McIntosh Marketing Blog

Imagine being in an industry that has more demand and need than is being fulfilled. This is the sad, but opportunistic story of the CPA. While so many businesses are being penalized by the IRS for bad accounting and tax handling, the lone CPA himself suffers for lack of new customers.

About seventy percent of CPA’s and accountants are single practitioners. Many of these CPA’s are never formally educated in marketing, advertising, much less SEO, blogging and other vital internet marketing tools. According to Sterling Management Systems http://www.sterling-management.com/ of Glendale, CA, these CPA’s are seen by other business professionals as the experts on how to manage a business. While accounting is most definitely an important factor in managing costs and profits, it is an after the fact analysis point.

What most is most deficient in a CPA’s acumen is how to generate leads, sales and higher levels of profits. And this is why they have been losing past clients while not adding enough. Their clients are dying from a lack of marketing “how-to” to stay afloat and even expand after the storm has subsided. Most of their clients are not even blogging from their existing web sites.

Another option is for the accounting world to partner up with the SEO and web design world, forming an allied partnership to help businesses do what needs to be done to not fall into the traps that so many businesses do. ANd believe me, there are many SEO guys out there that could utilize a new channel of business referrals, particularly from a trusted source – the CPA. When you consider the opportunity, having one place to keep your books and taxes IRS “bullet proof”, while also showing effective web marketing techniques is one powerful package of services.

While the partnership is ideal for both, universities and colleges will need to recognize the need to include in a CPA’s education the need to understand the basics of web marketing, blogging and basic marketing strategy.

Ask any business person, “What if you had infallible financial records and a profitable marketing plan?’, and I think you will see the opportunity that exists to two industries, both looking for more clients.

Although there are a million ways to market your products incorrectly, the big mistake I see is to forget that your public are humans and fail to build relationships with them.

Making 5,000 “friends” on a social network like Twitter or Facebook is a good idea. But if all you do is send them bulk advertising messages, it’s not going to work.  You’re dealing with live people who have interests and ideas and opinions. The more you find out what is needed and wanted and deliver THAT, the better off you’ll be.

When someone receives a generic “Thank’s for following” plus a link to where they can go to give their hard-earned money to that Twitter member they just decided to follow, they are rarely appreciative. This is because the human element is missing.

The first thing you always do in a successful marketing campaign is research. You find out if your proposed business is in demand and by whom. Then your marketing plan will be geared toward that public. You get to know this public via various channels they use. Yes, Twitter and Facebook are fine channels, as long as your purpose is to GET TO KNOW YOUR PUBLIC THERE.  Then as your marketing campaign rolls out, feedback from your public will help you understand what they like and don’t like, what they’re looking for, etc. This will continue to streamline your campaign messages so that they are effective.

There are research tools you can buy and get for free online, keyword research tools, search features on social networks to see what topics are of interest to people currently, and various kinds of feedback forms and surveys you can create for your public, once you’ve identified who they are. Google’s Keyword Tool is a free and valuable keyword research tool, and a good place to start.

Just remember that your public are made up entirely of individual human people. And getting to know them, their interests, their needs and wants, is the only way you will succeed in any business venture.

Now that we are getting over the DT’s from the high wine of easy credit, it is important to understand how we were caught wth our marketing pants down. You see, easy money makes you lazy and undisciplined. Like Paris Hilton, there is no need for responsibility when there is enough money to bail yourself out of any mess. And so it happened with the marketing budget.

Now if you are having a hard time recalling what a marketing budget is, that is because for over a decade American businesses developed a serious case of Alzheimers. This set in after we killed the marketing plan. Why have a budget, when we do not even need a plan? Why plan, when you can borrow?

What replaced the marketing plan was easy credit. If you got into trouble, you didn’t need to develop a better plan, a more intelligent methodology of how to get yourself out of debt, and even more to the point, become profitable as a business. You simply applied for more credit. And like a crack addict, we got in deeper and deeper, never addressing the original source of pain that drove us to our own self-destruction.

What is needed now, for each of us to crawl back up the ladder of financial responsibility, is to develop a plan of action that includes how to better market our skills and products. This must include a strong positioning for our brand, an clear identification of our key market, a budget that we adhere to and to treat that budget as an investment versus that as a discretionary budget item that we cut down when we panic.

We have to turn to intelligence and better planning when we panic, not easier methods of fast money that eventually drowns us.