is another one.
This focus message of affordable and simplicity is repeated through the website through compatible imagery fulfilling the consistency rule. As the purpose of the landing page is to get further engagement of the web site until a form is filled out or a first meeting is scheduled, this works well.
All fees for unlimited help and free tax investigation representation, are statistically calculated taking into account the actual time spent in assisting, the real value of long term relationships and referrals.
Video
Relevant engaging content is the most important attribute of any web site. Of all the content available, Video is no.1 (as of 2020). It is the best way to convey the message of simplicity. A VERY important message for an Accountant practice aiming at many Target audiences.
How many Accountancy practices know the importance of video ?
Therefore video was used in the above website.
Case studies
Happy customers and relatable stories of help make this another way to captivate the hearts and minds of prospects. That much of the work can be done online and by email focuses savings in the mind of clients. Exactly what you want them to think. Once on board the relationship and expenditure with you develops and early investments pay off as clients’ businesses grow, and so do you.
All Accountancy websites should use a stepping stone method to draw the prospect from one section to another to be effective.
But 95% of Accountancy websites do not do this !
Lead Generation
The best way to generate leads is to get your “positioning” correct first. Explore the above site and you will see what is meant by this.
The offer to have free help in the event of an HMRC investigation and many other pircs is ideal for a small business who view Accountants as a (necessary) expense rather than a benfit at this level.
Then deal with media planning.
Media Planning
Get the website right first and then the methods used to direct prospects there can be planned correctly.
For Accountants there are many ways to do this.
Life does exist beyond Google Adwords, although the right adwords will get you to the number one spot in google. That is important as it is one of the main ways businessmen look for new accountancy firms and with the right website strike rates of 1 in 5 visitors to your website can be achieved against the usual 1 in 50.
Advertising in all the right places.
To get this to an MC=MR state needs expertise. If you wish we can advise.
If your positioning is above 8/10 and your website above 8/10, you will get the lion’s share of new customers assuming your media planning is also 8/10 or more.
Every other Accountancy website seen, does not rate higher than 6/10 overall.
See where you stand:
Have a free customised review of your website with recommendations for improvements and a quote for different rectification alternatives.
