Using Thought Leadership To Strengthen Your Firm

All too often, content marketing gets deprioritized and placed on the back burner. Time doesn’t often afford you the luxury of being proactive to educate clients on new tax laws or items that could impact their business – meaning you may be missing out on major opportunities for revenue growth, upsells, client referrals, and more.

Your goal is to become the trusted advisor for all your clients, but it may seem like there simply isn’t enough time to personally connect with each and every client on a regular basis. Fortunately, this isn’t always the case: you likely just need a stronger marketing strategy. Here’s how to get started using thought leadership content to strengthen your firm.

Choose who “owns” your thought leadership process

Whether it’s your own marketing manager, office manager, or a content marketing consultant, share your vision with this person and enlist their help to bring it to life. The last thing you want is to have your CPAs using their valuable time on non-billable internal work.

While you can leverage them as experts for thought leadership content, it’s much more efficient having an office manager or marketer conduct a 15-minute thought leadership interview and use that transcript to create content rather than asking your CPA to write something from scratch.

Start small

Consistent, well-executed content will be far more powerful than a deluge of content your clients don’t read. Pick a communication schedule you can stick to (whether that’s one email per week or just one per month), and build it up from there.

When you’re getting started, pick topics that you know will appeal to your clients, whether they’re industry-based or related to news items.

Plan your content

While you’ll want to stay nimble for any breaking news in the accounting world, the best way to create a content schedule you’ll adhere to is to plan as much as you can in advance. In addition to your newsworthy content, create a backlog of “evergreen” ideas related to your clients’ main concerns that you can use to fill the gaps.

Brainstorm with your team

Have a discussion with your CPAs and other team members. Ask them what questions they’re getting from clients and prospects, and what stumbling blocks they’re encountering. Build your content around these common queries and pain points.

Focus on key points

Accounting terminology and changes in tax law can be confusing to your clients, so the best content will break it down into common language and focus on a single key takeaway. Hone in on what your target audience cares most about and speak to those concerns.

Persevere

Content marketing takes time to build momentum. If you aren’t seeing results right away, keep at it. Look for opportunities to gain feedback from your clients and keep an eye on your engagement metrics. Give your communication plan at least three months before making any major changes.

If you aren’t finding success with your content marketing approach or just can’t find the time in the day to prioritize creating content for your firm, there are options to help. A service like Marketing by Numbers can help fill your content gaps and give you the guidance your firm needs to excel at consistent client communication. Inside of spending unbillable hours on sending out marketing emails, your CPAs and support team can focus on what they do best.

From building deeper relationships with your clients to finding new revenue opportunities, a solid content marketing plan is the key to securing client trust and building quality client relationships for the long-term.