Is Your Firm’s Marketing Positioning You For Growth?
Marc Rosenberg, CPAOne of the main purposes of CPA firm marketing is to make selling easier. It’s been well documented that business development is a critically important skill that is also the hardest skill to develop. If you are a partner in a vanilla, generalist firm that does 95% compliance work, you are no different from dozens of other firms in your market. This scenario makes it more difficult for the partners to bring in business.
Specialties and niches make selling easier. How?
People like hiring experts. Demonstration of knowledge in a special area is a great way to get credibility with prospects and referral sources. As a result, it’s easier to sell to these groups. In fact, if you do a great job establishing a widespread reputation as an expert, prospects actually call YOU. This lets CPAs practice their favorite form of marketing: sitting at their desk, answering the phone and replying “Yes, I’ll be happy to take your order.”
You can beat the competition. The generalist, compliance/oriented CPA has the most competitors. But when you have a specialty, you can focus your marketing on a smaller segment of the market with far fewer competitors. The best way to beat the competitors is to have fewer competitors.
You can charge higher fees. If you are perceived as a top provider in your niche, you no longer compete on price. People who hire experts are willing to pay a premium for that expertise.
Throw away your shotgun. When you are a generalist/compliance firm, your market is as large as it can possibly be. This makes both marketing and sales more difficult. We refer to this as the shotgun approach to marketing because you aim at a large area, hoping you’ll hit something, regardless of what it is. But when you are a specialist, you focus your marketing and selling efforts in your niche, making marketing efforts more efficient and cost-effective. The specialist stops trying to be all things to all people.
Read our book CPA Firm Growth: Keys to Practice Development for tips on specialization and niche practices ► framework for CPA firm practice development ► branding and differentiation ► improving business development skills ► achieving a return on your marketing investment.
Specialization spawns synergy with staff development. When the firm develops a meaningful specialty, staff are needed with experience in that specialty. Eventually, a team is organized with training focused within that specialty, making team members even more valuable to their clients.
Growth begets more growth. The laws of economics work to the niche marketer’s advantage: The larger your niche, the easier it is to continue attracting new business because the specialty makes your firm famous.
Specialization and niche marketing can be a game-changer for your firm. What are some powerful niche marketing practices you’ve put in place for your firm to create growth?
CPA Firm Growth: Keys to Practice Development
This book teaches growth-minded firms time-honored practice development tactics that still work while providing bold new ideas: how to spend marketing dollars wisely, how to outgrow the competition and take the firm to the next level.
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